Programming the Kenwood TH-D7A

October 26, 2007 | Amateur Radio | By: Mark VandeWettering

Modern ham transceivers are complex. Really complex. They have dozens and dozens of settings, hundreds of memories, and they are kind of a pain to program. That’s why most radio manufacturers now include an ability to “clone” a radio from another one, and perhaps even a way to actually use software to design a configuration and load it into the radio.

Of course, the protocol they use is hard to find, and is likely something the manufacturer doesn’t want to talk about. But if you dig around, you can probably find it.

Here’s the command list for the TH-D7a.

I’ll probably set up a cable for this thing this weekend, and then write up a simple Python program using this information. I’d like to convert my local list of repeaters into a good configuration, as well as include reasonable setups for the major satellites.

[tags]Amateur Radio,TH-D7A,APRS[/tags]