BKmetzWRKZ843

I have family that I visit in your general area so I'm familiar your terrain. You have a distinct advantage with all those repeater installations on the mountains. The OP is in Wisconsin which is mostly flat, compared to your area. I'm in Illinois which is the second flattest state after Florida. Over here it's line-of-sight. I can hit a couple of repeaters that are around 35 miles from me with my two HTs. That's all due to the repeater's antenna height and nothing to do with the radios. I'm using a couple of 935Gs with the Nagoya NA-771G antennas. Enjoy those mountains and radio on. ?

The software makes programming FM stations very easy. There is a specific menu page for this. You just input the frequencies to one of the 20 memory slots. After that, while you're in FM mode, press MENU and you'll see 'Radio-MEM.' Press MENU again and you will see 'RECALL.' Now you have accessed those 20 memory slots. You can just use the frequency knob to scroll through the memory slots. When you're done press EXIT. Yeah, scanning with 'WX-ALERT' set to ON is very noisy. As already mentioned, just set WX-ALERT to OFF and don't look back. I forgot about that until I read this thread. I agree fonts could be better, but, the display is a HUGE improvement over the dot-matrix and mono-color LED displays on most other radios. I always use BLACK-2 in the THEME MENU setting.

I have two 1800mAh batteries and I would rate the battery life as 'adequate' at best. Yeah, there are a lot of radios out there that the batteries will last longer. I think the reason the D74A battery life is what it is, is 1, is that there is so much going on inside of it and 2, it's an average capacity battery by today's expextations. My Wouxun KG-935 has a 3200mAh rated battery. Every new generation of HTs have batteries with considerably larger capacity. Whenever Kenwood brings the next generation of HTs to market, they too will have higher capacity batteries. technology marches on. Back to the OP in his search for his ultimate radio. ?

The OP stated 'Water resistant (waterproof not required),' which the D74A is.

pcradio, good discussion. I'm also of thinking along the same lines you are in my need for a do-it-all HT. First I'll address what you haven't said, do you have a ham license? I'll assume so because of the Yeasu radio you mentioned. I own a Kenwood TH D74A. It's a tri-bander (2m/1.25m/70cm) and rather than list all it's features, I'll just post a link. https://www.kenwood.com/usa/com/amateur/th-d74a/ It has everything you're looking for but it's discontinued and sold out everywhere. Used ones are going for stupid money. 6 months ago these radios were selling for $450 to $500. Then Kenwood unexpectedly discontinued it because of the chip shortage. Open box radios (if you can find one) are going for $800 to $1000. Prices of used radios are just as high. I had the MARS-CAP mod done on my D74A by HRO so the warranty is intact. What this means is the radio was internally modified (removal of one tiny resistor) to open up those extra frequencies. What I have not done is get the firmware tweaked so I can take full advantage of those frequencies. I have a bunch of radios so it hasn't been a high priority. Another radio, on the opposite end of the price spectrum, is the Wouxun KG-UV9P amateur band radio & scanner. It has everything your looking for except GPS. If you buy it from these guys https://bettersaferadio.com/wouxun-kg-uv9p-amateur-ham-two-way-radio/ they will pre-program all the scanner frequencies. That's why their price is a bit higher than other online retailers. This radio will only transmit on the ham frequencies and scan everything else. I don't know if the radio can be opened up to transmit on all its frequencies. There is probably someone out there who knows how to do this. Good luck in your search and let us know what you end up buying. Here's a photo of my Kenwood D74A. I'm monitoring my local NOAA frequency.

Which Midland radio? I have a MXT400 and it worked just fine out of the box. I thought my radio wasn't working either until I learned how to set repeater tones. What confused me, because I was such a noob, is that I was listening to a repeater when I thought I was listening to someone local and using simplex. As already stated, find someone with a radio and see if you can talk simplex. I even found a pair of old bubble-pack Motorola Handy-talkies I forgot I had, and even those had tones preset in. The handy talkies could talk to each other, and I could hear them on my HT, but my HT couldn't talk back. Very confusing until I figured it out. Good Luck.

