I have a KSC-25LS charging cradle for my Kenwood TH-D75 handheld. This charging cradle comes with an AC/DC power supply which provides 12V to the cradle. I wanted the option to power the charging cradle directly from any 12V DC power source connected via Powerpoles.

Antenna design is a game of tradeoffs. There is no such thing as an inexpensive, portable, lightweight, small, all band, high gain, omnidirectional antenna. The good news is that for any given use case, there is probably an antenna design that works pretty well. The antennas that come with most handhelds are inexpensive, small, and portable, but have terrible performance. Their low gain is especially worrisome on a handheld which typically has only 5W of power. I found an antenna that's portable, small, with 7dB of gain, and it's great for use on handhelds: Ed Fong's DBJ-2.

I pre-ordered a Kenwood TH-D75 as soon as the distributors started taking pre-orders. I've had my Kenwood TH-D75 for a week now, and have had a chance to use if for quite a few hours. This is an expensive radio, I paid $750 for mine. Why would anyone pay this much money for any handheld radio? And is this one worth the money? You can buy a Baofeng UV-5R for less than $20, and it includes a charging cradle, which the Kenwood does not. The Baofeng will transmit and receive on the 2m and 70cm amateur radio bands, receive nearly anything with FM modulation, and with a little tweaking, can transmit on GMRS and MURS frequencies. What could the TH-D75 have that makes it worth almost 40 times the price?