The Patcomm PC-500
Ham Radio and QRP became soul mates for me back in 1981, when pursuit of my license was economically easier than pursuit of a rig due to my minimal hobby budget. Nonetheless, enough money was scrounged up in those days to purchase an HW-8 kit. That first “full-featured” QRP rig for me went together slowly, but not carefully enough, as I never got the thing transmitting cleanly on all bands. The radio paid a short visit to Benton Harbor, Michigan, and Heathkit returned to me a functioning QRP transceiver, while I pondered whether building was or was not a cheaper avenue within ham radio. I’m uncertain whether it was just my beginning into the hobby, the building, or the QRP that produced the biggest spark of excitement for each and every new QSO I attained with the HW-8. It’s now 2001, and little could be done to reproduce my feelings as a newcomer in the hobby; however, throughout my ham career, I’ve been able to remain excited with nearly all my QRP exploits, both operating and building.
Many commercial high power radios and amplifiers have graced my shack through the years, but the QSOs that retain vivid memories for me tend to be those with homebuilt or purchased QRP rigs. I’ve owned and used the following QRP rigs: HW-8, Ten-Tec Argonaut 509, Ten-Tec Argosy, Ten-Tec Century 21, Index Labs QRP+, OHR-400, DSW-20, WM-20, OHR100(15M), Radio Shack HTX100, NN1G 20M, a half dozen others including an Elecraft K2 that remains under construction.
More Bells and Whistles
Surely one more would be welcome on such an exhaustive list, so the itch began when the first ads for the Patcomm PC-500 appeared back around the time of the Dayton Hamfest in 2000. At first glance, the ads made it sound like a dual band rig that would be competitive with today’s offerings, and the latest technology for only $395. Was it too good to be true? Besides the two bands, other band modules were attainable for a mere $35 per ham band. A lot of fun could be had for that small price per band. The PC-500 appealed to me for home use, but even more so for portable use.
To be clear on terms, portable use to me was inclusive of throwing it into the truck for mobile operation, taking it camping or picnicking, setting up poolside, taking on vacation or business travel to pass time at the hotel. I liked the variable power with extra power to spare above the QRP limit of 5 watts. The built in keyer and split operation suggested QRP DXing would be well supported. Other features, such as the variable speed tuning and the direct plug in of an AT keyboard for CW sending, were extra icing on the cake and not all that persuasive to my personal decision.
The next step for me was phoning Patcomm ( www.patcommradio.com ) in late summer and inquiring about the rig. The first realization was that I wasn’t going to own one soon. In late 2000 they were still in prototyping stage, with some field units flowing out to select beta testers. Nonetheless, I had a pleasant conversation with Jim Idone at Patcomm, about the rig and this 6-man company. It was quite a stark contrast to this day and age of 1-800 numbers that are answered by order takers who want your Credit Card number first and your questions about a product last, if at all. It was apparent that Jim was partially responsible for his company bringing a QRP offering to the market. He spoke extensively about the rig without pressuring me towards a sale. His excitement infected me and I was placed on Jim’s call list to be contacted when volume production began. Around Xmas time I traded e-mails with Jim over some further design delays. A disappointment at first but, in hindsight, a relief to know this small company was intent on doing the job right. In February he made it clear some final refinements and a new circuit board were in design and test after accommodating feedback from the field beta testing.
Finally in March, Jim called with word they were starting a production run. Of course I confirmed my order after some discussion on how well the field-testing had been going, and after pondering my choice of feature and band options with Jim while he explained the pros and cons. I settled on the basic 2-band unit with a 40M band-pack as the only optional purchase. On April 22 my rig was shipped and on May 2nd it was received, well packed and looking fresh off the store shelf. A short manual was included in a small folder and a power cord I immediately critiqued as being too short.
Physical Appearance
As you can see by my own picture of the front panel in Photo 1, the rig appears per the advertisement with nothing altered as a consequence of field-testing. Upon visiting their web site you’ll discover the case and front panel is shared with the all-band big brother, the PC-9000.
The unit weighs a bit under 5 lbs. which is pretty stout for it’s size of 8″W x 2.75″H x 8″D. A heavy-duty aluminum case surrounds the rig with appropriately sized feet that elevates the front by an additional three-quarter of an inch.
My particular radio had a main board revision of PC-00300B. In general, all control of this radio is done through the on-board microcontroller, which was an Intel P87C51 processor in my rig. Most of the switches on the front are simple momentary push switches with enough counter pressure that you’ll not mistake whether you’ve pushed it in or not. Most of these momentary switches have LEDs to the right of them to also serve as indicators to the status of a feature. The three variable knobs control RF Power, On/Off/AF Gain, and Digital Variable Filter (DVF). Thus, the feature control is rather binary and without any complicated menu system that must be accessed for selecting items. The VFO is a weighted knob with finger indent on outer edge for quick spin tuning.
