Here's something I wrote last February, which may be helpful:
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After many contests with the venerable TS-930, ARRL CW was my first with
the FT-1000D. Here are a few observations.
Configuration:
The FT-1000D has all four CW filters, two 500 Hz and two 250 Hz. My
TS-930 has the two 500 Hz filters, and been modified to cascade a
third 250 Hz filter with the first two. Measured skirt response of both
receivers looks about the same at both bandwidths.
Note that over the years I've made some minor adjustments to the TS-930 to
improve its receiver performance, and I keep it very carefully aligned. A
poorly aligned TS-930 probably wouldn't perform nearly as well. The
FT-1000D is about 3 years old and seems to be in perfect shape, but I
haven't done anything to it. Many of my quibbles about the FT-1000D should
be easy to fix.
*************
The FT-1000 AGC is much better, which considerably reduces the pounding
the operator's ears take. However, like the TS-930, an external preamp
is required much of the time to get the weaker signals up to the
AGC threshold, so one doesn't have to keep riding the AF gain. (Maybe
the return of sunspots will take care of this one.) I find the "Fast"
AGC of the FT-1000D to be a little too slow for CW.
The FT-1000D has a bit of wide-band hiss when the agc opens up, generated in
the IF amplifier after the cw filters. A minor annoyance with wide-bandwidth
headphones.
The FT-1000 QSK is very slow, and it takes half second or so for the AGC
to recover. One really can't hear anything between the dots at 30 wpm
or so. The TS-930 fully recovers between dots, so one can even hear
backscatter echoes, which is useful for judging propagation. The TS-930
AGC recovers instantly, so even very weak signals are audible between
the dots. The TS-930 also has the nice feature that in QSK mode you can
step on the foot switch and mute the receiver when you get tired of
listening to all the noise. The FT-1000 foot switch closes the key
circuit in QSK mode, so that won't work.
The lower phase noise of the FT-1000 makes it possible to hear weak signals
a little closer to the very strong ones. I never felt the TS-930 phase
noise cost me many contacts. On the other hand, with the 250 bandwidth
of the FT-1000, I was able to park right between a couple very strong
stations and run Europeans on 20, which I don't remember being able to
do with the TS-930. Since the skirt response is about the same, the
phase noise may make the biggest difference.
Neither receiver has ever shown any sign of problems with front-end
overload. The lab tests show that the FT-1000 is a bit better, but
the TS-930 was adequate, even in high-sunspot years when there were
often a lot more strong signals.
*******************************
In summary, there's no doubt the FT-1000D receiver is excellent, but the
TS-930 really isn't much worse. Aside from the maintenance issue, an old
TS-930 still makes an excellent contest rig, and it's certainly
cost-effective. I'm going to keep them both.
Scott K9MA
sellington@ssec.wisc.edu
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