Tri-band D-STAR and APRS handheld with all-mode wideband receive.
Why You Can't Buy One New
The TH-D74 is discontinued, and the reason is a good story. 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 that sit at the heart of nearly
every digital-voice handheld. With no source for those parts and no quick second source,
the radios that depended on them simply couldn't be built anymore.
On December 24, 2020, Kenwood announced the end of production for the TH-D74 — and
in the same breath, for the dual-band
TH-D72.
Both radios were killed by the same fire on the same day. (It's also why Icom delayed
the ID-52.) That left Kenwood with no dual-band amateur handheld in its catalog at all.
The drought lasted more than four years. Kenwood didn't ship a successor until the
TH-D75
arrived in January 2025. The D75 is the direct descendant of this radio: same tri-band
transmit, same D-STAR and APRS, same wideband all-mode receiver, now with USB-C charging,
longer memory names, and a refreshed display. If you already own a D74 in good shape,
you're holding a radio that was excellent enough that its replacement took half a decade
and changed surprisingly little.
Circuitry
Dual band dual receive
Triple superheterodyne
false
false
Receiver
0.1–524 MHz (AM/FM/NFM/WFM/SSB/CW/DV)
true
false
true
true
Transmitter
H=5W, M=2W, L=0.5W, EL=0.05W
true
true
true
false
false
false
true
Memories
1000
30 memory groups, 8 character alphanumeric memory names
Digital
APRSD-STARGNSSKISS TNC
Class 2, doesn't support Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and therefore won't connect with iOS devices; works with headsets and speaker mics
