Despite working at the food booth for the Milford Hamfest, I did get some time to get into the boneyard.  I came back with a few things.

Astron SS-25M. Yes, the price sticker says “Bad”. No power output. It can be fixed – Astron makes some good products, and I’m sure I can find the schematics online.

Footswitch. Dear reader, you didn’t think I’d use the wooden one forever, did you? 🙂

Kenwood TM-201A. Works, but has quirks (some may be by design – like the fact that I have to use an external speaker!). Power output was 6 watts, although I didn’t play with the power level switch to see if it would go up to 25 watts. I do like the slide-out bracket it uses.

Another view of the Kenwood.

AEP PK-232 Packet TNC.

Parts. I looked through several bags and picked ones with parts I really want. The meter was partly to round up to $4, although I’m sure I’ll use it, too.

Not a bad haul.

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I was going to post this to twitter, but it’ll be longer than 140 characters, so I thought I’d put it here.

With Yaesu having began to advertise their C4FM and hopefully demoing it at Dayton in 5 weeks (from this post), and Icom having now 21,900 “registered users” worldwide (note that registered users ≠actual users, as I’ve heard via a twitter/D-Star user that people can register without actually owning any D-Star equipment).

Kenwood, based on their recent QST ads, appear to be ready to unleash another HF rig on us.  No telling what their plans are, but they could single-handedly destroy D-Star or C4FM by going with the competing technology.  They could also exacerbate the status quo by bringing out their own digital voice/data technology.

Of course, Kenwood probably doesn’t want to get in between Icom and Yaesu by siding with one of them.  And I’m not sure if Kenwood wants to add another proprietary-feeling digital mode.  They may just be waiting this one out for a winner.

Or maybe we’ll get lucky and Kenwood will figure out a way to build radios with FM, D-Star, and C4FM.  🙂

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