Separate Receive Inputs
In August 2001 I bought a new Kenwood TS-2000X transceiver. I had fallen in love with it from the QST review and had heard glowing reports from other owners. So although I had a brand new Yaesu FT-847, I went ahead and got the TS-2000 too.

My station was already set up to use separate receive feedlines for every band, so before I ever powered up the TS-2000 I opened it up and modified the 144 and 432 sections to provide coaxial inputs indepent from the main connector for each band. The original connector is then used only for the transmit signal. But for the 1296 band it was not so easy to see how to separate and I did not get around to figuring out how to do it until recently (June 2003). There are many advantages to setting up a station this way and I will outline some of these things in the future, but for now I just want to show how I made the modifications.


Frequency Calibration
After 2 years of operation I had a couple of minor problems with the TS-2000. The most disconcerting was that the rig was getting out of frequency calibration. I measured it to be about 200 Hz low on 144, 600 hz on 432, and almost 2 Khz on 1296! I checked out the users manual and did not see anything about calibration, nor did I see any information about where to get a service manual so I started scouting around on the internet. Eventually I found the Yahoo group called the KenwoodTS-2000 group. There I found some knowledgable people and, in the library, some description and text from Durl, ZF1DG, showing where the adjustment for the master oscillator or TCXO in the TS-2000 is. Here are pictures and text showing how to recalibrate the TS-2000.

Replacing Display Lamps
The second problem with the TS-2000 was that some of the backlights for the display had gone out. I could still read the display ok, but it did not look as nice as when new. First I took apart the front of the rig to see what kind of bulbs were needed, but discovered I would have to unsolder them in order to see what they were. Not wanting to do that until I had replacement bulbs available, I put the rig back together and asked on the KenwoodTS-2000 group. I was told that the part number for the bulbs is B30-2221-05 and that they could be ordered from KenwoodParts.com.

The price is $4.17 each! and I cannot find any manufacturer or part number to attemp to find a cheaper price. If anyone has any information on these bulbs I would much appreciate it. Here is the information on changing the bulbs.