Last Tokio Ham Fair, 22 and 23 august 2009 Kenwood was presenting a new transceiver at their stand. It looks like a refurbished TS-570 but insiders explain that it is a new high-end rig. More like a K3. Very interesting! It will be introduced in 2010.

Here I found a short clip of the introduction.

Since I swapped my Icom 910H for a Kenwood TS-850, I did lose my 2m/70cm rig. And in a earlier post I reported a fried Yaesu FT817.
I’m not that sad about not having anything to transmit on 2/70. I hardly ever use these frequenties. Not my thing. But…. I’m still doing the morsecode course and the teacher gives feedback on 2m. So I need to be able to response to that.
Therefore I bought a Condor 16 the other day. As former PMR transceivers they are very cheap and extremely robust. They are pretty easy to convert to 2m. Mine is already converted. I must say, they work pretty good! And only 40 euro’s for a set, a speaker and a microphone. Good deal!

Yesterday I’ve swapped the capacitors of my TS-850 CAR-board. It was not a very difficult job, but men, what are those smd-parts tiny! I have to get another iron for this little stuff.

Anyway, the leaking capacitors are replaced. No damage to the circuit board underneath the capacitors was discovered. Only the green layer was damaged around the capacitors. I’ve scraped everything clean and then cleaned it with some alcohol. Next I put down some transparant nail varnish to protect the clean board. After reconnect it in the rig, it turn out to work fine! So job done I guess!

After I took the picture, I’ve swapped the 47 µF/16V one for a normal (not smd) version of 25V. There was enough room for it, so why bother to get the smd-version. Hopefully no leakage on my CAR-board anymore!

For years this radio has been my dream. I already did own a Kenwood TS-450SAT. A very nice radio. But the other day I saw a TS-850SAT on internet for sale. In the corner of the shack was a Icom 910H which I never used. I traded the Icom in for the Kenwood TS-850SAT. A pretty nice deal, I thought!

After close inspection it turn out the TS-850 has a serialnumber in the 20-million…. Bummer! That numbers turn out to have several leaking problems. But the salesman ensures me he checked the rig and there where no traces of leaking capacitors. He also gives me a 6 months of warranty. So with a good feeling I went home and plugged in my brand new TS-850. The rig performes excellent. Really cool features (e.a. slope tuning) and a good quiet receiver picked up at least twice as many station as my TS-450SAT does.
But now lift up the hood to check the dealer claims.

Hmmm, that doesn’t look very promising:

The capacitors of the CAR-board ARE leaking, let there be no confusion about that. Now I can do two things: bring back the TS-850SAT to the dealer to let it fix. But he already replied my e-mail with above picture saying: this is no proof, if you want it fixed, you have to pay half of the bill.
Well, I’m not want to pay anything since he promised me 6 months of warranty.
The other thing I can do is fix the problem myself. So I ordered the 10 capacitors of 10 µF/25V. I hope they arrive tonight. I will replace them immediately! The 47 µF-one wasn’t available so I have to search a little bit harder for that one. But before I order, I’ll inspect all boards for these faulty blue smd capacitors and replace these too.

My main HF rig is still the good old Kenwood TS-450SAT. I absolutely love this rig! It looks beautiful, it sounds beautiful and it works great.
The most funny about this rig is, everyone who owned one in the past and see it again on my desk, sighs and says: “I should never never never sold that baby!” Even guys who own a Icom 756 pro III nowadays like the looks of my 450 more.

I’m a quick learner, I never want to sell this piece of equipment too. So I figured, if I never wanted to sell it, I might as well start the hunt for all the available options for it. If I’m gonna enjoy the rig, then please with all its options in it!
So I opened the manual to see what kind of options there are. Actually there a a few of them! Let me publish a little list:

Filters:

- YG-455C-1 CW filter 500 Hz
- YG-455CN-1 CW filter 250 Hz
- YG-455S-1 SSB filter 2,4 KHz
- YG-88C-1 CW filter 500 Hz
- YG-88CN-1 CW filter 270 Hz
- YG-88S-1 SSB filter 2,4 KHz
- YG-88SN-1 SSB filter 1,7 KHz

Other options:

- SO2-TCXO crystal oscillator oven
- VS-2 voice synthesizer (reads frequency)
- TU-8 Tone unit (so you can use tone enabled repeaters on 10m)
- DSP-100 MF digital signal processor.

I opened the hunt for all of these options. I was able to find the YG-455C-1 500 Hz CW filter, the YG-88SN-1 SSB 1,7 KHz filter and the VS-2 voice synthesizer. The only filter I don’t understand is the 2,4KHz SSB filter at 455 KHz MF. There is already standard a 2,4 KHz filter in this rig for 455 KHz. So I’m still looking for the other filters, the SO2-TCXO, the TU-8 and the DSP-100. Would be great to complete the rig!

I’ve picked up my Yaesu FT817 from the shop the other day. They hadn’t good news for me. After 2,5 hours of working the engineer managed to get it back to life. Well, it received. Transmitting still was broke. It seems that the feds are broken too.
I’ve picked it up because the bill was already up in the sky. Further repair would cost more money then what the rig is worth these days.
Maybe I can fix the feds myself. Until then I’ve got myself a nice receiver!

It is a very sad sad day. My first rig, a Yeasu FT-817, is broken.
The other day I wanted to turn it on, but it was dead. Shaking the rig gave me all weird noises, so I opened it. Seems that there was an exploded elco in it. All kind of lose smd pieces around the elco. It look a bit like a mess. Actually it seems that there was some kind of shortage in de power.

So I took the rig to the local repair man. All that smd stuff is a bit too new for me. I hope he will be able to fix it… Let’s cross fingers. I would like to have a working 817 for nostalgic purposes

Some while ago I bought a beautiful second hand Icom 910H. Very nice radio to work with! Only one little problem: to work some repeaters over here in The Netherlands, you have to send a CTCSS-tone. Of course this rig is capable of sending a CTCSS-tone. But….. The original configuration for Europe is sending only one 1750 Hz tone when enable the tone-squelch.
But that is a bit of a problem since non of the repeaters send a tone back. So I was able to open some of the local repeaters, but unable to listen to them.
After posting my problem on a Dutch forum K6APR rushed in to help me out.
He posted a Icom 910h Repeater mod to enable the American/Korean repeater settings of my Icom. I did used the mod and it works! There are more options to work the repeaters and now I’m able to work all the local ones.
One little thingy to remember: when you’ve made the change, when you first put on the radio, all your memories will be reset. So please write down anything important!

I was looking for a new radio for a while. For 2m and 70cm I used my good old Yeasu FT-817. Actually my first radio. A perfect radio for mobile and backpack use, but not for the QTH.

For in the shack I wanted something a little bigger, multiband capabilities and the most important: more output power. Since I only use Yeasu and Kenwood I was curious for Icom. When I went searching for a good 2m/70cm transceiver from Icom I quickly stumbled on the 910H. Very interesting radio, good performance. And also capable of heavy duty ssb traffic. Something I don’t do often right now because I don’t have the right equipment.

So a second hand Icom 910H it wil be. Last week I found one on the internet. I went over for a good look and liked what I saw. So I bought the rig and now it’s humming in my shack! Welcome 910