Just what it says -- this is the place for any discussions not related to Buying, Selling and Trading ham gear. The discussion must be related to Ham Radio.
I am a Kenwood man, and I have a Kenwood TS570-S, a Kenwood TS790-A, and a Kenwood TL922-A I have owned the TS530-SG, TS830-S and the TS430-S But lately Kenwood's radio line has a lot to be desired. AS FAR AS LOOKS GO.
The Kenwood 2000 and the 480 series, with every thing being rounded to the tuning knob just turns me off. You cant even attach the 480 face to the main rig. Kenwood's vhf and uhf rigs almost all have detachable faces I just don't like that at all. I like a good square design. So I guess I will wait a while or until they change there design to buy a new Kenwood. If not I will keep my 570-S for a long time. But I will still stay with Kenwood.
I would like some replies to see if anyone feel the same way.
I find your comments interesting about the Kenwood Amateur Radio Transceiver Products having curved front operating panels and detachable front face plates. I've own many different manufactured Ham Radio Products in the 37 years I've been licensed.
I personally think the Japanese Marketing personnel are slowly realizing that there isn't enough room in today's automobile passenger compartments to mount the entire radio. They have designed the control head, microphone and speaker to mount in the small passenger compartment and the main radio in the trunk or under the seat. While their development packaging engineers have changed the appearance from Utilitarian to Ergonomics, there were reasons for the radical changes to enhance the operators ease of using the equipment much like computer keyboards.
The other issue had to be decided between their engineering personnel, the managers and the marketing personnel how to solve using each radio for base, portable and mobile applications and keeping the manufactures costs down to a minimum. They probably also reviewed how they could reuse the design in their Land Mobile Two-Way Radio Products and/or Military Communication Radios at the same time thus giving Kenwood the most bang per Yen (buck) for the investment. If you haven't noticed, most amateur radio manufactures have moved from the hobby equipment to Land Mobile Radio and/or Military Radio Communications equipment because there are better profit margins for the manufactures.
You should be happy the amateur radio community still have the following manufactures: Kenwood, ICOM and Yaseu designing and building radio equipment for our small market. And to my knowledge, there are only three amateur radio manufactures here in the good old USA .... Ten-Tec, SGC and Elecraft. When I started in 1968, we had the following amateur radio manufactures: Collins, Drake, Hallicrafters, Gonset, National, Hammarlund, Heath Kit, Knight Kits, Layfette, Swan, Hy-Gain, EF Johnson, World Radio Labs, Atlas and the new kids on the block were Signal-One, Ten-Tec, Kenwood, Yaseu and ICOM.
One thing you should consider is the electrical performance of the newer radio equipment and what the manufacture will bring out in the future as far as the Digital Mode operation, such as FDMA, TDMA, CDMA and Frequency Hopping. Go ahead and keep your older gear but you need to realize the replacement components are getting more difficult to find because the technology continues to change at a rapid rate and they become physically smaller.
Most Marketing personnel think of two-way radio equipment including Amateur, Land Mobile and Military Communications Radio as Wireless Modems. It's going to be more difficult to prove them wrong in the future.
I am a Kenwood man, and I have a Kenwood TS570-S, a Kenwood TS790-A, and a Kenwood TL922-A I have owned the TS530-SG, TS830-S and the TS430-S But lately Kenwood's radio line has a lot to be desired. AS FAR AS LOOKS GO.