From: flloyd@l1-a.West.Sun.COM (Fred Lloyd [Phoenix SE])
Newsgroups: rec.radio.amateur.misc
Subject: Re: good HF rigs
Date: 11 Sep 1992 19:53:25 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Phoenix, AZ
Distribution: rec
NNTP-Posting-Host: l1-a.west.sun.com
Keywords: TS-850S

In article <1992Sep11.143604.931@news.acns.nwu.edu> rdewan@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Rajiv Dewan) writes:
>In article <20229@drutx.ATT.COM> paul@drutx.ATT.COM (AndersonPE) writes:
>>I purchased a Kenwood TS-850S with built in antenna tuner a little
>>over a year ago and I love it. The receiver is great and I get nothing
>> a 'good service' story deleted
>
>
>The 850 does have its flaws.


Ok, I'll jump in here with my TS-850 story:

The biggest problem I've had with mine is that when I use the 2.7 KHz
cascaded filters, I can hear a bit of the unwanted sideband when tuning
across zero beat.  It's a problem which several radios had, and one which
does not appear on new units that I've tried.  To see the problem, first
set the mode to CW and both filters to 2.7.  Next, find a moderately
strong (S-5 or more) CW signal and set the tuning speed to FINE.  As
you tune clockwise to zero beat everything sounds fine.  When you tune
a little farther past zero beat, the signal starts coming up again,
however at a much lower level.  The problem does not appear at all when
the 500 Hz filters are selected.

I called Kenwood and the service tech said that "He'd heard of that
somewhere" and that "he'd get back to me".  He never called back...
Yes, I agree that Kenwood needs a kick in the butt for their service
department.

Another questionable "problem" is that many users have a good deal of
trouble when they first connect a TNC via the rear 13 pin plug.  The 
usual complaint is a large amount of RF feedback and distortion whenever
they transmit.  After a fair amount of troubleshooting I concluded that
all grounds in the 13 pin plug are not equal (see the schematic), and 
that some of them snake furiously around inside the radio.  One of the
grounds is designed to be specifically an "audio ground" and it is 
terminated somewhere near the front panel mic connector after having
entered through the rear interface.  There are other grounds which 
run directly to the frame.  In the end, my solution was to tie a ground
strap to the TNC, and all of the problems went away.

I found out early on that you can't use 500hz filters with AFSK.  Sound
odd?  Yes it does.  But the reason is that the AFSK offsets of 2100+
HZ fall outside the 500Hz passband which is centered around the carrier.
The solution: I hooked up the tnc (MFJ-1278) in direct FSK mode where
the receive passband is automatically moved to account for the difference.
Using direct FSK I can use both 500 Hz filters all day long.

Overall I'm still quite pleased with the radio.  Despite the unwanted
sideband problem on wide CW, I feel that it's still a top shelf
receiver.  I'm going to ping Kenwood again today for some sort of
answer.  Incidentally, I've never had a bad signal quality report
either.  For the price/performance - and even more so on the used ones,
it simply can't be beat.

-fred



-- 
| Fred Lloyd  AA7BQ,  Systems Engineer          Fred.Lloyd@west.sun.com |
| Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation                   ...sun!flloyd |
| Phoenix, AZ    (If it's a fact, I believe it!)         (602) 275-4242 |
From: tcline@hplvec.LVLD.HP.COM (Ted Cline)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 17:45:01 GMT
Subject: Re: Empire of the Air
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Loveland, CO