Kenwood TM-D710G

I’ve been looking at mobile radios for a while, but the difficult thing about it is that there’s no radio that does everything. I’ve been looking at:

  • VHF/UHF radios that support digital voice modes like DMR, or
  • VHF/UHF radios that include a TNC and APRS, or
  • all-band radios that do HF in addition to VHF/UHF, or
  • HF-only rigs.

Choosing one means giving up on the other modes, or running multiple radios which multiplies cost and complexity. After much humming and hawing, I decided that packet is one of the things I’d most like to master (even though the prevalence of packet is supposedly much reduced from its heyday), so I chose what seems to be the most popular dual-bander with a TNC.

The Kenwood TM-D710G puts out 50W on the 2m and 70cm bands, which is an order of magnitude more power than the HTs I’ve been using. It has a well-integrated TNC which supports APRS (with built-in GPS for location), and also more general packet/AX.25 communications, even digipeater operation.

Illustration of cross-band repeating Cross-band repeating, courtesy Ken Larson KJ6RZ

Beyond that, it can do cross-band repeating, which is very similar to the SINCGARS retrans I used to do in the Army. Doing cross-band repeating can allow your vehicle to act as a high-power base station that can connect back to a permanent repeater on one end, and connect one or more low-power HTs on the other end, which can be very handy.

There are many good YouTube videos for learning different features. I very much appreciated intro videos from Jim KA6ETE. A couple of people have videos of working the ISS APRS digipeater, which would be interesting to try in conjunction with prepping for ARISS. There’s even a video of someone using DTMF for remote control; that’s a bit beyond me at the moment, but it’s nice to know it’s there.

All in all, this radio feels a lot more powerful and feature-rich than even my AnyTone AT-D878UV. I’m excited to explore this and see what it can do!