[Premium-Rx] RF-590 for Sale

[Jim Sorenson]

Gentlemen,

I'm putting one of my RF-590s up for sale. About five years ago I acquired
two identical units here in Cairo after the U.S. Embassy dispensed with its
entire RF communications system. I hand carried one of the units back to my
home QTH near Pittsburgh and boxed it up. I'm using the other one here in
Cairo at SU9AM. The unit I'm selling is at my home QTH in Saxonburg, PA and
is essentially unchanged from when it came out of the embasssy both
electronically and cosmetically. I would describe it's electronic condition
as excellent or as new and its cosmetic condition as good to excellent.. You
probably could not tell it from new. Both units had had their scheduled
maintenance checks in the Embassy done by Harris technicians not long before
I acquired the units.  Both units appeared to perform on the air absolutely
identically, as you'd expect.

Both units came with the following optional equipment:

Remote Control Interface (10073-6910), which permits the 590 to remotely
control the RF-551 preselector (track it)
Remote Control (10073-6210), which provided complete remote control of
frequency, mode etc.
ISB Option (10073-6310), which allows simultaneous operation in USB and LSB
Digitally Tuned Bandpass Filter (10073-6510), which provided 20 dB of
selectivity at +/-10% of tuned frequency. This will reduce interference from
close transmitters.

For the Cairo unit, I constructed a cable for the Remote Control Interface
and have the 590 controlling the 551 directly. The same could be easily done
with the unit I'm selling. The 551 perks up the receiver considerably across
the whole HF range, but if you operate with a good resonant antenna and
perhaps a bit of pre-amplification, you will have excellent results. And,
since nobody out there is operating on a battleship, the extra filtering
providing by the 551 is probably unnecessary. However, with the 551 and the
Tunable Bandpass Filter ahead of the front end in place, you will find that
nothing breaks through the front end except the signals you expect.

Most of  you already know about the RF-590 and the specs and the tech manual
are available on the Premium site. If you do need futher information about
specifications or performance, please let me know.

Before I got my SU9 license here in Egypt, I used this RF-590 to log  LF NDB
(non-directional beacons) and have at last count logged beacons from more
than 40 countries, best DX being in excess of 6000kms. This was done from an
extremely noisy city QTH. Most of these beacons operate between 250 and 500
kHz. and run very low power into extremely low efficiency antennas, that are
in many cases designed to limit the beacon's range. I think this says a lot
for the receiver.

I'm asking $2000 plus shipping from Saxonburg, PA 16056 and will throw in an
RF-551 preselector. The only kicker here is that the preselector will have
to be shipped from Egypt. I have five of them and they all work perfectly.
If you are willing to wait a bit longer to receive the preselector, I'll get
it to you somehow. I will get a quote, however, on the basic air-cargo cost
of shipping it direct. Otherwise, I would look for a friend who is leaving
his post and ask him to put it in his shipment for later UPS forwarding in
the U.S.

If you are in driving range of Saxonburg, all the better. Saxonburg is
located about 40 miles directly north of Pittsburgh, not far from Butler.
Otherwise, I will have my friend Rey, W3BIS organize the some profrssional
packing and shipping. (only within the USA).

I can send you digital images or post them on my website:
www.cairo-egypt.com/su9am

Many thanks,

Jim

W3BH/SU9AM