Last piece of my Kenwood TS-850-line has arrived! The Kenwood SP-31 speaker. I already had the chance to play with one when the TS-870 for the club was temporarely in my shack. A beautiful speaker, not only to look at, but also the filters do a fantastic job. And most important: my TS-850-line is complete now! I’ve got the TS-850 transceiver, the PS-52 power supply, the SP-31 speaker and the MC-60 microphone!

I always wanted to build a piece of wooden furniture for this Kenwood line. Something that I could put on my desk so the gear is not placed directly on the desk but a little higher. Better view on the display, easier to operate and safer in case if anything wet (drinks) falls on the desk. It should be something fancy like mahogany or so. Nice shiny and chic! Mahogany is too expensive at this time, but I will make something more suitable.

My precious FT-817 still is lying around in the shack unable to transmit. I’ve studied the service manual and did some measuring around in it. Regular readers of my blog know that a while back suddenly my Yaesu broke down due to shortage. It seems like a capacitor on the voltage input blew and took something with it. I let the input fix by a local service shop but that alone cost me already 75 euro’s. So now the Yaesu is able to receive again, but still no transmit.
My intention is to fix that myself. The local repairman told me it’s probably due to blown finals that the rig isn’t transmitting. That would make me a member of the “Blown Finals Club”. But I’m not quite convinced by his story. When only the finals are blown, you should get a very faint signal as output. But there is absolutely no signal at all. Not even when I take another receiver and poke around with that antenna in the transmit line of the Yeasu, no signal at all. So maybe the oscillator or driver stage must be (also) broken to get this behavior.

This would be my very first big repair job, there for I’m not in possession of various measuring equipment. The only measuring device I have is a multimeter. That won’t bring me very far in this case. Fred, PA3YH has a Multimeter which can measure HF-signals. A RF-millivolt meter, such as referenced to in the service manual. But it has a maximum reading frequency of 100 KHz. The RF-millivolt meter reads like 2,6 volts AC on the output of the oscillator (the service manual says it should be 66mV). But the output signal from the oscillator has a frequency of 65.875 MHz. So it’s logical the meter is not reading the correct voltage.
Okay, so I don’t know if the output of oscillator is correct, but I DO know that the oscillator has output! So I guess now I should look to the first driver stage.
But I think I’ll look for someone with a good scope first. It’s easier to check all the checkpoints in the service manual and also check if they have the correct value.
If anyone has good tips on how to find the problem, let me know!

A while ago I’ve bought a DSP-speaker from bhi, the NES10-2MKII. The results with this speaker are unbelievable. The background noise is totally pushed away and you’ll be able to hear signals that are normally buried in noise. So the DSP-algorithm is very good. However…… I’m not satisfied with the LF-amplifier in the speaker itself. It hums and makes noises when it has no input. When you crank up the volume too high the speaker starts making distorted sounds. First I thought it was the speaker itself, but when I put the thing inline between my rig and the Kenwood SP-23 speaker the distorted sound appears from the Kenwood speaker. Really unsatisfying when you take in consideration that the DSP-unit itself is doing a great job.

I would really like to add the ‘bhi-experience’ to my TS-850 and TS-450. But I prefer a way without the crappy LF-amplifier from the NES10. I’ve a external speaker for as well the TS-850 as the TS-450. So it would be an option to put something in there. But I don’t want to drill extra holes in those speakers. It would also be an option to put a DSP-unit in the transceiver itself. I read from the bhi-site they have an unit for building in transceiver too: the NEDSP1061-KBD. Although tis unit is mainly made for adding to a Yaesu FT-817 or a Kenwood TS-50, it is possible to build it in other transceivers according to this manual to build it in a TS-440.

Now would it be possible to also build the NEDSP1061-KBD into a TS-850 and TS450? Does it have the same performance as the NES10-speaker as regards to the DSP-functionality and I’m I rid of the bad LF-amplifier behavior this way?