The back has connectors for cabling as noted in Table 1 and as viewed in Photo 2.
| Keyboard | Standard AT connector for key/freq. control |
| Paddle/Key | 1/8″ Stereo jack; paddle/manual controlled from KEY SPD |
| DC Power | 2-pin Molex jack for 13.8V |
| External Speaker | 1/4 ” Mono jack |
| Antenna | SO-239 |
| VOX Adjustments (Opt) | Threshold, Delay, On/Off |
| Ground | Wing Nut |
One item of note on the back panel was the Molex 2-pin connector just below the ground lug. The supplied 3-foot power cable works fine but is a bit short for me. However, I’m now off on a mission to locate a couple more of the plug connectors so I can create special adaptor patch cords to allow me to have DC cords for mobile (cigarette lighter), gel-cell connection and of course the lugs of power supply in my shack. Often these power plugs are not of the type easily found at my local Radio Shack, which is an annoyance that I’ve endured with nearly all QRP offerings whether pre-built or in kit form through the years. The keyboard connector on the back is a standard AT-style computer jack. If you’re going to make use of this feature you may want to stock up on a couple of plug converters for AT-to-PS2 since it appears that keyboard connector is standardizing towards the PS2 connector on PCs.
Receiver
The highlight of this entire radio is the receiver and it is the receiver that provides the distinction that allows characterizing this radio as inexpensive as opposed to “cheap”. This single conversion receiver lacks nothing in sensitivity to my double conversion receiver in my Yaesu FT-920. The rig switches between one of two bands via the front panel by simply pushing the BAND button. With the PREAMP turned on, it heard everything my FT-920 could hear without its audio DSP enabled, and at the same levels of audio back out of the respective speakers. I tried but could never detect one as being better than the other.
On the subject of speakers, the PC-500 has ample gain (i.e., 2.5W total) to be had from the audio amplifier section. As such it will drive a speaker loudly in contrast to some of the audio amp sections other radios I’ve built. Related to this abundant AF gain, the cabinet appears to have resonance to some frequencies in the CW and voice frequencies, which causes a rattle of the speaker and/or case. This was solved here with addition of an external speaker. Down the road I may experiment with rubber or nylon insulators in conjunction with the speaker mount. It remains acceptable within a quiet shack environment where you can turn it down below the threshold of the rattling occurrence, but I suspect in a noisy mobile environment, the problem will exacerbate as a consequence of having to turn up the volume. But then in a mobile, you’re probably going to use an external speaker anyway.
This radio has a Variable Speed Tuning (VST) feature. The instruction manual states that the VFO tune rate will vary with the rate and speed at which you turn the knob. Indeed it does vary and this same intelligent tuning rate has worked for me on other commercial rigs. Presently, it tunes a little faster at slow revolution rate than my personal preference. But, this is a worthy feature to prevent cranking on the knob multiple revolutions, or needing to hit buttons to kick it into high-speed tuning.
I was quite pleased with the DVF feature which enabled tightening the receive passband on both modes. In CW mode it truly nulls out the others and goes to single signal reception quite easily. The variability is excellent and allows the greatest adaptability versus the binary choice between wide and narrow when popping in or out narrow filters in other commercial rigs. No ringing at the tightest bandwidth, which probably was not tight enough to exhibit the ringing I used to detect with outboard SCAF and op-amp filters I have built. Per the manual, the range of the DVF is 600hz to 2.8kHz. The other distinction I could make was no amount of DVF filtering appears to interject any signal loss, which is quite the norm with the crystal filters in most commercial rigs.
It’s worth noting that the receive mode (CW/SSB), preamp setting (on/off), attenuator (on/off), keyer settings and the split frequencey setting (on/off) are retained in memory upon power down and subsequent power up.
I put the headphone jack to the test. It takes a 1/4-inch mono plug for your headphones. A nice set of Yaesu communication headphones were tried and they played excellently. But they gave me quite a wakeup call when I hit the key and the sidetone sounded off too loud for comfort. There is a sidetone adjuster inside the rig that would decrease the level to an acceptable level. Perhaps this factory level should be set a little lower for initial startups.
Within the internals of the rig you can see where the optional Noise Blanker goes (shorted jumper on my rig) and the option for 3 additional IF filter crystals (8 versus the default 5). The optional VOX board was for customary VOX operations in addition to enabling PSK31 operations. Subsequent conversations with Jim at Patcomm apprised me of a ready-made cable that would also put one on PSK31 as well.
