Kenwood R600

[spongella]

Hello all,

Anyone out there use an R600 for digital (FAX, RTTY) modes? Reason for asking is am considering purchasing one as they have a good rating on eham.net, but not sure if the tuning is fine enough or if they are drifty. Just wondering if anyone is using or has used the R600 for these modes. Perhaps the R1000 would be a better choice depending on the price. Thank you.

 

[ka3jjz]

This radio will likely work OK for some of the basic stuff, such as ALE, HFDL, FAX and Sitor-B decoding. However both the R600 and R1000 (which I've played with for awhile) can't easily tune fine enough for some of the more technically challenging modes. Even a low cost SDR would be a better choice.

Just so you know, apart from hams and one or two rare utilities, baudot RTTY is basically a dead mode.

One other thing - these radios have a very hot front end - so much so, that if you have a MW or FM station nearby, you may need to add additional filtering, or a preselector, to get rid of it. This is also true of many of the lower cost SDRs, unfortunately. Whether you will actually need one is very dependent on your local RF environment and the antenna you plan to use.

Mike

 

[spongella]

R600

Thank you for the response, very helpful indeed.

 

[majoco]

Nice little radio that I had on my bedside table - gave it to my grandson who still uses it on his bedside too!

See a review here...

Shortwave Receiver Kenwood R - 600

 

[nanZor]

Man, I remember how disappointed I was with the R600 so many years ago. I definitely wouldn't use it for fax or rtty!

Unless it was just my unit, the featherweight tuning knob was so touchy even on ssb, and with a *tad* of mechanical drift, it just drove me nuts.

They really should have added an RIT (or I should have hacked on into it) to make it tolerable. I couldn't afford the '1000 at the time, and had big plans for putting filters and whatnot into it to tighten things up. But that tuning knob was such a show-stopper for me that I sold it to someone who just wanted to listen to the local am station.

The R600 was my first inclination that engineering and marketing can be vastly different!