thd74a , i cant run it,baffled

i posted this elsewhere, go ahead kick me!!

yes i know, im a dummy. i just counted back to my start in ham radio and i count 17 rigs,ht,dual/tri band,hf,name it.still have some. i ran them all and for fun operated some b4 opening the book.yep,keyed up repeaters,qso on 40. cross band , do it all.
i spent this day,off/on 8 hours trying to program a memory, set up for repeater. no luck.
ive followed the the book and can do one thing ok, then go to next function and get stalled. do a reset and that function is ok but cant do the next.
it seems like i cant go back one step as i must need to.
i am doing the book EXACTLY as it is printed.
i find nothing intuitive as i have on other rigs. so now doubt creeps in: is it me? or is the rig defective??
how can i know since i keep getting stuck...
utube,video. yes i tried and guys b4 me said what i thought. the guy was too fast and not clear on some terms he used. he knows the rig too well to see what others need.
will i keep it, oh yeah. ill finally break thru but this this is the worst experience ive had on ? 25 years of fun with radios. at last count i have 6 db/tri band ht's ive used with ease. not this one...

 

Are you programming the radio directly through the menus/keypad or using the Kenwood software? It's a lot easier with the MC-74 software which is a free download from Kenwood and uses a standard micro-USB cable which you probably already have for your phone.

 

i like to start out doing it direct so i 'know" the rig but this is messy. i finally broke thru last night.
got 4 repeaters ker chunked! dont know if anyone out there heard me!
its hard to repeat because it seem like you need a "clean" starting point,like if you reset. hard to explain.
even now i cant get back to what the original panel looked like,without a reset.
and once i get the weather ch running, by accident, i cant get rid of it.
ill try the sw after another day of "learning"...
thanks, 73
btw, wonder how many u usb connectors there are?

 

The weather channels are in a separate memory group, you probably have that group selected. I don't have the radio with me at the moment to look at.
I keep the manuals for my radios on my phone so I can always refer to them in a pinch, you might also consider getting the Nifty manual for the D-74 which is easier to follow than the Kenwood manual.

 

you know the nifty probably did it right...i usually get them. maybe ill do that.
they pack it right.
kenwood is scattered and i think they put all focus on gps,aprs,etc and rightly so. theres a lot more to that.
ill try as a test to save my few repeaters on the sd card and reset to get back to the start screen..
its a good thing to do on another cold day in indiana...

 

Good luck.
It's a great radio but does take some time and a learning curve to get comfortable with programming and operating. Plus a lot of $$ to carry around.
My D-Star carry radio is the ID-51A, smaller/lighter/less $ and more user-friendly. Missing some features that the Kenwood has but not dealbreakers for most regular use.

 

Looking at the radio now, what you may have done is while in memory mode pressed and held the left arrow key which selects memory groups. If you haven't set up any groups there will be two, Group 0 and Weather. Holding that left arrow will select the Weather group and exclude everything else. Pressing and holding the right arrow will get you back to Group 0 which will have whatever memories you programmed.

 

trying to go thru freqs till i get to am bcst?. thought left/right did that?
trying band b...

just got home so ill get a new look

 

Yes left/right changes bands but only in the VFO mode. In memory mode it changes groups.
Also the AM/FM bcast and HF bands are only available on the B VFO.

 

Thanks for the heads up. ...as I was thinking about getting this radio as my first ham radio.