Kenwood TS-530S

This is another new toy of mine. It is a early 80s vintage HF transceiver that will be used as critical piece of the new aspect of my Vintage Electronics Hobby that was previewed by a post showing another device. This Kenwood TS-530S was purchased as working with new tubes. Like many things on ebay, the reality of the condition wasn’t quite up to advertisement. First power up revealed an issue with intermittent operation. Investigation on the web shows that there are frequent problems with the band switch with these units. I found a couple of tutorials online and preceded to tear it apart.

Band Switch

Though I was a bit intimidated at first by the number of discrete components, the more I worked on pulling this device apart, the less concerned and more intrigued I became. The red arrows show the 7 boards that contain wipers and contacts that are rotated by the bandswitch. I pulled each of them out and checked for connectivity in each position. I found a couple of the wipers were not making any contact at all. I also smelled what I thought probably was tuner cleaner, so someone probably already tried to rectify the issue by cleaning contacts, but based on what I found, that approach had no chance of success. I corrected all the issues that I found and re-installed everything and now it appears the bandswitch probably is working correctly. One thing I did in addition to the normal instructions was measure each of the spacers with a dial micrometer so I was sure I could replace them correctly, should I accidentally mix them up. In case someone else has an issue on a TS-530S, the measurements of each spacer, starting from the front are .1″, .6″, .6″, .2″, .25″, .5″, .35″, .2″, .25″, .15″, .2″, .2″. I was a bit surprised that the measurements of this Japanese made device were in thousands of an inch, but maybe that is because PCB layouts are frequently done in that measurement system.

I’m not 100% sure that all is well. I haven’t done any transmitting and I decided I need to align/recalibrate the entire transceiver before declaring success and moving on. I have most of what I need to do this, but I do need to build a dummy antenna load and find a signal generator. Oh boy, an excuse for more gear. Stay tuned for new adventures in this new aspect of my vintage electronics hobby.

73s
KC1CKV