Hi all, and Happy New Year.
I heard from a couple of people off-list who were curious as to whether
I had gotten my 590sg, and what I thought of it. Thought I would post a
few initial thoughts.
It arrived on Tuesday, but I had second thoughts about pulling a VGS-1
out of one of my other radios, so I ordered one Tuesday afternoon, and
had it here before lunch Wednesday. Installed it later that day, with
no problems, other than dealing with those 4 little screws that hold the
cover over the voice board.
The SG seems identical in shape, size, and front and rear panel layout
to the older S version.
It does have a powder coated finish compared to the older flat-smooth
finish of the S. The powder coat, and some differences to accents on
the front panel are supposed to make it look more like a little brother
of the TS-990. Probably the easy way for a blind person to tell the
difference between is to just feel the top or bottom cover: slightly
rough texture is an SG, and smooth is a S.
The menu structure, firmware, and control software are totally different
between the 2 versions.
A cool feature is that when you enter menus, the first entry speaks
firmware version. This makes it real easy to determine what firmware
is installed.
The radio has a additional (or at least different) roofing filter, is
supposed to have more dynamic range, and some tweaks in the DSP to
improve RX slightly. I'm not expecting a tremendous improvement in
what was already a fine radio, just a few tweaks as science marches on.
One cool thing blind ops will like is the ability to add 4 additional PF
keys to the front panel. There are no additional keys, but you can
remap the RIT, XIT, and Clear keys in the upper right hand corner to
act as PF keys. Of course you lose the original functions of these keys.
Also the multi channel knob now acts as a push button as well. It can
also act as a PF key. It will actually perform one function while in
any mode other than CW. Default is to adjust power level. In Cw mode,
default is CW keying speed. These can be changed in menus, but the
ability to push the knob in, turn to change a setting (like power), then
push the button again is pretty cool.
I think another new feature is the ability to connect the Drive
connector to a SDR receiver.
I was listening a bit last night, but probably won't be on the air
with it until tomorrow. I need to get my menus and settings
straightened out first. There are now a total of 5 amp keying options
that I need to figure out.
I've not found a lot of accessible docs for this version, but the
active elements site has an audio reading of the manual.
73, Steve KW3A
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