Hi Brett.

I did do quite a bit of general listening with the TS430S.  It wasn't the 
hotest receiver I ever had, but it wasn't bad, and it had fairly nice audio 
characteristics for general listening, especially if you sprung for the 6 
KHz AM filter or one of the after market knock-offs.

One problem that I had with mine was with the relays that were used to 
switch in the bandpass filters for the various ranges.  After some 
operating time, the relay contacts began to oxidize and make very poor 
contact.  There was a certain magic spot on the top of the radio that you 
could tap and everything would come back to life until the next time you 
tuned to a different range.

I ended up sending to Kenwood for another set of relays.  A friend of mine 
found a modification that passed a small DC switching current through the 
relays.  It involved adding a blocking cap to keep the DC from going where 
you didn't want it and maybe one or two other components.  My friend was a 
technician over at Scientific Radio at the time, and had access to 
commercial grade equipment and tools, and did the modification, realigned 
the radio, told me the the thermal drift for the master oscillator for the 
first hour was 30 Hz, and when I got the radio back, it sounded great, and 
I never had another bit of trouble with it.  I probably would have kept 
that radio for years if I hadn't gotten laid off from work, but I hit a 
point where I needed money more than ham radio, so I sold out almost all of 
the station.  I bought an old SB401/SB303 pair to keep something on the air 
and used that along with my Icom IC2AT.

Eventually, I got hungry enough to even sell the Heathkit twins.

Fortunately, a few weeks later, I found my present job, and the day before 
I started the job, I won a Icom IC735 as the Grand Prize from a local 
hamfest, and I was back on the air.

I do recall using the TS430S to tune VLF and Medium Wave.  It wasn't too 
bad.  Of course, I had the good fortune of living 37 miles outside of 
Rochester, then, so a full sized yard in a quiet listening location went a 
long way.

On this coming Monday, it will be 17 years since I started my present job.

As painful as it was selling out the station, it was kind of fun building 
it back up again once I got back on my feet!

73, de Lou K2LKK


At 09:50 AM 7/6/2007 -0600, you wrote:
>Nether did I except to fid out where the remote receiver input was as I
>had a loop for a time for low noise receiving on .1.8 MHz.  =20
>
>
>###
>BRETT WINCHESTER
>[log in to unmask]
>208-639-8386
>###