[aprssig] The new D710 and Smart Beaconing?

[Bob Burns W9RXR]

At 12:19 PM 5/23/2007, Robert Bruninga wrote:
> > I wish Kenwood saw this product important enough,
> > to talk to a panel of amateurs with APRS interest.
>
>They introduced the concept at the TAPR Digitial Communications 
>Conference last September and handed out questionares for everyone 
>to list their most important features.  I believe there may also 
>have been a web site?  Anyway, the solicitation of comments was well 
>published here and elsewhere.

I've been a member of this sig since July 2006. The first mention I 
saw about Kenwood showing a new radio at DCC was in a [tapr-announce] 
message from John Ackerman on 06-Sep-2006 which read:

"Kenwood will be displaying a new model radio for the first time in the U.S.!"

You then posted a message in [aprssig] on 18-Sep-2006 which read:

"By the way, I guess everyone has heard that Kenwood was showing A 
new radio (mockup) at DCC this weekend which would have APRS... In a 
year or so...."

I posted a message in [aprssig] the same day asking if anyone had 
details. Few details were posted because, I think, Kenwood had few 
details to release. There seemed to be much confusion between the 
TM-V71, which was near production at the time and has since been 
released to sell, and the TM-D710, which you stated was in the 
mock-up stage at DCC and still hasn't been released. You answered 
later that day by saying that Kenwood was passing out questionnaires 
at DCC looking for input on how people used APRS and what features 
they'd like to see. Based on your comments, I concluded the radio was 
still in early development or just vaporware.

The only place I saw any indication that Kenwood was soliciting 
comments was in this forum. I'm a member of several Kenwood-oriented 
groups and this is the only group where I saw any credible mention of 
this solicitation. To the best of my knowledge, Kenwood USA never 
mentioned on their web site that a new radio was coming and they were 
looking for comments. If Kenwood was truly interested in what APRS 
users thought, there are any number of means they could have used to 
solicit input, starting with a press release to the major amateur 
radio magazines. Did they do that? It seems that Kenwood's first 
official acknowledgement to the general amateur radio community that 
the D710 was coming occurred at Dayton last week.

I'm glad that Kenwood is continuing to develop new APRS-capable 
radios. I've been a Kenwood radio owner since 1991 and I can't begin 
to count the number of Kenwoods I've owned. But it was made clear to 
me at Dayton that Kenwood thinks that by talking to you, that they 
are getting the input of the APRS community. For the most part, I'm 
OK with that. On the other hand, the posts in this sig routinely 
indicate that the APRS community doesn't always see your vision and vice versa.

>I would like to see a good definition of settings.  Almost every 
>instance of smart beaconing that I have seen on the air are 
>noteworthy due to their excessive beaconing.

I agree that SmartBeaconing can be abusive if the setting are 
incorrect. But the same statement can be made of any APRS setting. An 
example is the guy in my area with the Mic-E encoder in a home 
station that transmits 40-60 packets per hour around the clock. As a 
new owner of a tracker with SmartBeaconing, I'm interested in the 
proper settings, too. After all, I don't want to be the guy that you 
use as a bad example someday. <grin>

Bob...