QST wrote a 224 MHz radio review a few years back and I had been meaning to save it. Three or four of the available 224 MHz radios were covered. Alinco, ADI, Kenwood, Icom and someone else... at least.
Alinco Radios have a pretty good reputation and my ham friend likes to beat the snot out of his gear... yet it keeps on playing like the day it was built. Of the two Alinco Radios that I know were returned for service... both were fixed right the first time and returned in a semi normal amount of time. ADI radios have had reports inbound about the display failing... and no replacement. I have yet to confirm that report but I have heard it from a number of people/places. But ADI radios are also sold for really cheap prices. I've got a few Kenwood TM-331 radios and they work pretty good for what they are. I also have and love my original 3530 Kenwood but it's long out of production. The Icom IC-37a? is/was a very popular radio in its day... but had reports of the PA Module failing in more than a few cases. If you can find a used radio, simply throttle the power back and/or run it on the low power setting. Nice compact size radio... The QST Magazine review was pretty good... in addition to the normal ham band operation... one or two of the radios also provided a measure of receive (only) frequency coverage well past the ham bands. One radio model even included an AM detector, which I thought was pretty neat. Just add a bfo and notch filter and you could listen into SSB & ACSB trunking traffic (if there's any left out there...). There might even be some special AM Aircraft traffic available well above 224 MHz if the receiver will program more like a wide band scanner. cheers, skipp > > Jed Barton wrote: > > Hey guys, > > Any good radios to use for 220 linking? I know Alinco makes > > the DR235, but the PL decoder stinks on it. > > http://www.irlpcables.com/AlincoTS64.html > > > Anything from tait or anything else to suggest? > > I need a few of these. >
