Its just a hamstick vertical with a hamstick antenna  as a horizontal radial. Its basically a asymmetrical dipole.

You can read about it on this link. It seems to have held up well over the last 2 years in the shootouts.

http://www.3905ccn.com/newsite/antenna-shootout.htm

Those connectors look they made by LEMO, another company that produces excellent HV connectors.
ALDEN also make some nice convenient plug in HV connectors at good prices.

Dont worry about the voltage rating, if you feel unsafe just mount the connector on another piece of insulated material then onto your panel. You will then have a double insulated connector that is unlikely to flash over.

Its nice when you have a huge Hypot that you can test all these possible scenarios, its amazing what you learn about high voltage playing around with any Hypot.

QSR1 and QST1 is like the the ADAT radio, a dead end road going nowhere fast. Its unfortunate but I suppose when its not your full time job and a hobby you cant expect much.

I have a QSR1  and I like it a lot, its a wasted investment now since I just got my Hermes radio. I would suggest  you look at this option.

My Hermes with a Class A 10 watt amp is superb. I just putting the finnishing touches to my VRF150 amp with diplexer filters. I really dont need any other radios at the moment. Well I do, A HPSDR Hermes with a front panel!

HPSDR Hermes is a superb solution  and it is very affordable and blows away anything on the market at moment.

There is none. Actually I could be wrong here. The FT1000MP and MK5 with inrad upgrades might do it for you. Likewise the FT2000 with Network Sciences roofing filter. The modified FT2000 would have sufficient dynamic range and  you would also have a  great clean 200 watt transmitter.

Most of the radios on the market that have a huge amount of knobs have bad receiver and transmitter performance. I suppose the message here is that bells and whistles does not always equate to  real world performance. This
is the argument run by the K3 supporters. I have K3's but I hate their ergonomics. I really  want a BIG humungous  Elecraft radio with tons of knobs like the FT2000 and FT5000. A  radio like this from Elecraft would be a huge seller
if it had a decent analog calibrated S-meter and  a 200 watt FET PA. I dont think this will happen, Elecraft seems to be captured by the cutesy QRP small radio mentality even though their radios have tons of receiver performance.

If Yaesu put  a decent receiver into a radio  like the FT950 that would  have been an ideal candidate. Remember radios like the FT920, TS930S, TS940S, IC738? They were all knobbed radios with great ergonomics and  very few menus.
They were also big and nicely layed out. We just need modern versions of this style of radio with a decent FET PA and decent receiver performance.

The ideal candidate would  be the Hilberling  radio,  but how many hams can afford this beauty?  Even a radio like the TS830S  updated with a solid state PA has enough receiver performance for today. Manufacturers
really are missing a great opportunity by ignoring  what hams really want, a radio thats big in size with knobs and excellent ergonomics. If you use a radio like the K3 it would put you off menu radios for life, its ergonomics are so terrible. The K3 is a  ergonomic joke in my book.  You cant call radio ergonomic if you dont have dedicated band select buttons, end of  argument! Most hams would find powersdr running on a PC more palatable than the K3.

Its unfortunate that radio companies are moving  away from knobs towards highly menu orientated  radio operation. The new FTDX3000 is an example, frankly I would have preferred a FT102 with  some sort of external pan adapter.
The FTDX3000's bandscope  is close to being useless much like the FTDX5000's bandscope. Icom has a good tradeoff between menus and knobs. Its just unfortunate that all their transceivers have  marginal receiver  and transmitter performance.  If Icom released something the PRO series of radios in a down conversion  series of radios with 200 watts I am sure it would be very popular. I doubt that they would  undercut the IC7700 and IC7800 series of radios.
Icom has the best layout for a radio with a integrated bandscope. We more likely to see a direct sampling radio  from them.

Anyway  most of the manufacturers dont seem to want to listen to their users they seems to be  on their own planets in their own universe. All I am waiting for now is  some ham company to produce a blackbox transceiver and then they tell you to go buy  a Ipad or Smart phone for the front panel.  This is the design mentality that dominates the ham companies thinking at the moment. Its just unfortunate that they ignoring the legacy and heritage of ham radio, big boxes with knobs and switches. Its this  romantic nostalgia that appeals to most hams, not cutesy look at how smart we are  radios with menus nested 10 layers deep. I guess they just slow or need to do better market research.

Everything works. When you are operating QRP its the antenna that matters not the radio. There is no QRP radio that is the equivalent of the radio walking on water. Well there is, its a Harris RF-5800H-MP but most of us cant afford it.

