A barebones Kenwood TS-850S (technically Kenwood TS-850SAT or TS-850S/AT — AT for auto tuner) that I acquired shortly before upgrading to General. I gave it some TLC and upgraded the factory oscillator to a SO-2 compatible TCXO from N3BA and now the rig performs great! I got my WAS with my 50ft EFHW and this rig.

This radio has proven that not only well-designed electronics and legendary Kenwood radios are high-quality and reliable with some good TLC. A while after getting this radio I purchased and installed a N3BA (SO-2 compatible) 20MHz TCXO.

Some time after (couple of years or so) I had an issue with power output – the DC-DC converter as it turned out – and to summarize, the TCXO was now shorted. Luckily, it did not take the PLL board with it, but I then decided to install the first Syncium SO-2 TCXO after researching it and seeing some people reporting success with it. I repaired the DC-DC board with some more robust components and replaced the gas discharge tube with a Bourns 2049-13-BT1LF since the orignal is unobtainium and had quite a bit of charring inside even though it still worked fine.

While I had this rig apart I also spent some extra time and recapped this whole unit except for the filter boards on the bottom of the radio – I still have those caps, but I opted to save myself the frustration with these ground plane heavy boards and decided to leave it for a later date since none of the capacitors here were leaking.

This thing takes quite the bit of abuse even while connected to a gutter with a 9:1 UnUn the internal tuner does its magic and I’ve been able to reach the world from the hole in the ground I’ve lived in since 2021. I currently have a Digirig with its two cables, including a home made audio cable I was using with a Digirig Lite I own, and I made a TS-850S to RS232 DB9 to connect it directly to a computer (with some ferrite beads clamped on the cable) made from an old USB-A to USB-B cable.

It is almost fully decked out and is only missing one of the 8.83MHz filters and the VS-2 Voice Synthethizer module. I have a Piexx DRU-2 for the voice recorder module that works extremely well, but especially for contests!