Stepaniak 1

Matthew Stepaniak

Dr. C

ENG 1101-219

6. December 2018

Can You Hear Me Now?

Radios have always been of a great interest to me. As little kids, my brothers and I used

walkie-talkies constantly. They gave us the ability to post lookouts watching the road for

incoming cars while we breached the fortress of my house. In our minds cars were driven by

enemy spies, so we would hide when cars drove by in order to not compromise the mission. As

we grew older, we started building bases for these missions in the woods behind my house.

These bases needed to be completely secret and at the first sign of a neighbor kid or a parent the

“lookout” would radio an alert for everyone to hide until the all clear signal was given.

Eventually we would replace our little camouflage walkie-talkies with a set of bubble

pack camping radios with a longer range, but even those had their limits. I remember reading a

story about a boy who would talk with his out-of-state friend every night with a ham radio. This

amazed me, as I had never been able to get our radios to even reach a few miles from my house

into town. So I started doing some research into these crazy long range “ham radios,” and I

learned that they could go much farther then I ever thought possible; clear around the world. I

instantly wanted to get into these magical radios, but it was not until high school that I obtained

my amateurs radio license and bought a small hand held radio. This radio let me talk with other

amateurs clear across town, and if I used special internet linked repeaters stations, I could call

out to any other internet linked repeater station in the world. Now I want to cut out the middle

man and buy a radio that is capable of going around the world all by itself, no repeaters needed.
 Stepaniak 2

So I did some research and what I found was, although newer models of radios have more flashy

user features, the old solid state radios are just as good and reliable as a new radio.

There are a couple stories about where the name ‘ham’ originated. A common one comes

from the fact that early amateur radio operators were often called heavy handed, or “ham

handed,” by commercial radio operators for their bad Morse Code technique. The amateurs not

realizing it was meant to be an insult, adopted the term. The most likely story however was

published in the 1959 Florida Skip magazine and goes back to an amateur radio club started by

three Harvard students, Albert Hyman, Bob Almy, and Poogie Murray. The club’s identification

name (call sign) started as Hyman-Almy-Murray but was soon shortened to Hy-Al-Mu. In 1901

after some confusion in between a ship name the Hyalmu and the radio club call sign, they

changed their call again to simply HAM. When Congress tried to put extreme regulations on

amateur radio in 1911, Hyman took a stand and fought against it saying these new complex rules

and associated licensing fees would force the amateur station HAM to shut down. The little

station HAM became well known from the Congressional spotlight and soon the term was being

associated with all amateur stations (Origin). Knowing some background on the origin of the

name is interesting, but what exactly is ham radio?

Amateur radio, as it is technically called, is the hobby of talking with people far away

using radios. The most common thing to hear on the air is people having random conversations

with each other, they are often refereed to as rag chewers. Of course that is not the only thing

you can do, there are contests to see who can make the most contacts in a set time, trying to see

how far you can go with limited power output known as QRP operation, fox hunts which involve

finding little hidden transmitters using directional antennas, and emergency or natural disaster

practice groups. Hams are also fond of building their own equipment, low power QRP rigs are

especially popular as they can be built for a relatively cheap price (A Ham Radio).
 Stepaniak 3

The last major change to amateur radios was the replacement of vacuum tubes with

transistors. Vacuum tube driven radios needed to be tuned before every use and were known to

slowly wander off frequency. The new digital transistors radios, often referred to as being solid

state, eliminated both the tuning and wandering problems While there has been many

advancements in electronic technology over the past thirty years, few of them affect amateur

radios. Newer radios often have big color screens, and the radios of today are a little smaller

then their older counterparts, but they work just the same as older radios. Take this review of the

TS-940S, a rather old radio, witten by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) and published

in the 1991 QST magazine.

The TS-940S is a “solid-state, broadband transmitter; a sturdy power supply . . . with . . .

an optional all band, automatic antenna matching network.” It has individual buttons for each of

the amateur radio bands it covers, these buttons can also be used to directly enter a frequency

into the Tunng control or variable-frequency oscillator (VFOs). A pair of one Megahertz (MHz)

step buttons, a button to select which of its two VFOs is in use, four memory banks each with ten

channels, the memory channels store both frequency and mode used. It also features both

receiver incremental tuning (RIT), used for talking on a different frequency than the one your

listening to, and xmitter incremental tuning (XIT) which is the same thing as RIT but changes

the transmit frequency instead of the receive. A multipurpose digital display is also found on the

front. The receive side of the TS-940S features two blanker filters and a pitch shift control for

the tone of incoming morse code which is called continuous wave (CW) in the ham community.

The transmitter side has two heat controlled cooling fans as well as full break-in CW

(Hutchinson).

