QRP club booth (Hamfair 2010)

QRP favorite members from all Asian area are gathering at JA QRP club booth and neighboring villa-QRP booth. QRP homebrewing equipments and presented with documentation. QRP operation technique are also introduced and exchanged each other. In evening, QRP friendship party is held at pub in separate place.

TS-590 from Kenwood (Ham Fair2010)

As the blogger promised, here is the report of TS-590 shortly. Kenwood is presented 5 units of TS-590 in their booth. 3 units are displayed only and 2 units are for sound listening. Belief lecture style presentation of its magnificent performance attract people all seriously listening. A blogger tried headphone listening and felt very good Kenwood sound immediately. As a QRP gear, amazingly this is a QRPp native machine with 0 dBm output port and additional RX input. Though these are port for transverter, mW-class QRP is realized by manufactured transceiver.

ICOM released IC-9100 (Ham Fair 2010)

ICOM released IC-9100 at Ham Fair 2010. It says the first fixed type transceicer with D-STAR digital mode. This is the digital mode of no interest from QRPers who like to build anything from scratch. The classified specification negotiated under Japanese administration and university professors is no meaning to all radio amateurs. Buy the IC-9100 without D-STAR.

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.

DX-R8 table top receiver from ALINCO

ALINCO　announces a new HF table top receiver DX-R8. After the storm of JRC discontinue, another wave by Chinese radio swept away almost every made in Japan receivers in market. Now the surviving receiver of this kind is only IC-R75. This DX-R8 will be welcomed by all QRPers waiting receiver. 10 years ago everybody says who likes Yae-com-wood says ALINCO is the second class manufacture. They dislike ALINCO also handles ladder and health-care product through their TV-shopping. But maturity of their transceiver is enough, even they are attractive than the Yae-com-wood. DX-R8 has IQ output necessary for SDR processing, without expensive dog-year DSP, the analog output receiver is 59,800JPY.

K-ON! 2nd season

K-ON! 2nd season started. As the previous one, Kyoto Animation poured enormous resources to this 2nd season opening. The 3-D synthetic animation shows incredible 2-D character's motion we've never seen. Details of music instruments are well described again. As our consequence, emitting loud acoustic sounds is still popular and let everybody enjoy. On the other hand, making and emitting radio frequency is less popular.

The cable shop

This shop Oyaide handles only cables. In this small shop huge kind of cables such as magnet wire, flat cables and coaxial are stacked. It is difficult to catch salesperson in busy time since they are preparing cable orders from professionals. To buy the cables, at least one must have conversation to the sales person to let them cut length.

Professional Parts Shop (Bolt and Nut)

Shops in Akihabara are professional in their specialties. To find right parts at right place is important for beginners. The shop Nishikawa is special in metric bolt and nut. If you have Japanese transceiver and some bolts are missing, bring them to the shop. Sales persons are kindly find out an identical one from their stock. Don't care about quantity, though they are selling 100pcs package, they work hard most willingly.