For about a year I have been eyeing up the TS990 Kenwood, transceiver, however the price tag at most dealerships were $5.00 shy of being $8000. Way too much, so I decided to wait a while on this one. Shopping around I found a fall sale at HRO that removed $1500 off the regular price, this included a rebate from Kenwood.
That suddenly became appealing to me and with in ten days a large 67 pound box arrived at my doorstep. Well, off to work I went unpacking this new treasure, but getting it out of the box proved a challenge. It is tightly packed, so the outer box I had to cut down the side, removed it and attacked the inner box.
Once out side the box I looked at this radio without plugging it in, my reaction was WOW, so after wrestling my Alpha 86 off the table, I moved it to my workbench, lifting the transceiver in the hole, it was a days work for this old man.
I routed the power cord to an electrical strip and connected the transceiver up to some AC, pushed the on button and then another BIG WOW! With this radio you better have the manual handy for the first couple of days you have the 990, a learning curve is necessary.
So, in this article I want to compare this rig with my present Yaesu FT 5K. The comparisons are interesting indeed. So let’s begin.
The biggest problem with the FT 5 was the small window panes and the OLED that give the information in the panes. Either you had the dreaded white line going across the information, or the OLED’s started to grow dim. With mine they are growing dim and will need to be replaced, I may have this done prior to selling the radio. Originally, I had thought of keeping the 5k and selling the 2K. However, think I will do that in reverse, keep the 2k, much easier to read and see what you are doing.
With the 990 the band width adjustments and all functions can be clearly seen, no squinting, or unreadable information.
The 5K has phono jacks on the rear apron including T/R and ALC for a linear amp. The 990 uses one 7 pin din plug, and I despise those din plugs. You have to make up your own cable, or have it made for a linear amp. The expense of the radio certainly they could have included two phono jacks on the rear apron to make easier hook up for a linear amp. No, Kenwood made this a little complicated, but it can be overcome.
The 5k has a feature on it that is in effect a magic eye, this is used for CW tuning, if the icon is in the center of the scale, you are exactly zero beat with the station you are calling. Kenwood on the other hand has a large screen that you can see the bandwidth of the received signal. There is no guess work, I like this feature.
For split frequency, pretty easy on both rigs, the 5 k only indicates one small LED for split, easily overlooked. Kenwood with the larger screen leaves no doubt you are in split mode. Not only does an LED light, but an indicator Icon shows up in the larger screen pointing to the frequency that you are transmitting on at the time, no excuse for calling on a DX channel and causing interference.
Notch filter on the 5k does somewhat of a good job, but you cannot see the wave form display as you do on the Kenwood. The notch filter is adjustable in ten db steps all the way to 80DB. The default is 40, you can see the adjustment of the notch filter across the bandwidth of the received signal very plainly. Tune in a CW signal, in the center of the wave form and it is indicated by a vertical line, tune the notch filter across the signal and watch it vanish. I mean gone, no trace, I could not even hear clicks, or any indication it was there.
The 5k has two selections of preamps, but the Kenwood has one, the effect is the same with two as with one. Just depends on the gain of the FET that is used.
On air audio, well the 5 k has equalizer adjustments of high, medium and bass, that is it. Kenwood gives you a simulated eq with all the audio frequencies and you can adjust them for your own microphone, or the best sound to you or the on air sound.
Direct entry frequency keypad on both rigs, on the 5 k numbers are etched on the keys, with Kenwood once you depress enter, the keys light up with the numbers you want. Nice feature.
The 5k has a keypad to select prerecorded audio messages and will serve as a voice keyer, or play back of recorded CW messages. Kenwood does not have one, instead you select the TX message and dependent on the mode you want, it will transmit your message. One thing I noticed right away the audio playback the Kenwood is clean, no bit noise, the 5 k I can detect some slight bit noise.
However, by using this selection you lose your band scope, on the 5 k the band scope was external. Often I glanced at it to see where the last station that worked the DX was calling. Of course this can be over come with the activation of the sub receiver on the Kenwood.
Noise reduction on the 5k works, but as with all noise reduction features some distortion of the received signal takes place. If you selected DNR and DNF on the 5 k, CW signals were unreadable due to the distortion. On the Kenwood there is some distortion on SSB signals, but tolerable on CW on the Kenwood.