WOW! I am SO glad I bought the KG-935G! It's been a great radio for me. It's also my first Chinese radio. I had some trepidation about buying any Chinese radio but so far, (knock on wood) it's exceeded my expectations. ?

I have a Wouxun KG-935G with a Nagoya NA-771G antenna. I can usually hit one repeater (500ft tower) 35 miles away in a 2nd story room standing next to a window. On my back porch I can hit another repeater (60ft tower) 25 miles away. When I'm making contact, it's a weak signal but usually audible. Evenings are better than daytime and moving a few inches can make a big difference. I haven't had a chance to meet any one local yet to try simplex. My house has vinyl coated steel siding so it's essentially a Faraday cage. Magnets easily stick to the siding. Windows are double pane with no tint.

I have a couple of Motorola bubble-pack Talk-Abouts that I bought back in 2009 for a road trip. Back then I didn't know what FRS and GMRS was. After the road trip the radios were put away and forgotten. I found them, looked up the manual online, and relearned the menus. The radios have 99 privacy tones. OK, so what are the tones? I googled around and found this table, easy enough. The Talk-Abouts are on channel 5 using tone 12, which translates to CTCSS 100.0. So now all my GMRS radios can talk to each other. I hope this helps someone.

My first and current GMRS HT are both the same, Wouxun KG-935G. great radio! ?

First, let me apologize for the tread hijack. I didn't see the need to start a new thread on this fine radio. Thank you everyone for understanding. Received my radio a week ago. This is my first Chinese radio and it met all my expectations and then some. #1: I was able to fully program the radio through the keypad. This is the first radio I have owned that I was able to do that, and rather easily at that. #2. It has a great battery. I ordered a spare battery, desktop charger, and the battery eliminator for mobile use. #3. The color display is awesome. It's better than the photos and videos I've seen. I almost had an ASMR moment when pulling the protective film off the display. I love doing that on new items. ? #4. Build quality was much better than I expected. On par with my Japanese branded ham HTs. It's a rugged radio that will stand up to just about anything except being submerged. But then this is a premium radio and it carries a premium price. This is definitely NOT a cheap disposable Chinese radio. #5. Performance? I easily hit my nearest repeater that is 35 miles away. Usual caveats apply, over flat farmland, no obstructions, etc. I know, lots of cheap HT radios can easily do that. Nothing special about that. While performing the radio check, I was told the KG-935G was as clear as my 40W mobile unit. That's the part that impressed me. #6. As the radio is a joint project between Wouxun and buytwowayradios.com, buytwowayradios.com (they deserve a plug here) wrote the specs and the owner's manual and it shows. The manual is written in proper & correct English, very well edited, and has the beginner operator in mind. Everything is well explained. As mentioned, this was the easiest radio I ever programmed. I expected programming to be 'challenging' so I ordered the programming cable. I'm still glad I did because it can be used on a lot of other radios, Wouxun and other brands. I did download the software and use it to look at what I did. In reviewing my menu settings I didn't miss anything. One can program the radio faster with the cable, software, and a computer, but it is easily done through the keypad. Using the keypad just takes longer. Photo 1: The radio and the accessories. Photo 2: This carry case was listed under Wouxun accessories, but not under KG-935G accessories. Glad I found it, it easily holds two HT radios. Photo 3: Decent close up photo of the display. As I said earlier, the display actually looks better than in the photo. I also replaced the Wouxun rubber ducky antenna with a Nagoya NA-771G antenna. Maybe I'll drive out about ~40 to 45 miles from the repeater and switch antennas. See if it makes a difference.

I ordered my KG-935G a few days ago from BTWR. I'm really looking forward to getting this radio. ?

Yup, that's me! ?

I bought my MXT400 in March/21 with the data cable and downloaded the programming software. The first time I was in programming mode, the radio was indeed already in wide band mode. I highly recommend getting the cable and download the software, it's well worth it. Brian WRKZ843 WB9VLW

I received my new amateur call sign yesterday. I was able to get my dad's call sign, WB9VLW. The photo is one of his old tags.