I just received an email from
Martin Lynch and Sons; The Kenwood TS-590S will be available from 29th October. This is the rig that they say has a better receiver than even the Elecraft the best from any manufacture in fact. Soon no doubt we will be able to find out.
No need to wait. I can tell you now. It isn't. It's all marketing hype. The fabled down-conversion circuitry that will result in good receiver IP numbers is only used on the amateur bands below 10 metres, I think. All the other bands, the short wave bands and the higher ham bands, will use up conversion just like other Japanese transceivers in the same price bracket. So you won't have the great dynamic range you need transverting to 2m from 10m, or on 6m.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest Julian I would never even consider transverting to two metres. I would use a VHF or UHF rig to transvert to 23cms, 13cms and above, but when there are dedicated rigs to do the job why add another stage of loss to the set up.
ReplyDeleteAgreed the down conversion is only good on the HF bands 1.8-21MHz but 6 and 10 performance should be on a par with Kenwood's other rigs anyway. Personally I very rarely listen to none amateur short wave and noise and adjacent channel interference is less of an issue at 6 and 10 metres. As my main interest is in weak signals from low power stations operating on 40 and 80 metres the marketing hype sounds good. Bearing in mind my HF is is either over 25 years old or meant for mobile I kind of think I would be very happy to own one even if it is not quite up to the hype. Just waiting for my sample so I can do a review on the blog. Tee Hee We can all dream.