Just some questions and it would be great if someone have already experience with the NEDSP1061-KBD. Let me know!

We did need a new transceiver for the club. After looking around we’ve found a good one: a Kenwood TS-870S in mind condition. In comparison to the new rigs it’s a real muscle radio for not too much money. It came with speaker SP-31. Very nice sound IMHO. I put it on top of my TS-850S. It’s receiving capabilities are alike but the 870 has a little more bass. Of course the digital filters are awesome and 2 antenna connections are very convenient.
Now I’ve to do the wide transmit modification to let it work on the new upper piece of the 40 meter band. I think I’ll ship it tomorrow evening to it’s new destination, the shack in the club building!

Ever since my friend Fred, PA3YH has got his Signalink, I’m thinking about getting one too. I never participate in any digital modus simply because I have never been able to get the setup right. This Signalink is pretty much a plug and play device and it looks nice too. But hey, it’s a whopping 150 euro’s (with cable and delivery costs). So I’d not feel the urge that much to be in digital modus

But the other day as I was over at Fred’s place and was toying around with Ham Radio Deluxe and his Icom-Signalink integration, it pushed me over the edge. I need to get this! But still there was the money thing. So I put out a Google Alert on Signalink USB. This morning it went off. On Marktplaats (the local eBay) someone offered a Signalink USB. A reasonable price, only it had the wrong cable (Yeasu FT-817). Since my Yeasu still is broken, I need a Kenwood cable for my TS-850. But nevermind, I bought the Signalink. Fred called me to congratulate me with my new toy. He offered me to buy me a Kenwood cable and trade it for my Yeasu cable. That is a nice deal! You see, that’s what friends are for

First run with the new Signalink where pretty disappointing. I’ve got a lot of RFI in the shack, mainly because the shack is practically near the end fed wire antenna. The Signalink only makes it worse. I really need to make a good earth to be able to feed away all the nasty stuff. I think that is gonna be the next bg thing. Or will it be the Cobwebb?

Anyway, the Signalink performed very well as voicekeyer interface between the transceiver and N1MM-logger. I’ve used it constant to give CQ’s. Only need to get rid of the RFI in the shack so I can use it at home too.

With the PACC 2010 coming up, I’m getting all jumpy to get my “ultimate contest setup” complete. My plans are to participate in the PACC this year from our club location NERA. Last year I’ve take a look and made a few QSO’s from that location and it is fantastic to operate from there. Far from the inhabited world there is zero QRM. Very nice when you sometimes have to pick up weak signals.
The idea now is to setup my Kenwood TS-850SAT at this location. The TS-850 has a build in voice keyer, but this keyer is not able to repeat the message with an adjustable delay. So I’ll use my own homebrew voice keyer. I already tested with success my headset. It works fine, so now I only have to find a decent foot pedal to switch between receiving and transmitting. Of course I can buy a foot pedal in an instrument shop or something like that. But that is expensive and less fun. So I searching for a solution for that.
Then I’ve hands free for logging. I think I bring my MSI netbook with me for logging. Only thing is I have to find a good contestlogging program. My main rig controller is Ham Radio Deluxe, but that is not quite feasible for contest logging. N1MM makes Windows crashing when it interacts thru the Keyspan USA-19H USB-RS232-adapter to my rig. So that doesn’t seem a solution. I already take a look at many logging programs, but they are all so old and ugly and don’t do rig control (which I want for logging the complete QSO). So I didn’t figure out that one yet.
If you have any good suggestions, please send me a message!

Last weekend I offered a friend of mine, Fred PA3YH, some help with his shack setup. He owns a Icom IC-756PRO-3 radio. Since a few months he bought a Signalink USB and works all different digital modes with it. Actually this combination works really well! He is doing great in QSO’s! The only thing missing was a good logbook. He did connect the rig via the Signalink to his laptop, but didn’t yet use rig control (Cat-V).

