Fred McKenzie wrote:
I also posted the question over on rec.radio.amateur.equipment, and
received an answer there. It seems that the UT-121 to IC-9100 interface
is very poor. It uses a micro-miniature connector, and uses sticky-foam
to hold the little PCB in place. The cure for the problem is to
repeatedly re-install the module until the transmitter will un-key when
you let up on the microphone button.

After getting it to work, several people have told me, "Everybody knows
that. It is a common problem!"

At the price that 9100 is sold, should we expect any quality?

That is the problem with buying that ICOM JUNK!


D Star is a waste.

It was nothing more then a gimmick to sell more radios.
Some moron who confused public service radio - digital, with amateur radio - analog, and thought that they could improve upon the chicken egg.

The fact be told, public service never wanted to go digital.
They had to go digital to increase their overall bandwidth.

When they ran out of frequencies to use, they just narrow banded it, piggy backed the digital data next to the audio and thought that they somehow improved it.

When you remove deviation - you loose sound quality.
The thought was that if it was digital, it wouldn't matter, because digital is all 1's and 0's.

Tell that to the state trooper at the bottom of the hill that can't talk back to the barracks 5 miles away with a 150 watt radio.

The high band VHF - analog, worked just fine.
The digital UHF radio - no signal, no service.

Since noise is inverse the square of the frequency - using D Star doesn't make any sense on 2 meters!