Kenwood TH-D72Discontinued

Dual-band APRS handheld with built-in GPS, KISS TNC, and full-duplex FM satellite operation.

Why You Can't Buy One New

The TH-D72 is discontinued, and it went out the same way its successor did. In the third week of October 2020 a fire broke out at an Asahi Kasei Microdevices (AKM) semiconductor plant in Nobeoka, Japan. It burned for roughly 82 hours and destroyed the line that produced the analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converter chips used throughout the radio industry. When the parts ran out, the radios that needed them stopped being built.

By 2020 the D72 was already the old guard. The tri-band, D-STAR-equipped TH-D74 had superseded it on features back in 2016, but Kenwood kept the D72 on sale as the simpler, dual-band APRS option. On December 24, 2020, Kenwood announced the end of production for both radios at once. The fire that took the D74 took the D72 the same day.

The Satellite Radio Kenwood Stopped Making

Here's the part that keeps the D72 in demand on the used market: it is a genuine full-duplex radio. It can transmit on one band while receiving on the other at the same instant, so you hear your own downlink as you work an FM bird like AO-91. Set the uplink on VFO B and the downlink on VFO A, enable full duplex (F → DUP with VFO B active), plug an earphone into the speaker jack to stop the feedback, and you have a complete portable satellite station in one hand.

This is the feature satellite operators miss most, because Kenwood removed it from everything that followed. The TH-D74 dropped full duplex in 2016, and the current TH-D75 still doesn't have it — the D72 is the only one of the three Kenwoods that can work a satellite full-duplex. That, more than anything, is why a fifteen-year-old discontinued handheld still commands the prices it does.

What the D72 still does well is the fundamentals: dual-band FM, an honest built-in SiRFstar III GPS, and a genuine, user-accessible KISS TNC. It has no D-STAR and no Bluetooth, so if digital voice matters to you, look at the D74 or the current TH-D75 instead. As a rugged, GPS-equipped APRS HT, the D72 still earns its place on a belt.