Finally, I wish to reiterate my subjective assertion that this receiver is “hot” and extremely stable. No startup drift and no long-term drift observed. The crystal reference is doing its job. It also survived an excruciating overload test when my close neighbor came on the air with a kilowatt and 7 elements pointed my direction to work a DX station while I was monitoring on 15M. It clearly blanked out the receiver on that frequency and had this been a “cheap” receiver, some of which I’ve formerly owned, I fear it would have promptly blown out the front end of the receiver. This thing bounced right back with no adverse affects. I hit the attenuator switch and monitored him through the rest of his contact.
Transmitter
The transmitter is variable from less than 1W to 15W per the manual. I did not push my unit to 15W mainly for lack of a power supply that would deliver 14.5V. At that maximum level, about 5A of current would be drawn. In my station, a 13.6V supply, greater than 5A was hooked up to the rig. I measured 10-1W outputs on both the 20 and 15-meter bands at that voltage level with the PWR control fully advanced. After measurements I moved the setting back to 5W level. The rig runs luke-warm to the touch throughout receive and warms up moderately to a still touchable level after extended transmitting. The warming is due to the fact the final transistor uses the case as a heatsink for the highly overrated 70W final transistor. With such a large device driven so minimally, it provides for a virtually indestructible transmit section.
By my judgement this radio is equipped with QSK, yet Patcomm’s official claim is for: “Nearly Full Break-In”. Whatever it truly is I can tell you it is quite nice not hearing the clatter of a relay on CW send while listening to the receiver audio closely in between your characters.
The manual said the pins for the microphone followed the standard Yaesu 8-pin connector, but two off-the-shelf Yaesu mics in my shack did not key the rig for me. Two different mics were rewired to pinouts denoted in the manual. The first mic was a Realistic Noise Canceling Mic with preamp. The second mic was a TenTec Model 705 Electret desk mic. Comparative checks showed both mics drove the rig to the same power out levels. The feedback from QSOs where I did A/B audio tests was that the mics were equal with solid comments on quality of audio. The RF clipping and VOGAD so highly touted in the ads worked very well from the first time, I plugged in a mic. This was a pleasant surprise versus the obstacles I originally encountered with one other commercial QRP rig that was quite optimal for all CW operation but never driven well in SSB mode. The real-world test for me was receiving a good audio report from half-way around the world and the DX station says you have no signal strength on their meter. In addition, I did not receive a single comment to the negative over audio on all other SSB contacts I made, both DX and Local.
Split RX/TX
Operating the radio split is simple and rather intuitive. You can choose to move the receive or transmit frequency simply by toggling the SPLIT button. When you’re through working split and want back to normal transceive mode, a touch on the RIT button disables the split function.
Keyer
The electronic keyer is sufficiently on par with the built-in CW keyers I have used in most commercial radios. The speed is set easily with the push of a button and turning the main VFO knob. For portable operation, you have to love any rig these days that has provided this built-in feature. You simply plug in your paddles and begin to send perfect CW. You have no accessory keyer box or forgotten hookup cables for this part of the operation. If you don’t like keyers, the same jack in the back will take a straight key and you may switch the rig to manual keying mode by pushing the KEY speed button, then the LOCK button.
Keyboard Operation
The highly touted keyboard keyer and frequency entry feature works as advertised. I think judgement of this feature is going to be rather binary by most owners of this radio. That is to say, you’ll either love this feature or you could care less. I happen to fall with the latter. If you can actually type, you’ll soon be disappointed in the type-ahead buffer only being 16 characters. Merely sending a CQ sequence with my call overfilled the buffer and it burps back at me for each subsequent character over the buffer capacity. The direct frequency entry worked quite nicely with the keyboard but isn’t worth the extra shack desk space needed to hook up another keyboard to sit next to the other one for the computer. Many of the front panel pushbutton switches, such as mode, band and key speed are selectable from the keyboard. At one point, I did select the keyer speed mode but then nothing on the keyboard actually increased or decreased it (perhaps the key needs to be mapped). I had to spin the VFO knob just the same as if I had pushed the button on the front panel of the radio.
Finally, this product contains a memory feature. So one would think I could build up a CQ or a typical contest exchange, right? Wrong! These are not keyer memories. There are four memories per band, and these memories may only store a desired state for the radio and it’s respective settings. That’s probably quite useful on one of Patcomm’s larger all band rigs with general coverage receiver. Preferably, I’d trade away the keyboard keyer and direct frequency entry feature, if Patcomm offered message memory for their built-in CW keyer. That is if it also contained multiple banks of character memory that could be loaded and controlled via paddles or a pushbutton on the top of the radio. Others may offer different preferences to mine on this though. This keyboard capability comes with the rig-it works fine and you can choose to use it or not.
