Lab599 Discovery TX-500

Table of Contents

This is the third HF transceiver that I bought. I was looking for a while for an alternative to the FT-891, because I wanted something leightweight for my little hiking tours.

Low quality mic? #

It’s like many plastic mics on other radios, it definitly feels a bit “cheap” and it was the first (and only; until now) thing that broke. I haven’t noticed the broken mic until I tried to call CQ in the mountains and I fixed it on the same day. I haven’t been out since then…

I bought a Laravel mic from Amazon and I already got a spare in-ear plugs from Sennheiser which I combined with the adapters from Robert W2ENY (including a hand-held push-to-talk button adapter (like the Heil HS-2 but smaller).

This is pleasing to use and you got the sound directly in-ear. Though, the Laravel mic has no punch and I’m not using this for the moment.

Original CAT cable settings #

Setting	Value
RIG type	KENWOOD
Baud rate	9600
Data bits	8
Parity	NONE
Stop bits	1

Firmware version 1.19.01 or later includes a second CAT protocol named Lab599 which adds support for DIG mode switching commands (MD6). It uses the same settings as the KENWOOD mode.

I use these rigctld commands:

KENWOOD mode #

$ rigctld -m 2014 -r /dev/ttyUSB0 -d /dev/ttyUSB0 -p /dev/ttyUSB0 -P RTS -s 9600 -vvvv

Lab599 mode #

$ rigctld -m 2050 -r /dev/ttyUSB0 -d /dev/ttyUSB0 -p /dev/ttyUSB0 -P RTS -s 9600 -vvvv

Power output at 10% #

Since someone asked on a mailing list to verify his measurements and I had my tinySA in reach I also created these measurements and I do not want to hide them :)

As always, take these with a grain of salt!

BAND	FREQUENCY	TONE SETTINGS	TX500	tinySA
80m	3.530 MHz	NORMAL	0.8 W	1.72 W
		DUAL	0.6 W	0.48 W
40m	7.130 MHz	NORMAL	0.8 W	1.40 W
		DUAL	0.6 W	0.41 W
20m	14.285 MHz	NORMAL	0.7 W	1.40 W
		DUAL	0.6 W	0.44 W
15m	21.245 MHz	NORMAL	1.3 W	2.13 W
		DUAL	1.1 W	0.60 W
10m	29.080 MHz	NORMAL	1.7 W	2.86 W
		DUAL	1.5 W	0.90 W

Power consumption #

(I forgot to put that down to 10, so the first row was set to 14% of power)

TONE	80m	40m	20m	10m
DUAL 14%	0.88 A	0.91 A	0.93 A	1.14 A
DUAL 35%	1.10 A	1.14 A	1.17 A	1.56 A
NORMAL 10%	0.96 A	1.0 A	1.03 A	1.31 A
NORMAL 35%	1.40 A	1.5 A	1.57 A	2.15 A

I wanted to include a measurement at 100% power but I haven’t found a good audio source that I can feed into the transceiver to maintain a constant testing environment.

These values have been taken off a digital Voltmeter that I put between the battery and the TX-500, then I pressed the TONE button (to tune) on the transceiver and let the value settle (about 2-4 seconds).

PA500 #

Since the TX-500 does not have a built-in tuner the PA500 is well worth the investment. It got it’s own page in my equipment collecion.