It was love at first sight, the
distinctive design of the
TS570 with
its ergonomically placed
buttons, its big clear display and the
unusual
orange black and grey colour
scheme looked very attractive to me. Later
I realized
why. When I was a lad of 14
years old I owned one of the first
scientific
calculators. It was from
Omron, and it was bright orange with a
black
keyboard and round grey keys
with a slightly hollow surface. It was my
object of
desire....
Being a
technician I have learned not
to
follow my
first impulse, so when I got
my HF licence some time ago I went out
to see what
HF rig would be suitable
for me. I wanted a compact state of the
art rig and I
had a few on trial for
some weeks. I decided to buy the 570 and
haven’t
regretted my decision ever
since.
I had to get
used to the audio at
first.
The rig
sounded very different from my
R5000 receiver with its sharp almost
hissing
sound. The 570 sounds very
civilised, a bit dull even. The reason is
that you
cannot switch off the DSP
filter. So even with the filter ‘wide open’
everything
above 4 kHz is cut off.
Although I didn’t like it at first I soon
discovered
that I could listen to the
rig for hours without getting tired. Now
I do like it,
it’s quiet, nice and
smooth, without a hint of distortion.
A point of
criticism must be the
effectiveness of the high-and low-cut
of the DSP.
From a DSP filter you
would expect a steep brig wall type of
performance,
but the filter on the 570
rather acts like a classical tone
control. The
filter is not sharp at
all, in fact the flanks of the IF filter
are steeper.
You can’t cut
high-pitched sideband splatter from a neighbouring
channel
without impairing the
intelligibility of the signal you want to hear.
In my opinion
it is almost useless.
In CW the DSP
band pass filter works
great. On the
DG model you can reduce
the bandwidth down to 50 Hz without any
sign of
ringing or distortion.
Although I prefer an IF notch, the B.C. (beat
cancel)
function of the DSP is really
excellent. If you are having trouble with
carrier beat
notes during a SSB QSO,
simply press B.C. and they disappear as
snow for the
sun. The suppression is
phenomenal ! I often forget to switch BC
off because
you can’t hear the
difference on the audio, and you don’t notice
whether a
carrier has disappeared.
Also useful is the N.R. (noise reduction)
especially on
the DG model. But don’t
expect miracles from it. I have never
heard a
signal that I could copy with
the NR switched in, that I could
not copy
without it ! The NR makes the
audio sound a bit hollow, as if
the station
you are listening to is
transmitting from a church or other large
empty
building. But again, no hint of
distortion !
Both for TX
and RX there is an audio
equaliser you
can use. You probably
don’t need it, since the audio on TX is
just fine. In
fact some stations I
worked on SSB voluntarily gave favourable
reports about
the audio. You can
however even program your own equaliser using
a little
windows program called
EQCALC. This will define the U (user defined?)
setting which
is not documented. I use
it as an extra bandpass filter around
1kHz for PSK.
One of the
best parts of the 570 is
its big bright and clear display.
The contrast
is high, and the orange
back lighting is smooth and equal. The
S-meter is
integrated into the
display. Some people will
prefer an analogue
type, but you
have to consider the
advantages of digital ones. Classical needle
instruments
are notoriously slow, and
will never be able to accurately indicate
signal
strength or power output peaks.
Digital ones do ! The one on the 570
even has a
peak hold build in. Besides
this S-meter is one of the best I have
ever seen. It
is even accurate ! From
S3 onward every S point is 6 dB apart, as
it should be,
and above S9 it
indicates real dB’s rather than imaginary ones
(HI). But
that’s not all… during TX
you can simultaneously see power output,
ALC and SWR.
The last one is of great
help to me, since I am using an external
symmetrical
antenna tuner.
The 570 is
equipped with an automatic
one, and during the
brief period
that I used it, it worked
well. It is a switching type. It
remembers the
settings for each band
segment, so once tuned, assuming that the
antenna does
not change, you will
never have to tune again. The 570 has two
separate
front panel selectable
antenna connectors. The antenna tuner has two
separate
memories, so even if you
switch from one antenna to the other retuning
isn’t
necessary. For manual tuning I
switch to AM and lock the PTT on the
microphone.
The AM mode has a separate
power level setting, so this way you can
tune with
i.e. 5W, switch back to SSB
and start transmitting with the full 100 W.
I run PSK,
Hell and RTTY on the 570
from the soundcard of
the computer.
The 570 has an extra
audio input/output on the ACC2 connector at
the back so
you don’t have to unplug
your microphone every time you want to “go
digital”.
However in order to make it
work you have to use the PTT (pin 9) on
the same
connector. This will also
silence the microphone input, so you can
talk while
you type HI.
The 570 has
one position to install an
extra IF filter.
This could be
a 1.8 kHz SSB filter,
or, much more sensible, a 500 or 270 Hz CW
filter. Now
with a CW filter installed
we would like to use it for lets say
PSK. But we
can’t since the rig does
not allow you to use an CW filter in SSB
mode. There
is a workaround however.
In menu #46 you can change the bandwidth of
the filter
that was installed to 1800
Hz. This will allow the use of the CW
filter for
SSB. Now don’t forget to
set it to the proper bandwidth after you
finished your
PSK operation, if you
don’t you will have no output in CW. I do
all this by
controlling the rig by
computer using the COM port.
You don’t
realise it all the time, but
everything inside
the 570 is
done digitally. Even if you
turn up the volume, you are not just
turning up a
potentiometer, but are
actually setting a digital control which
controls the
audio level. You will
never have guest it by simply working with
the rig
because it all feels like the
“good old thing”. It means that you can
also control
the rig by computer. And
if I say control, I really mean CONTROL,
because
everything you can do from the
front panel you can also do with
computer
commands. In this respect
Kenwood has always excelled. Compare this
with the
Yeasu rigs that have almost
useless CAT capabilities probably
conceived in
the stone age !
Using the 570
is really
straightforward. The layout of the front panel is well
designed. The
controls you will use in
every day operation are at the most one
push of a
button away, while settings
you will typically set once according to
your own
preferences or needs are
hidden in the menu. In fact there are two
menus : A and
B, so you can use
different settings i.e. for two types of
operation. A
useful feature is the
Quick Memo. While tuning over the bands you
can store an
interesting frequency
instantly by pressing M.IN The Quick Memo
acts as an
FIFO (First in First Out)
memory with 5 cells. The stored
frequencies
can be revisited by
pressing MR. These memories, like the normal
ones (00-99)
in fact behave as extra
VFO’s. While in memory mode you can still
tune the
frequency, change the mode or
even change the band you are working on.
You can
simply transfer the frequency
of a memory (QM or normal one) to one of
the regular
VFO’s by pressing M>VFO.
Another
useful feature is CW TUNE . It
will automatically
tune the rig
so that the CW beat note
frequency is the same as the one you set
for the
sidetone (Menu #20). This
ensures that you return to a station calling
CQ on its
exact frequency. This
function does not work very well while using
the smaller
filter bandwidths or FINE
tuning. In these cases it may even loose
the signal
all together, but it is
nice to have anyway.
I am not
trying to sell my rig…. Never
! It is simply a
very nice rig
to own. It does what you
expect it to do, nothing more, but
certainly
nothing less. Sure there are
a few things I would like to be
different.
The High/Low cut DSP filter
is one, and not being able to select the
IF filter for
whatever mode is
another. But these are just minor points. If you
are after a
nice, state of the art,
all singing all dancing, solid, nice
looking
little rig, the TS 570 DG may
be the one for you !
73,Arend PA1ARE
