Another Kenwood for the Shack

Read Time: 2 minute(s)

You may not know I have a thing for old Kenwood radios. It is partly because my brother-in-law (now deceased) had a complete Kenwood station, but I also just like the look and feel of them. And of course, the famous Kenwood sound. Oh, and all the controls are right in front of you: no menus!

I’ll get better photos soon, but the front panel photo above is good enough to show the layout and condition of the radio. Unlike many older radios, this one doesn’t look like it sat in the sun. The plastic bits look good. The Kenwood desk mic looks pristine.

I found this on Facebook Marketplace and followed some clues to figure out who was selling it. It was a licensed ham, Fred. And he was 15 minutes away from me. The condition looked good, a hand mic and a desk mic were included, and the price was excellent. And I love Kenwood radios, so we connected and made arrangements to meet at a local grocery store with a coffee bar and inside seating.

Rigpix has a much nicer photo of the front panel of the TS-680S. Bands are 10-160M plus WARC and 6M. This double conversion superheterodyne radio consumes relatively little power at idle (1.5 amp) with a 20 amp maximum on transmit. Maximum power output is 100 watts for SSB, but 10M is 95 watts and 6M is limited to 10 watts. The Rigpix site also has links to the manual and the schematic, and a photo of the back of the radio, too.

The TS-680S has a 4.3 rating on eHam. I think the sliding potentiometers are a bit sketchy but they also look handy. No hunting through menus to find a way to reduce power! I doubt I’ll be adjusting them very often.

I’ll put it in an Apache case for portable use. The radio is fairly compact for the era it was made and weighs a bit more than 13 pounds.

I’ve read a few reports that say the radio reacts too slowly for use with digital modes. That bears testing.

I’ll have more once I get a wire up and can test the device. Many thanks to Fred for letting me take this lovely old Kenwood radio off his hands.