The Kenwood shines in another feature and that is the reception of digital signals you have a water fall presentation and also a read out on the screen of the text being sent. Makes it easy to connect to the digital world, a scope in the smaller screen indicates if you are tuned correctly. Impressive indeed to see this in action.
There are two USB connector ports on the front panel where they belong, hook up a keyboard and you are in business. I may give this a try at some point,but have other things to work on my favorite mode and that is CW. There is one thing I have noticed, the 5k switched my linear to the band I selected every time. But, for some unexplained reason the Kenwood will switch a few times, but not every time. Maybe I need to set something in the menu, but cannot figure out what it is, this is not a major problem, just a little annoying.
Maybe in a week, or longer I might figure this out. However, the 5K does have a CAT connector at the rear of the unit, the Kenwood uses a DB9 instead of a DB 15.
In comparison of the two rigs in signal reception I found S meter readings were about the same. Both hear well, but the Kenwood out performs the 5k in menu functions and Technology.
Both radios offer four antenna ports, on the 5k antennas are selected by a step switch, on the Kenwood a button push. Both rigs maintain memory of what antenna you want for different bands.
On both rigs you can set the power output in the menu, I have mine set at 50 watts on all bands except six. It is 200 watts on that band, but for HF bands my linear amp does not need more then 45 watts on any band for the full legal limit.
Drift factor Kenwood offers 1PPM while the 5k .05 only on the MP version that has a TCXO. Thing is do you really need an oven at room temperature? I think if you were in a cold garage, or out building this would be the reason to have it. If you operate at room temperature all the time, you will never notice any drift.
Kenwood offers .13 Mico volts of sensitivity on the ham bands while the 5k offers .02 just slightly better on the then then the 5k.
Image rejection 70 DB for the 5k and about the same on the Kenwood. On the matter of Broadcast radio say the AM band, forget it, neither one is performer on those frequencies. These radios are peaked of the ham bands and indeed they are in that respect.
Two things on the 5 k I felt were not useful, one you have a normal and wide transmitter selection. This enables your transmitted signal to become wider in actual bandwidth. There is no reason to ever activate this in my opinion, spectrum space for SSB is about 2.8 kHz, going wider gains you nothing but enemies. This may be the thing for unpopulated bands, but 20/15/10 plus 40 where I operate it is useless.
You do not have this on the Kenwood and glad I do not, the next area is RF peaking, on the 5k you have a control that will peak your signal level on receive. To be honest I set it and forgot it, nice idea, but totally not needed. Kenwood other then RF level control has nothing other then a Preamp and the RF control. Anything else is just not needed.
Neither rig offers more then 10khz with TX, or RX offset, more then that use the second VFO This brings me to the access of these functions. On the 5k, you first need to depress the clarifier group button, then select your RX, or TX offset.
Kenwood has one button push and you are in business lot less complexity with the Kenwood.
A note about the CW recorded messages, when I first programmed the 5k, being a long time cw man, the sent cw from the memory keyed sounded choppy. Although, the 5k has weight adjustments they are not defined enough, the over all weight adjust is choppy. On the Kenwood the cw is smooth and more weight adjustments, sounds much better to me. However, this is just my observation and if you are not a cw man then it will make no difference.
Now do not take this report wrong, the 5k is a good transceiver, I have run one for about three years, but in terms of rating I would rate this rig as an 8 due to the window panes being small and some differences in the two radios. My rating on the Kenwood is a 9, for the reasons mentioned such as rear connectors using din plugs instead of phono plugs for connection of a linear. I do believe that Yaesu could have come up with a better design then those small window panes and troublesome OLEDs.
BTW the audio quality of both rigs are good, but the Kenwood has a distinct good sound, add the processor and it adds to the enhancement of the transmitted signal. The 5 has good audio no doubt, but just not as defined as the Kenwood.
One more thing to mention, Yaseu has taken the 5k off the market and is only offering the 5K MP on a limited basis. In the past they pulled their 2K off the market and it is no longer made, sad I liked the 2k, much easier to see the icons and no small window panes. Personally, I had thought I would sell the 2k originally, but think I will keep it and sell the 5k.
Make someone a good offer to buy it, have the OLEDs replaced and it should be good for many more hours. You now have some comparisons of the two radios, it depends on what you want and how well you want it.
Hope you found this of interest and informative, any further questions you may contact me via my e mail.
Bill, K4LRX