So these two things I want to help him with. First, rig control. Fred did already bought a cable for rig control. It is a USB – ACC-connector cable. After installing the driver for the cable, the laptop did see an extra com-port. Now download and fire up the latest copy of Ham Radio Deluxe. No problems so far. Imported his logbook from LogPA (his current log program). Also no problems. What surprised me was the super duper integration of HRD with the radio. I myself do not yet have a Signalink, but men what cool features do you have then! You are able to record sound of the rig, almost all options are controllable from the program.
Also figure out for him how to let Windows use the internal sound card and let the HAM-programs use the Signalink. I wasn’t able to fully test his new setup because he pushed me out of the way, that enthusiastic he was!
The cool thing about this new setup for Fred is that he makes enough time to investigate all the options and tricks. Hopefully I can benefit too from his investigation

Some time ago I’ve bought the TCXO-SO-2 option (Temperature Compensated X-tal Oscillator) from Joerg, DL6IB. Although I was very pleased to have the option, I postponed the installing because I wanted to figure out a way to measure the stability improvement before and after installing. Since I don’t own (yet) a frequency counter, I didn’t know a way to check.
A few days ago Joerg again send me a message asking me if I already installed the option in my Kenwood TS-850. I was a little ashamed to reply I didn’t. Promised him and myself to do this as quickly as possible. At this new years day I’m a little tired anyway, didn’t feel like anymore work around the house. So I sat down and opened my TS-850. Before I started with installing, I googled around to find a story of installing this option. Didn’t find anything. Okay, it is a pretty simple install but it gives me confidences to read about it. Seems I have to post the first story about installing this option… (more…)

Hi all! We’re back in town from two weeks of holiday! It was very nice. We did a lot of hiking, site seeing, enjoying meals etc. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to set up my portable radio kit in Italy at all. The chalets where so tight packet together, it was impossible to throw a wire over something. And if I was able to do that, I would have interfered with at least 10 satellite receivers. So I kept the goodies in the trunk for the first week of the holiday.
In France of course I had more possibilities to setup a nice configuration. I did bring a 1:6 balun with me to experiment with. Two wires of 13,8m and 27,7m where attached to it and hung up between two tree’s. It worked kind of nice but of course only on the lower bands (40 and 80). And there was not much of interesting activity on those bands that week. Then I’ve tried to work my open dipole for 20m and my long wire (16m) that are already installed at the house. But not much luck either. Lots of static (at least I think, or even there are appearing noise generators) and very little signals. All in all I’ve made 4 QSO’s. Not enough to even bring the stuff with me. I consider to buy a dedicated (old) radio for that location to leave. Then I don’t have to bring the heavy stuff with me all the time and I’m able to use a good radio with all filters and stuff even on holidays.

So when someone has good suggestions for a good (second hand) transceiver with (kind of) modern filter methods but isn’t too expensive (I’ll only use it for maybe one week a year), leave me a comment or a message!

When I posted the message last month that I bought my Kenwood TS-850, I’ve got a mail from Joerg, DL6IB from Germany.
Joerg did offer me something nice. He bought 2 pieces of the Kenwood TCXO-SO2 in the USA. The first one he had used to build in his own Kenwood TS-870 and the second one he did offer me for a good price. You know I’m a sucker for
accessories. I already did manage to find a voice synthesizer (VS-2), a digital recording unit (DRU-2) and several filters for my precious TS-850 . The only thing that was missing was the temperature compensated cristal oscillator (TCXO-SO2). So it was a very good timing of Joerg to contact me!
But I find it always a little bit scary to just send money over the internet and hope the other end will deliver what he promised.
But yesterday the package arrived and there was my “little bug”. Maybe I’ll mount it this weekend. Then my TS-850 is fully loaded and even more capable of operating so nicely, the way I want it.

Thank you Joerg! Thanks for the offer and it was great doing business with you! Hope to hear you on the bands sometime.