TS-590 announced with detail specifications

Prior to the Japanese Ham Fest next weekend, Kenwood released long awaited TS-590 detail in their web site. It says they will start shipping in October. Looks like TS-570 previous model, but inside of the rig is totally different. No frills like recent ICOM and YAESU, they focus on real performance in SSB and CW to communicate in distance. They prepare S/D/V lineup and price of the series are 228,900JPY. With nominal discount of 15% in Akihabara, we can reach them less than 200,000JPY. Not cheap, still this is realistic range as QRP gear. We must say welcome to the 20W V-version for QRP operation.
It is sure Kenwood will display TS-590 in Ham Fest. QRP blogger will report its feeling in this site immediately after the festival.

Ham Fair 2010 next weekend

Japanese Ham Fair 2010 will be held next weekend 21, 22nd August at Tokyo BIGSIGHT exhibition hall. Due to shrinking the scale year by year, it is not interesting place to find QRP gears and parts anymore. Though the exhibition hall is expensive place to retail small parts and exchange junks, stupidly JARL is choosing the place for the sake of their appearance. As a result, most of retail shops withdraw their booth, and many radio club had to sell junks to compensate their cost instead of present their radio related achievement. Kind of PC related rubbish are presented many booth and they throw away in the end of exhibition. Such horrible situation occurs actually. JARL prepared three kits, IC radio, LED flusher and morse trainer for children. Before doing this, policy must be changed. At least QRPers can find a reason to the place to meet other QRPers once a year. Beside this shabby exhibition, fruitful conversation of QRPers are valuable.

Marutsu released a direct conversion kit MRX-7D-FK

Marutsu Denpa is relatively new parts shop chain located in Japanese major cities. They focus on amateur radio item as well as other computer item just like Radio Shack in good old days. Recently they released an original direct conversion receiver kit MRX-7D-FK. In previous blog topic, we reported that they had a seminar course to build the DC-RX. The kit price 12,800JPY is expensive for those who experienced QRP club kits. But for newbies who never experienced kit building and DC-RX nature, this kit will be a very good educational material proofed by Marutsu corporation. We can observe they are using two 8-pin dip ICs. They are supposed to employ NE612 and LM386.