These days a good noise reduction or noise blanking system is more important than receiver performance when operating QRP. The next  thing after good noise blanker is a 100 watt amplifer. You then back to the equivalent of a
normal mobile HF radio. You notice now that everyone has the KX3, that they all asking what amp they should buy! Thats irony and the stupidity of the  cute QRP radio syndrome. If you a sucker for punishment  its a good
way to waste a  lot of time. I much prefer a normal 100 watt radio like the FT857 which BTW  will be smaller and more convenient than a KX3 with any external amplifier. Why anyone would want the inconvenience of this combination of radio and amplifier is beyond my understanding. The same comments can be made about the FT817 and any external amplifiers when you can buy a FT857. I  even operate my K2 with a 100 watt PA on lithium batteries and it works well.

Hey its a new toy buy one and keep the economy going, we heading for a global depression soon, you need something to make you feel happy.

A hamstick with a hamstick radial seems to be doing well in the antenna shootouts on 40 meters. Why not give it try and report back. I will be trying  this configuration next summer.

If you can get within a 0.5db of a Scorpion antenna without all the heavy mounting and engineering you are doing well.  Big heavy screwdrivers are not practical for most people and nor do most people
require the performance if they just chatting within their own country.

All really poor CB rubbish that does not belong on the ham bands.

Why any ham would want to use this CB garbage on the ham bands in the form of   splattering CB amplifiers and freeband CB radios with poor IMD suppression is beyond belief. There  are so many affordable genuine ham radios
available that perform much better and cost less. A second point is that the economics of buying a freeband radio and  crap CB amplifier dont add up when you can buy a proper 100 watt transceiver like the IC718 for much less money.
The operating ergonomics  is certainly superior. I guess you cant take the CB'er out of some hams. It seems many CB'ers who become hams dont want to give up their ignorant  ways and poor equipment.

Leave the CB junk up on the CB bands not on the ham bands.

 Hams who use this type equipment stand out like sore thumb on the ham bands because of the interference that they cause.  It seems many hams who use this equipment suffer from technical deficit disorder, it seems that there is no cure for this malaise.

I thought an individual ham in the USA could import  a non type accepted piece of equipment for personal use?

I see Ebay USA is full of export CB radios and illegal  RM Italy amplifiers. These illegal importers are doing a roaring trade with technical deficit disorder hams. What about all the garbage 2 meter HT radios from China?

The FCC is a toothless tiger against  all these small importers and seem to only pursue the celebrity companies for publicity. The same thing is occurring  in Europe. The market is getting flooded with equipment that fails all European EMC laws and all the importers have to do is produce a fraudulent certificate from the Chinese that says it meets standards. We all know that the Chinese manufacturers are making a mockery of our laws yet our authorities will hand out hefty penalties to any European based companies who break these laws. All double standards, the law is truly an ass  in this area.

Hi M Sarkaria

Do you have 2 tone  IMD data for the other bands? If you do have this data can you post it some time in the future? I am interested to see how the IMD performance holds up on all other bands.

Dont forget the venerable Drake L4B.

You can beef it up very easily. Just change the power supply capacitors and change the blower for an external big blower. If you want QRO just build a new external power supply. I would not bother.  It will do a 1kw  for 48 hours  with ham duty cycle. Just add 2 big muffin fans on the top of the cabinet and away you go.

The L4B is built like  a tank compared to the TL922 which is a flaky amplifier without upgrades, the parts are all marginal in the TL922. The Drakes RF deck is airy compared to the swiss watch engineering and cramming on the TL922. Lots of space to do things on the L4B's deck.

You can even put the L4B temporarily on 160 meters by just padding the load temporarily and using the 80 meter position. I have seen other hams use 2 X  3cx1200s in a L4B, this was done when 3cx1200's were cheap. This is an exercise in stupidity of course.

I will take a L4B over a  SB220 or TL922 any day. The only problem is the prices that the L4B is fetching is getting ridiculous.  I have a L4B deck on every ham band, all nine bands with a switch matrix. I dont need a solid state amp!

Agreed 100% with your comments. Its a technique thats rarely used today and  subject that is poorly understood.  I mostly use the resonant choke technique on screen supplies  for  voltages upto 1500 volts.  It works very well to the point where you dont need a screen regulator, even on SSB.

I just wanted to make sure that  someone does not remove the  resonance tuning capacitor from the choke! Many people made this mistake on the Collins 30S1.

mobile = k3

Its the radio with the worst ever ergonomics for base use. Everyone has their own opinions on this, this is my opinion.

I am waiting for the K4 maybe that will be a true home based radio.

