Apparently people found the “Making a Cable to Go Between a GPS device and the Kenwood TH-D7” useful, and have asked for information about making a data cable.

View of the front of the connector-side (not the best picture):

View of the top of the solder-side:

So a view from the solder-side shows the pins to be:

__(_)_(B)_(R)_(_)_(G)__
____(_)_(_)_(_)_(_)____

G = Ground
R = Red
B = Black (sometimes white)

A lot of this depends on the cable manufacturer. If for some reason it does not seem to be working, simply switch (R) and (B).

I discovered pocketAPRS recently and wanted to try it with my old Palm m100. It is at least 6 years old, so I wasn’t sure if it was up to the challenge.

One of the most difficult things of this project, was finding the pocketAPRS software! Unfortunately the project was discontinued in 2004, making it difficult to track down. If you do enough Google hunting and searching, you should be able to find a copy some place on the net.

I installed pocketAPRS on the Palm, using the Palm Desktop… just like installing any other piece of software for the Palm OS.

Next I needed to figure out how to physcially connect the Palm m100 with the Kenwood TH-D7A. The Palm m100 I have came with a serial sync cable which looks ike this:

Since the sync cable had a female serial connection I decided to try using the GPS cable I had made in a previous post. Sure enough the Palm m100 with pocketAPRS was communicating with the Kenwood once I switched the TNC mode to “packet”. Thankfully I had made another cable, so I could have both the GPS and Palm connected to the Kenwood TH-D7A.

I am now able to see APRS information and locations on the Palm m100. This is a much more compact way to use APRS, instead of carrying a laptop around.

Although you can buy cables “pre-made” for connecting the GPS to the Kenwood D7, it seems to be in the spirit of ham radio… to build your own.
Hopefully these pictures will help you see what I did to get mine working.

Page 6 of Kenwood’s Documentation on Connectors was very helpful. However it doesn’t really say what to do with the “serial” port end of the cable. The TH-D7 manual mentions which holes are what, but obviously it can make a difference on which viewpoint (solder-side or connector-side) and whether it is a male or female port.

This cable has allowed me to connect a Magellan Meridian GPS and a Garmin etrex Legend to the D7. (NOTE: This was for use with the existing manufacturer cables that provide connections from the device to a DB-9 serial cable).

View of the front of the connector-side:

View of the top of the solder-side:

So a view from the solder-side shows the pins to be:

__(G)_(_)_(R)_(B)_(_)__
____(_)_(_)_(_)_(_)____

G = Ground
R = Red
B = Black (sometimes white)

A lot of this depends on the cable manufacturer. If for some reason it does not seem to be working, simply switch (R) and (B).

You’ll notice that I used the crimp style connector for this specific cable, since the wires were large enough. On another cable that had smaller wires, I used the crimp and then soldered to make sure there was good connection.

I purchased a Kenwood D7A/G at Ham Radio Outlet today. The built-in APRS and TNC should make it a useful rig to learn amateur radio technologies.