The Quad-County Amateur Radio Club

Hello everybody, now we are going to have some fun!

As some of you new hams might remember, at the last meeting I promised that you were going to play with some of my rigs at upcoming meetings, and I thought you should get acquainted with the easiest rigs first, so, take a look at the radio at the right, that is a Kenwood TS-520, from about 1975, its a so called hybrid rig, which means that it is both transistors and tubes. The tubes are used in the out-put amplifier, but the rest of the radio uses transistors, and has a built in power-supply. Bands are 80, 40, 20, 15 and 10m.

The second rig I’m going to introduce you to, will be the next generation of Kenwoods HF rigs, namely the Kenwood TS-440s. This radio came out around mid 80’s and is all transistorized, its got a built in antenna-tuner, the receiver covers 100khz-30mhz. It can transmit on 160, 80, 60, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10m. As you can see, it also sports a digital frequency display, plus it also has a built in squelch, it does not have an internal power-supply, so you would need an external 20Amp power source. As the older radio, it too produces about 100w output. This radio also do FM and split, so you can use it on 10m repeaters.

The third radio I will let you play with, is the newest in my “fleet”, it came on the market in 1998- 99 and I bought it a few weeks after it came out. This is the Yaesu FT-847 and was called The earth station, because of it’s ability to operate the OSCAR satellites, on any band, and any combination. The receiver covers 100khz – 470mhz and transmits on all bands from 160m to 70cm. HF bands and 6m is 100w, 2m is 50w and 70cm 40w. So, it’s all band and all mode. The radio also have DSP and other goodies, but does not have antenna-tuner nor does it have an internal power supply. It does have 4 antenna connectors, HF, 6m, 2m and 70cm and it also have built in key’er for cw.

I also have another rig, the Icom 706MkII, but I think these three radio’s are gone be just fine to begin with, I’m sure that some of our other members can let you try some of their radio’s, but, since we are coming into the summer months, I believe we can wait till the fall before we continue with “play N learn”. If you guys N gals have any questions, or any special wishes, please do ask!!! No question are stupid or to dumb, so please ask!! I’m sure we will all have fun playing with the “real stuff”, so come down to our next meeting and “widen your horizon”

Yours truly

The Swede KB3WBT

Checkout the blog post by Tim Carter, W3ATB, concerning amateur radio support on the Boston Marathon 2013 on http://w3atb.com