Greetings.
Here's a few suggestions.
1. Use the mini-USB cable (with ferrite choke) that came with the TH-D72 radio to connect the radio to your computer. Other mini-USB cables may work, but the choke is good to reduce RF conduction into the computer to mess it up.
2. Since you are using Microsoft Windows, ensure that the COM port in the radio has appeared and identify its COM port number (ex.: COM9), using the Device Manager in the Windows Control Panel. You may need to download and run a Windows driver installer from Kenwood to tell Windows how to talk to the USB-to-serial chip inside the radio.
3. Once you have a COM port working, on the radio itself, go into its menu, and check the baud rate you have specified for the COM port (defaults to 9600 baud). Once you know what COM port baud rate is configured, tune the radio's A side to 144.390 simplex, and press the TNC key on the radio until the top of the screen says PACKET12 (not APRS12 or blank). Also adjust the squelch as low as it can go without letting normal no-signal static come out the speaker. Notice if you hear any local packets squawk from the speaker.
4. Start up YAAC. When you are configuring your radio port, choose the Serial_TNC port type (not the Kenwood port type), select the COM port number that was identified back in step 2, set the baud rate to match the radio's baud rate, enter your callsign, specify you are using a TNC2-compatible TNC for the KISS mode command (the D72's built-in TNC is TNC2-compatible), and save the port configuration. Note you can do this either from the configuration wizard, or from the expert-mode Configuration dialog.
5. Make sure your YAAC beacon is configured and enabled to identify your station.
At this point, if you hear received packets from the D72's speaker, they should also appear in YAAC on the View->Raw Packets table view. Whether they will appear on the map window depends on whether you are looking at the part of the map in your local vicinity. If you have entered your beacon coordinates correctly into the beacon, you can click the Home button (little icon of a house) on the Map window to center the map on your station's configured coordinates.
Hope this helps.
Andrew, KA2DDO
author of YAAC
________________________________________
From:
[email protected] <
[email protected]> on behalf of scott pastor <scottpastor@...>
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2024 8:50 PM
To:
[email protected]Subject: [yaac-users] Introducing myself and asking for advice
Hello everyone, name is Scott, Call is kc8kbk, been a ham for years and just now getting into APRS.
Does anyone have configuration instructions to connect a Kenwood D72 to YAAC? I’ve tried following the YAAC help file but I can’t get the radio to talk to my computer (Windows 10), and I’m beyond frustrated.
73 and thanks in advance!
Scott, kc8kbk
scott pastor