Hi Keith.

You are thinking of the TS690S, which is a great radio for blind 
operators.  Unfortunately, the TS680S was a Kenwood TS140S with 6 meters 
added on.  It used a double conversion receiver with first IF at 40.455MHz 
and a 2nd IF at 455 KHz.  The receiver didn't have the best strong signal 
characteristics in the world, but at the time I was 37 miles outside the 
city, so it didn't matter that much to me.  I did notice a tendency to pick 
up  an image off the 1st IF that would bring FM broadcast interference into 
the upper frequencies.  This wasn't a real serious problem in rural areas, 
but could get to be a problem in urban areas.  I would think, however, that 
a decent low pass filter would knock that down quite a bit.

The TS680S had 31 memories, and the last 10 memories were tunable memories 
where you could program a lower limit and an upper limit and the radio 
would just tune the memory between the two limits.  This was great for 
setting limits just inside your band privileges so that you never had to 
worry about being out of band.  The TS690S does this as well, except the 
the TS690S has 100 memories.

The TS680 is not good from two standpoints--it has no provision for a voice 
synthesizer, and it does not have any provision for direct frequency 
entry.  There is no provision for controlling an auto tuner from the TS680 
either, although you could run most of the popular auto tuners in a stand 
alone mode where you initiate tuning from the auto tuner rather than from 
the radio, and you take the care to make sure that you cut the power back 
before you initiate tuning the antenna.

One thing I will say about the TS680 is that it had a built in preamp that 
made it extremely sensitive on 10 meters and 6 meters.  If I still had 
usable vision and lived a few miles out of the city, I wouldn't hesitate to 
buy another one, but as a blind person, I wouldn't be interested.

73, de Lou K2LKK



At 11:35 PM 6/9/2006 +0100, you wrote:
>Hi Andy,
>
> From what I can remember, this is a ts-450 with 6 metres included.
>
>
>
>On 9 Jun 2006 at 16:23, andy m0ceg wrote:
>
> > Hello All,  Does anyone know any thing about this Kenwood rig the 
> TS680,  I
> > believe it has six meters on this rig not quite sure.
> > Regards
> > Andrew Shipp
> >
> > Located Northamptonshire  UK
> >
> > Home phone...+44,0,1604 517007
> > Mobile Orange network 07891809892
> >
> > Contact me on
> >
> > Msn andyshipp54
> >
> > Skype andyshipp55,
> >
> >  or email [log in to unmask]
> >
> >
> > __________ NOD32 1.1589 (20060609) Information __________
> >
> > This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system.
> > http://www.eset.com
> >
> >
>
>
>Keith
>
>- - - -
>
>Keith Barrett
>email <[log in to unmask]>
>Website www.barrettpianos.co.uk
>Amateur radio callsign gw4nby
>Corntown, South Wales

Louis Kim Kline
A.R.S. K2LKK
Home e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
Work e-mail:  [log in to unmask]
Work Telephone:  (585) 697-5753