Posted:  5/24/25

1.  I am selling all of my ham radio equipment. (I will also donate my 40 or so ham-related books, many concerning antennas, to a club with a lending library.) I have not operated from home since 2015, when we had a new deck built, which removed the wooden supports to which I had strapped metal and PVC pipes to support low dipoles and a Cushcraft R7000 multi-band vertical. Here is a description of what I have. (I note that the small electronic accessories often need a wall wart. I have a box of those in the basement, which I will look through if you want to buy a particular item, although most hams will already have enough power adapters that they will have something that will work.)   

 

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Kenwood TS-850S-AT transceiver, with built-in antenna tuner, as well as a handheld microphone (plus a 90° PVC elbow that I put on top of the unit to re-direct sound forward from the built-in loudspeaker that fires upward from the top of the unit). I bought this, reconditioned, in the early 2000s from Burghardt Amateur Supply. (In 2009 they turned exclusively to radio repair.) I believe I paid about $1,300 for it. (In October 1996 the list price for a new unit was $2,199.95.) I have a complete service manual with schematics, bought at a hamfest, as well as an operating manual.

I really enjoyed this radio, including the Dual Passband Tuning, which lets you narrow the passband for the received signal from both above and below. As a 2017 review on eBay put it:   

 

The Kenwood TS-850 S is in my opinion one of the finest ever produced by Kenwood. The receiver is one of the most sensitive out there and great for pulling weak signal contact out of a pileup. The slope tuning ability to pull in slightly off frequency signals is near unbeatable. This is one of the last radios that had a knob or a button for each function...Unlike later model radios that have electronic multiple menus that you have to jump through, just to adjust things.

 

Astron RS-20M power supply, plus schematic diagram. I used this for the Kenwood TS-850S-AT.

 

MFJ-949E Deluxe Versa Tuner II, plus instruction manual 

 

MFJ-422C Electronic Iambic Keyer and Iambic Paddle combination, plus instructions and schematic diagram  

 

MFJ-432 Voice Memory Keyer, plus instruction manual

 

MFJ-259 HF/VHF SWR Analyzer with RF Resistance Meter, plus instruction manual

MFJ-66 Dip Meter Adapter for MFJ-259, plus instruction manual (I have the manual for the adapter, so I know I had the adapter, but to date I have not located it.)

 

Tigertronics SignalLink USB Integrated USB Sound Card for digital modes, plus installation & operation instructions. I never got around to using this.  

 

Shure Model 444D Controlled Magnetic® Fixed Station Microphone, plus data sheet and wiring guide

 

JPS ANC-4 Antenna Noise Canceller

 

MFJ-752-C Signal Enhancer, plus owner’s manual and schematic diagram

 

AEA PAKRATT Model PK-232 MBX Universal Data Controller

 

MFJ-1910 Telescoping Fiberglass Mast

 

MFJ-918 1:1 Current Balun, 1.8-30 MHz

 

Unadilla W2AU Balun Model 4:1, with installation instructions

 

MFJ-704 Low Pass Filter (1.5 KW, 0-30 MHz, 52 ohms), plus instruction manual

 

Industrial Communications Engineers Model 420 Low Pass RF Filter, DC-30 MHz, 300W DC, DC passive 0.1-0.4 db insertion loss, 50 ohms, non-polarized  

 

Industrial Communications Engineers coaxial 300 Series lightning arrestors. These have a high-voltage RF feedthrough/DC blocking ceramic center capacitor, and both a gas discharge tube and a bleeder resistor to ground on the antenna side. I have one, on a plate for mounting on top of a ground rod (with metal paste), with two separate paths (with SO-239s on each side of each path) in one unit. I also have two separate single-path units mounted on one mounting plate for ground rod mounting. These are commercial quality. After Top of Form

Mike Koss (W9SU) died in 2011 at age 57 his brother Bob (W9ETA) kept the product line running under the name Morgan Manufacturing. In 2018 Morgan Manufacturing changed hands, and is now Morgan Systems, at Surgestop.com. They manufacture the same products as I.C.E. I also note that Array Solutions states that they manufacture their lightning arrestors “[b]ased on the design by Industrial Communications Engineers (ICE) 300 Series coaxial arrestors.” The lightning arrestors by both Morgan Systems/SurgeStop and Array Solutions look identical to the ones I have from I.C.E., which were advertised as being able to be run over by a truck with no damage (which I find believable).

 

B&W FL 10/100 TVI Filter

 

Ameco HP-300T TV/FM Interference Hi-Pass Filter, 300 ohms, 0-52 MHz

 

The DX Edge gray line calculator

 

Slinky Dipole from Helitrix®, plus assembly and operating instructions

 

Four new original Slinky coils (smaller than the coils of the Helitrix® Slinky Dipole) to make a half-size 80-meter dipole (or a half-size 40-meter dipole if you just use two coils), plus an unused spray can of cold galvanizing compound for the coils. (A dipole built with the small-diameter coils will work, since I previously built and used an 80-meter dipole from four other Slinky coils. [I have never used the Helitrix® Slinky Dipole.] I tried to sand and scrape the coils, with the intent of then painting  them blue or gray to blend with the sky, but it is impossible to paint all surfaces unless you can dip the coils, and it is basically impossible to sand and scrape the entire surface of all of the coils in the first place. The scraping and sanding just led to them eventually rusting after being outside for years. It may be that the new coils are already galvanized, in which case the cold galvanizing compound spray would be necessary only where you sanded the coils for attachment points, etc.)

 

 

Ten spreaders for a multi-band dipole (I used these for an 80M Slinky dipole combined with wire dipoles for 40/15M, 20M and 10M. I strung the Slinky coils on Kevlar cord covered by Dacron, while the whole system, on the spreaders, was supported by the either the Kevlar cord or the 40M wire dipole.) 

 

The DX Edge gray line calculator

 

Many clip-on and circular RF filters

 

Many connectors, including PL-259

 

Bare and insulated wire, coax, ladder line, cord

73,

Mark, K2DL

mark@Lydius.net