I could however imagine a  K3 with dual P3's (one for spectrum and a separate P3  for  waterfall and rig info + TX monitoring)  new  front panel, 200 FET amplifier  and all in one box with a in built power.
What would even be better is a 10 inch touch screen K3 that combined the P3 and K3's designs. The modular concept should remain this way it would be easier to address any improvements or failures in various parts of the radio.

The K3 design has  lots of potential if all the marketing and packaging options are examined. The problem is that all the Elecrafters are more worried about fighting with the "elecraft haters" rather than making the product better with suggestion and product criticisms.

Very few products in the world can get it right with  the first release onto the market. It seems that the K3's design is trapped by being carved into rock by its owners and designers. The K3  could be rig for all people if some K3 owners opened their minds to the possibilities rather than just wanting to be  elecraft criticism attack dogs. Any criticism of the design has hardly effected the sales of the radio thats why its perplexing why so many owners react so negatively to the many suggestions and requests  for  and an improved K3.  Trying to bludgeon people into  believing that a radio is perfect when it is not does more marketing harm that good. We live in the information age not the brainwashed age.

Yaesu, Kenwood and Icom have been doing this for decades. If you sat down and studied their circuit diagrams you would  soon realize that the improvements in model X has become model Y with some minor changes. It was very rare to have a completely new clean slate design per new model. Why should elecraft designs be the exception and exempted from  this practice? It just makes good economic sense recycling old products into new exciting and improved products.

A totally ridiculous patent claim.

Its  ridiculous as the guy who first filed the patent for using a PC keyboard  that plugged into a ham transceiver.  This patent effectively blocked any transceiver from using a plug in keyboard.

This patent will prevent someone from releasing a SDR black box radio that will say for example use  IPAD for the interface.

This is like filing for patents on human genes and  DNA  in nature, totally  ridiculous when its been around for a million years. The patent system is well and truly broken.

Nobody minds the protection of genuine intellectual property but patenting a product  around the idea of  integrating concepts that already exists in the market is really beyond belief. We
see more and more manufacturers patenting things as ridiculous as a mounting bracket and the number of screws used.

All?

Some Henry amps used a resonant choke supply. The choke was tuned by a low value  capacitor across the choke. The 4K Ultra comes to mind as well as the Henry 8k Amp.

Just make sure your Henry amp does not use a resonant choke filter.  Changing the value of the capacitor will allow the plate voltage to soar to a high value, that could cause a lot of damage.

I have used a brute force choke supply by simply using the choke with two capacitors in the pie configuration. The improvement is not worth the trouble and weight..

These days its far easier adding a bank of snap electrolytics and  making sure  you have a adequate glitch R preferably with a fuse if the cap bank is rather large. Excessive joules can
cause a lot of damage.

If your amp does not use a resonant choke supply its worthwhile using a tuned choke as upgrade if you have all the parts. For a legal limit amplifier I would not bother with all the trouble because
whatever the amp  originally used for a filter bank is enough C or filtering.

TS-990S is another unremarkable radio that is using dinosaur concepts with bells and whistles.

I have read all the available material on the TS-990S and I read nothing that makes me excited about the radio.
While Kenwood has had a history of producing radios using  rather clean PA's, and  selecting linear PA devices, it excels at very little else.

The TS990S looks like its just going to be another pig in lipstick radio with the usual shortcomings.

Old technology
Birdies in the receiver
Poor transmitter design with the usual poor transmitter ALC. There is no reason whatsoever to have ALC in a modern transmitter as implemented by ham radio manufacturers.
A PA using excellent FETS that will not be optimized on all ham bands. Adaptive pre-distortion should have been the new standard.
Uncalibrated S-meter
A bandscope that wont have enough dynamic range  and controls to be a useful tool.
A radio with a 2 watt distorted 20% distortion audio amplifier.
Poor  receiver in band IMD.

Yes, its exciting that they have re-entered the ham radio  with a big radio. Projects like the HPSDR transceiver will  very shortly be  blowing all these expensive white elephant radios out of the water. Kenwood
and the other Japanese manufacturers really should get with the program and design radios using  the latest DDC/DUC architecture designs. This technology can deliver all the performance required  that does not require obsolete   dinosaur technology that will become obsolete when the Chinese manufacturers stop manufacturing the crummy parts.

There  is not one killer feature in the TS-990S design that can  be considered leading edge, its just another  new radio that will do little for the ham radio masses.
 Its a good radio for milking the baby boomers of their retirement savings. Nothing like a big box with knobs that does very little to help the average ham enjoy his hobby that cant be done with any available transceiver already available.

Excuse me I need to have a snooze!