Now compare that to the ARRL review of the TS-590SG from 2015. The TS-590SG has

independent control of the Digital Sound Processing (DSP) filters high and low ends. Easy one
 Stepaniak 4

button split frequency operation, both RS-232 and USB ports for computer connection that can

grant you almost full control of the radio from a computer. Located on the back of the radio are

two antenna inpts, an ant ½ button on the front panel selects which one the radio uses. A socket

for connecting an external antenna tuner, and the 13.8 vDC power jack. To keep the front panel

compact most of the buttons are dual purpose with a short press meaning one thing and a long

press a different thing. Its easy to use menu allows use of the radio without constant need of the

instruction manual. The tuning knob can select from 2.5, 10, or 20kHz tuning rates and each of

those rates can be reduced by a factor of ten with the Fine button. The band buttons also double

as a number pad for directly entering a frequency. It has 120 memory channels, although five are

dedicated to the sixty meter band channels, and ten are meant to be used for scan limits. The

590SG offers seven different high and low boost modes for the transmit audio, full break-in CW,

and a limited internal antenna tuner that works best for tuning to the edge of a band (Hallas).

Both radios are solid state, have two VFO’s for split frequency operation, and full break-

in CW. Full break-in means that it does not block the receive audio while transmitting CW,

which is a high end feature. While the 590 has 120 memory channels to the 940’s forty, the only

real big difference in the two rigs is the 590 has built-in computer ports and the 940 does not. It

is also important to note that while the 590 does have a built in antenna tuner, radios from the

1990’s have those as well just not the 940, therefore it is not a big deal. Just like how the 940 has

a built in power supply and the 590 does not. These radio are almost twenty-five years apart and

when it comes down to basic functionality, the old radios is just as good as new one.

Cost might be one of the greatest benefits of buying an older amateur base station.

www.GigaParts.com was used to for the price of new radios, and swap.qth.com to find used

prices. Both sites are popular suppliers of ham radio gear. Even a simple entry level radio like

the Yaesu FT-450D runs for $769.95 new, or around $600 used. Add that with the cost of a
 Stepaniak 5

power supply, which is needed for most radios, and the price is around $700 for used equipment

and $900 for all new equipment. Now keep in mind that is just a basic entry level radio, a nicer

radio like the TS-590G we looked at earlier, cost a whopping $1,648.95. Compare those prices

to the $450 average used price of an older radios like the TS-940S and it becomes obvious why

these older radios are such a good deal.

If these old radios are the same thing as a new

one, why would someone ever buy a costly new radio?

It is like cell phones, if all a person needs is to be able

to call people, an old flip phone would work great for

then. However if they like being able to have social
media apps, email, and a nice camera on their phone,
then they will pay the price to get a nice smartphone.
Figure 1: The simplistic looking TS-940S
from 1986 is just as powerful as modern
day radios (Kenwood TS-940S Amateur
HF Transceiver with auto antenna tuner
Serviced!).

The same thing goes with ham radios, if a person likes

having a big screen and digital sound processing (DSP)

for super clear audio, then they will be more willing to

shell out the money. However, if all someone wants is

Figure 2: While the 2013 TS-990S has
to be able to talk with people around the globe and does newer features like color touch-screens.
However, the base features are the same
not mind only having a little LCD number display, then as older solid state radios (Kenwood TS-
990 at Florence HamFest).
an older radio is perfect. If you compare figure 1 to figure 2 you see the simplistic look of the

older TS-940S , and the large color displays of the twenty-seven years newer TS-990S, the two

radios “guts” however are practically the same.

I have started searching amateur classifieds looking for the perfect first base station, and

it will be an older used one for sure. The thought of being able to finally talk around the world

brings back a childish wonder in me, and yes, ham radios are in a way just big boy walkie-
 Stepaniak 6

talkies. They do however have the power to establish communication with someone clear

around the globe, a skill quite useful when cell towers go down and the world goes dark. As the

old ham saying goes, “When all else fails, amateur radio.”
 Stepaniak 7

Works cited

“A Ham Radio for Makers [Resourcespass:[_]Hands On].” IEEE Spectrum, Spectrum, IEEE,

IEEE Spectr, no. 3, 2016, p. 21. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1109/MSPEC.2016.7420390.

Hallas, Joel. “Kenwood TS-590SG HF and 6 Meter Transceiver.” QST, July 2015. pp. 47-53

Hutchinson, Chuck. “Trio-Kenwood Communication TS-940S HF Transceiver.” QST, Feb

1986. pp. 47-49.

"Kenwood TS-940S Amateur HF Transceiver with auto antenna tuner Serviced!” picclick,

https://picclick.com/Kenwood-TS-940S-Amateur-HF-Transceiver-with-auto-antenna-

111989831753.html. Accessed 5 November 2018.

“Kenwood TS-990 at Florence HamFest.” iw5edi, 1 Feb. 2013, http://www.iw5edi.com/ham-

radio/tag/ts-990. Accessed 5 November 2018

“Origin of the Name "HAM" for Amateur Radio Operators.” Rfcafe,

http://www.rfcafe.com/references/electrical/origin-of-ham.htm. Accessed 31 October

2018