Monday, Nov. 2, 2020
The Kenwood TS-520SE I purchased recently on eBay arrived today, though I’ll admit that the box sitting on my front porch worried me.
As I turned the box over, I felt weight inside the box shift. ARGH! The radio was bouncing around in the damn box!
I moved the box into the foyer and into the living room and opened it. I got lucky. The rig was wrapped in sufficient large bubble bubblewrap to protect it, even though there was insufficient packing in the box to keep the radio from bouncing around. The seller had stuff some wads of bubblewrap around the radio, but not nearly enough to do much good.
I unboxed the radio and took it up to Studio C. Despite my concerns about the packing (or lack thereof), the radio was undamaged. The receiver sprang to life. The rig suffers from dirty switch contacts on the bandswitch, attenuator and a couple others.
Now the transmitter is only putting out 3 or 4 watts, but at least the controls appear to be working. It almost looks like the radio has no finals, just the final driver tube. I haven’t removed the cover yet, but I’m hoping the radio is an easy fix. The receiver works really well.
And ironically, the 520SE is ALSO missing the (apparently) optional CW filter. Off to eBay to find another cw filter.
Other than some stains, scuffs and minor rust on the cabinet — and wear on the silver front panel trim — the front panel is in excellent condition. I’m looking forward to getting this one on the air.
73 es CUL …. de KY4Z … SK … SK … (dit dit) ….