Sep 11
Working all the DX throughout the past months was somewhat annoying when I wanted to make digital (JT65 or FT8) contact right after having switched on the transceiver, the Kenwood TS590s. This happens, when the main reference oscillator is cold and has to warm up for some time. I experienced a frequency drift of over 120 Hz on 50 MHz in the first 30 minutes or so. This is a lot.
The best solution would be to feed an external GPS referenced signal into the transceiver, but where to get this stabilized 15,6 MHz from?
So I came THE other solution of putting in a more stable oscillator in form of a Temperature Controlled Oscillator (TCXO).
There a an option (03) available, where you must buy an expensive temperature controlled oscillator for far over 100€ for the original Kenwood equipment. Nowadays there are quite cheap equivalent types available through eBay. They all seem to originate from China. Prices of those parts vary from 12€ to about 50€. I chose to order one for 19€ where I thought, I could do nothing wrong with it. Worst case: perhaps it would not work. After 12 days (30 days were proposed) it arrived and installation was easy.

With a stable beacon signal I could see, that the drift has been reduced to about 5 Hz after 60 minutes. That is a factor of 24 times better than with the old crystal. And the resulting frequency is only 2 Hz away from where it should be on 50 MHz. This makes this man happy now :-)

Posted by Christoph Petermann

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