Topband: Drake Twins on 160M

[W2RU - Bud Hippisley]

-----Original Message-----
From: Phil Clements
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2007 3:39 PM
To: topband at contesting.com
Subject: Topband: Drake Twins on 160M

> BTW, does ANYONE on 160 anymore use anything like the Drake twins these
> days, or is it all strictly Omnis & Yaesu out there to-day...?
>
> ~73~ Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ

Eddy,
...I have tried several "rice boxes...I won't say anything about the
Kenwood's, no
experience here. Most Kenwood owners seem to not do CW.
***********

Oh boy, I can't let that last sentence of Phil's remain unchallenged....:-)

I have logged countless hours on 160 with Kenwoods -- originally a TS-940
and more recently a TS-950SDX.  Some much more notable contest stations than
I, including N2IC/5 and W0SD, use 950SDXs for their considerable CW efforts.

One nice feature of the 950SDX is a front-panel menu-settable rise & fall
time; the "labels" on the choices are 2, 4, 6, and 8 milliseconds.  Whether
Kenwood defines rise time the same as we used to in our digital design
groups is immaterial; the important part is that Kenwood gave the user the
opportunity to easily clean up the clicks on his/her own signal.  On my own
particular transceiver, extensive tests with a very critical fellow ham
showed that I needed to be on either the 6- or 8-ms setting to be "squeaky
clean".

IMHO, for this and many other reasons, one of the most under-appreciated
lowband transceivers out there today is the 950SDX (not the 950SD).  I
intend to keep mine "forever".

Bud, W2RU