Ten-Tec Model 539 on display at the Ten-Tec Hamfest, September 24, 2011 - Click to enlarge
At the Ten-Tec hamfest today, I just happened to stumble upon the new, as yet un-released Ten-Tec Model 539 QRP transceiver.
It’s a beautiful, simple little unit.
The footprint is very similar to the Elecraft K2, while its height is slightly greater than the Yaesu FT-817. It’s very lightweight and certainly backpackable.
The Ten-Tec folks I spoke with said that the current requirements may be as low as 250 mA on receive–though they’re not yet certain. When I asked John Henry (Eagle and OMNI VII firmware author) about the receiver performance, he mentioned that the receiver board is the same as the Eagle’s, and performance is likely to be somewhere between that of the Eagle and the Jupiter. There is some compromise on a receiver optimized for backpacking and QRP field ops. Nevertheless…wow.
Price: still undetermined.
Ten-Tec hopes to take pre-orders at the 2012 Dayton Hamvention. They also announced a companion 100 watt amp for the new QRP rig (see separate post). The amp, however, will work with any QRP radio on the market.
I honestly believe this may be a transceiver worthy of the Argonaut lineage.
Features include:
- 10 Watt QRP Transceiver
- 80, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 Meters Ham-Band Only
- AM, USB, LSB, CW Modes
- Tricolor backlit internally adjustable display
- Hardware features in common with the Ten-Tec Eagle Model 599
- Noise Reduction
- Noise Blanker
- AGC – Fast, Medium, Slow
- RIT
- Pre Amp
- 100 Memories
- Two VFO Displays
Thank you, Ten-Tec; you listened.
Additional photos:
Ten-Tec's John Henry behind prototype of the Ten-Tec Model 539 QRP Transceiver
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Where is 60 meters…. I love 60 meters. I’m close to a WAS with 10 watts SSB.
I do both cw and ssb, but I hope the transmit audio on ssb is better the the Argonaut V. The 505 and 509 with only 3 watts had excellent audio quality even with a cheap mic.
Sell the 539 for $499.95 and you’ll sell a bunch of them.
tnx Larry AB0AH
Looks like more of Ten-Tec’s SDR garbage. And, yet ANOTHER TT rig that excludes VHF/UHF, as well as general coverage on RX.
Thanks but no thanks.
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