[K3PZN-List] Quasi-Vintage Rigs?

[James Owen]

Hi Curt,
   These rigs of course have been work horses for many
and do a reasonable good job. However from my
experience and from reading blogs and user comparisons
I think that almost any Ten-Tec of a given design will
run rings around any you have listed. The T-T's all
have a very quite and sensitive receiver with little
or no phase noise. Personally I can't stand the
FT-1000D series, all I have tried to use are far
nosier that any TT I have had. Many of the Icom,
Kenwood, Yaesu rigs have layers of menu's that are
hard to understand. All TT that I have used have
menu's that you seldom even need the manual to get
through. 
   If you go with an older rig not TT, I really like
the Kenwood TS-820s or TS-830s. These had excellent
receivers and transmitters though they have tubes in
the final and don't have a lot of bells and whistles.
You will also find that the Kenwood-Yaesu-Icom will
depreciate much faster than the Ten-Tec's.  That said
what is my recommendation?  That depends on several
things. How much do you want to spend? How many bells
and whistles do you want or can do without? What is
the max age you will accept? Remember one thing, TT
will repair almost any rig they ever built as long as
parts are still available. Try that with some of the
others, usually at about 5 or so years they will say
it's unrepairable. You can't get a TS-930 fixed and
they will also not repair a TS-820s though the 820s
can easily be fixed for most things.

    OK here goes. Likely the best CW rig TT ever
built, and it fine on SSB is the Corsair I or II. I
prefer the II as it has a few advantages over the I.
Expect to pay about $375 for a Corsair  and about $475
for a Corsair II. Next up is the OMNI VI or VI+, both
are excellent and in some cases will do a little more
than the Corsair's. Talk to John W3JJH about the OMNI
VI. Expect to pay around $700+ for the OMNI VI and
another $100-200 more  for a VI+.
   If you want something that is current and can be
completely computer controlled I can't help but
recommend a Jupiter. This is what I have run for the
last 4 years and though I have Kenwood's and other
Ten-Tec's I always defer to the Jupiter. Though it's
spec's are not the best even by TT standards it's
never let me down and when a reduced spec rears it
head there are easy work arounds that are hardly
noticed. The main problem with a Jupiter is with a
very strong signal off frequency (40db+ on S-meter)
but within the 20 Khz roofing filter you will have
front end overload and all kinds of pop's. Turn on the
20db attenuator and the problem goes away. The only
place this has happened to me is on 75M SSB and the
signals are so strong you don't even miss the 20db.
Expect to pay $850-1000 without a built in auto tuner
and $100 more with. You don't need it if you have a
tuner or resonate antenna's.
   If you want to try my Jupiter come over sometime
and operate. 
   Watch some of the older Icom's as they did store
the operating system in cmos memory and if the battery
goes so does the rig. I don't think that ICOM will
still flash a new system into the memory though I
could be wrong.
   Any solid state device can be subject to age
failure, usually metal migration but in general you
don't see many failures. You do need to look at the
transistors in the final. Many of the 50W rigs use a
MRF-477 that is out of production and doesn't have a
sub. If you can find a '477 you will pay $40-50 for
it.
   Enough for now. Ask any questions and get lot of
opinions of all the rigs and then make the decision
that is right for you.

73 Jim K4CGY
--- Curt Milton <wb8yyy at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am contemplating upgrading my station by replacing
> my 100 w rig (TS-140) with something higher
> performance. 

James C. Owen, III K4CGY

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