[aprssig] Some Quick Impressions of the Dayton Hamvention 2007 -- APRS

[Stephen H. Smith]

The 2007 Dayton Hamvention APRS forum on Saturday morning had an 
overflow crowd of around 250.  A few pictures from the forum are  on my 
website at:

      < http://wa8lmf.net/Dayton2007 >

Apparently the Hamvention organizers originally didn't want to provide a 
room and time slot for an APRS forum because they though there wasn't 
enough interest to justify it.  The crowd shown in my pictures should 
put this belief to rest.

===========

The non-debut of the much discussed and rumored new Kenwood TM-D710 
replacement for the D700 was the major highlight (or was it low point?) 
of the 2007 Dayton Hamvention. 

A prototype of the D710 was displayed but it was sequestered inside a 
clear plastic display case. I'm not sure if it was a working prototype 
or just a mockup.  Three Japanese representatives of Kenwood were 
present but NONE of them seemed to be able to understand technical 
questions or could answer in comprehensible English.     No literature 
on the radio was available.

I was finally told that the D710 probably won't be available until early 
fall.   No one could confirm whether the APRS firmware will be contained 
in flashable memory for field upgrades. 

The radio main chassis is about the same height and width as the D700 
but about an inch shorter.  The control head is significantly larger 
than the D700's.  Unlike the D700,  the control head can be mated 
directly to the main chassis without a cable.  In this mode the head 
sticks up above the chassis in a manner similar to the TM-G707.  

The wrong-sexed 9-pin serial port connector of the D700 has been 
replaced with an 8-pin Min-DIN jack like the one used by older 
Macintoshes for serial ports. 

ARRRRGH!!!  Apparently the color of the LCD panel can be changed.  One 
of the two prototype/mockups on display had a orange LCD panel. The 
other was a pale green. 

The reps seemed more interested in talking up, in mangled English, how 
the radio was "Echolink ready" meaning it can store DTMF strings in 
named memories, and had audio I/O ready to connect to an Echolink 
interface; i.e. the STANDARD 6-pin Mini-DIN "packet/data" connector that 
has always had audio input and output pins. 




--

Stephen H. Smith    wa8lmf (at) aol.com
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