Foundations of Amateur Radio

A little while ago I was gifted a new radio, well, new to me. A Kenwood TS-480HX. It's an all mode HF transceiver with 6m. Does 200 Watts, but you know me, I'm into QRP, low power, so I first had to figure out how to dial the transmitter down to 5 Watts and that was after figuring out how to feed the dual power supplies from one source and have the fuses work as expected.

When I received the radio, I took stock of all the bits that it was packed with, all complete, all the accessories, even the user manual was laminated. The previous owner, Walter VK6BCP (SK) whom I never met was an amateur after my own heart. I've talked about how he meticulously documented his alterations to a power supply for example.

Previously I've taken this radio on holidays to operate portable in a field day. The experience was underwhelming, in that I didn't hear anyone and nobody responded to my CQ calls. At the time I put it down to a poor antenna and unfamiliarity with the radio, despite reading the manual, well, at least scanning it.

Today I finally set some time aside to do some more testing. I decided that the first step would be to actually set it up in my shack, next to my trusty Yaesu FT-857d and see how it performs in comparison.

So, I plugged everything in, found a coax switch so I could switch the antenna between the two radios and learned that the audio connector that I've been using for digital modes on the Yaesu is actually compatible with the Kenwood. Now I need to make another adaptor for this radio, but in the meantime I can move the audio plug between radios when I swap.

In doing this I learnt a few things.

One is that there's plenty of scope for things to break.

For example, I was reaching over the desk to plug a connector into the coax switch when I leaned on the keyboard and touched the space bar. This caused the radio that I was working on to start its tuning cycle without an antenna connected. Fortunately I was using 5 Watts and I caught it within seconds, so no white smoke this time around.

It does remind me to turn off the radio when fiddling with connectors though. I'm embarrassed to report that I thought I'd learnt that lesson already, nothing like a refresher course in transmitter safety and dumb things not to do in the shack.

Then there was the thing about using remote control. In my naivety I thought that the connector that the Yaesu uses for computer control is also used on the Kenwood. Turns out that it isn't. Fortunately I read the manual before plugging that in.

The Yaesu has a specific digital mode with individual gain and filter characteristics, which seem to be completely lacking on the Kenwood.

I'm still attempting to learn the differences in receive performance between the two. I started this process by running WSJT-X and listening to WSPR or Weak Signal Propagation Reports and testing how both radios decode things. I cannot yet do this side-by-side, but for now I can swap and see signals coming in on either radio.

This is not the first time I've put a different radio on my desk to see how it works and it's not going to be the last time. What I'm looking to achieve is to swap over from the Yaesu to the Kenwood in my shack, so I can put the Yaesu back in the car and have a mobile shack operating again because I have to admit, I do miss that.

What kinds of testing regimes to you have when you're trying out a new radio? I'd love to hear your thoughts. My email address as always is [email protected].

I'm Onno VK6FLAB