PA1JIM » Kenwood

Kenwood TS-509S

PA1JIM — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:52:07 +0000

Finally more details of the new Kenwood are published! Take a look, must be a interesting transceiver! A nice christmas present for this year?

Kenwood SP-31 speaker

PA1JIM — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:30:40 +0000

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.

Installing TCXO-SO-2 in Kenwood TS-850

PA1JIM — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 19:49:06 +0000

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…

To install the option you need two things: a Kenwood TS-850 (or other Kenwood, but this article is about the 850) and this little ‘bug’ TCXO-SO-2.

First unbox the little bug and read the manual on how to install.

Then open your rig upper cover, be careful to disconnect the speaker cable as soon as you lift the upper cover. The speaker cable isn’t that long.

Unscrew the screws around the CAR-board on the left (enjoy my revised CAR-board

Lift up the CAR-board with the metal plate underneath. Now you’re in the oscillator department of your rig. Disconnect all cables from the oscillatorboard en unscrew. You can lift out the oscillatorboard.

Now gently solder the SO-2 into place and brake both jumpercables W1 and W2.

Your SO-2 is installed! Now build everything in as it came out and you can test your new installed option. Joerg supplied me with a neath little trick to check if the oscillator frequency is okay without a counter: tune on 10 or on 15 MHz. You can hear a signal. When you switch between USB and LSB the tone height must be the same on both USB and LSB. When it’s not you have to adjust the SO-2. You can do this adjustment by breaking the label on the SO-2. Right underneath the “K” from Kenwood there is hidden a little screw. With this screw you can adjust the bug.

After installing the tone height on mine sounded pretty okay to me. Listen for yourself, the file contains a one minute sound. Recorded on 15 MHz. Switching between USB and LSB every 5 seconds starting with USB.

If you want to build in this option, it is a piece of cake. Only the building out and building in of the oscillatorboard is taking the most of your time. Enjoy and good luck!

New Kenwood transceiver

PA1JIM — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:22:07 +0000

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.

Kenwood TS-450SAT options

PA1JIM — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 07:16:44 +0000

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!