I've owned a few iterations of the Icom ID-51 D-Star handheld for several years now. about a year ago I upgraded it to the 51 Anniversary edition. at the time I thought that little radio was doing about everything I could possibly want it to in a handheld. Then came along the Kenwood D74. Sporting a nice color screen thats easy on the eyes, tri-band, Dstar, dedicated APRS and wide band receive, I had to try it out. I had never owned a Kenwood anything before. When I first saw it, it looked clunky. a large brick of plastic that didn't look 21st century as opposed to the ID-51A and its sleek sexy design and solid feel.

The Kenwood is packed with a ton of function. It got me to try out APRS, I can listen to just about anything on radio, D-star is a breeze to program on it. The menus and functions are very intuitive more so than the Icom way of implementing D-star. The Kenwood software is a breeze to setup and it works fast. Tell it to upload, and within seconds your back on the air with your new setup. Now locally here 220Mhz isn't huge but its fun to play with and the D74 gives me that option unlike the 51A which has had only minor updates (IMHO) since it was first introduced 4 or so years ago.

I hear Kenwood is considering doing a mobile radio based on the D-74 and although I own two ID-5100s I'm excited about the prospect of seeing a tri-band, D-Star, APRS color screen mobile. Watch for my next episode of K6UDA Radio for more on this and a better look at the pros & cons of the ID-51A and D74.

Welcome to the Blog page. I'm going to use this space as a means to dive into different subjects that interest me and hopefully interest you. It's now been a whole two weeks since my last show. I try to post once a week but sometimes life gets in the way. From the beginning of the K6UDA show, I've tried to treat it like a job. I put a schedule of a show a week into my "work schedule". The reason for this was

1. In order to learn how to do a successful video production, I needed to have a mission that forced me to put in the time. Creating a job with a weekly deadline became that job.

2. It takes approximately 15 to 20 hours of planning, filming, editing, uploading and marketing for each show. So, each week I'm picking a subject, filming that subject and then putting a cohesive story together and boiling it down into a 5 to 10 minute segment that isn't to long, technical, boring to watch or otherwise not up to my standards.

So why haven't I posted a new video for two weeks? We recently purchased a new to us motorhome. Part of the deal I made with my wife was that I'd put up a cover to keep it from baking in the Northern CA sunshine. So, for the past two weeks I've been cutting down down trees, leveling a pad, and building a road down to that pad suitable for a 42,000 pound vehicle. That part is nearly complete. So, I guess it's back to videos.