Specifications
I lack the necessary equipment to put the radio to any ARRL-level testing and in fact, I suspect you’ll see a review inclusive of lab equipment scrutiny of this new little rig in the future.
I have produced the following table of specifications gleaned from the instruction manual:
| Bands | Any 2 from 160-6 |
| General Coverage RX | None – Only Ham Freqs. |
| Modes | USB/LSB/CW |
| Supply V | 11.5-14.5VDC |
| RF Power | ~ 0-15W Variable from Front |
| Power Consumption | RX 0.75ATX (2A @ 5W); (5A @ 15W) |
| AGC | Fast or Slow |
| Stability | 15ppm |
| Bandwidth | Variable (600hz -2.8Khz) |
| Receiver | Single Conversion |
| Intermediate Freq. | 10.7mHz |
| Preamp | 12dB |
| Attenuator | 10dB |
| Audio Power | 4 Ohm; 2.5W |
| Typical MDS | -130dbm |
| Third Order DR | 93db |
| Keying | Nearly Full Break-In |
| Keyer | Internal Iambic (5-75 WPM) |
| VOX | Option |
| Noise Blanker | Option |
| Keyboard Control | Yes |
| Mic. Impedence | 600-1K RF Clipping /VOGAD (enabled at all times) |
On The Air
The excitement I spoke of has not been diminished by my actual exploits while using the PC500 radio. I’m having an enjoyable time both operating and reviewing this rig. The audio reports are quite favorable and the microphones I tried ensured a steady driving of the rig all the way down to 0.25W PEP as confirmed in one QSO in the neighboring state of California. In fact the initial few days had me splitting time 50/50 between SSB and CW, which is an abnormal distribution towards SSB for me.
While I’m not a superstitious individual, I’m always hopeful to open the log of a new rig with a memorable QSO that I hope foretells the future experiences to be expected with the rig. As such, I would have to predict this radio as uniquely qualified for my QRP DX exploits. My first contact was on 15M with FR5FD and that was promptly followed six minutes later with JW0HS on the same band.
Below is a snapshot of my logbook while using the PC-500. I’m confident I could have completed WAC with this rig over this weekend had I not dedicated my time to the writing of this review. All contacts whether CW or SSB were done at the 5W level. The antenna here is a trapless no-ground vertical, ten feet off the ground.
The 3B6RF DX-pedition just came on the air and I have no wondrous story of working them in the first day on the air, yet I’m confident that my chances are as good with the PC500 as the FT-920 (at 5W) which cost me four times the price.
Customer Service
Buying a commercial radio these days buys you a warranty card to be mailed in so you may become a number or statistic. Granted, a defective radio will get repaired for you while under warranty at no cost but you don’t want to be one of “those” statistics. You probably won’t find people so concerned as those at Patcomm with your personal satisfaction that e-mail is read within 24 hours of being sent. Also, you won’t likely have the phone passed to the principal designer of your radio and truly have his ear over your questions or improvement ideas. And, I doubt you’ll get a follow-up call at the company’s expense from the person who sold you the radio, or to respond to weekend e-mails over concerns you have, or a new e-prom with improved features 2nd-day air to your QTH. I compare the distinction to shopping at an old family-run drugstore versus one the major mega-chains. I’m confident you too will appreciate Patcomm’s customer service should you become an owner of one of their radios.
Summary
I began writing this exactly five days after receipt of the radio. I was without the radio for only seven days during my return of it for an upgrade to a crystal on the main board to improve keyer timing. The rig is one of the first production runs of any quantity from Patcomm. I took a risk with an early buy, and in the minds of some people that may have been unwise as few products are ever without some flaw on their first try. However, if I had not been satisfied from first receipt I would have boxed this rig up promptly and shoved it back in the mail to the Patcomm.
This one is a keeper in my QRP arsenal. The receive quality, transmit quality, and feature set of this rig simply can’t be beat for the under $400.00 entry point. They say you get what you pay for, but in this case, I believe I got even more, especially when I place a value on the customer service received. It’s great to have this radio join many others as QRP continues its popular growth. And, I’m pleased to know even more QRP designs are on the drawing board at Patcomm.
Now, where’d that 3B6 go to……..???
Originally posted on the AntennaX Online Magazine by Mark E. Gustoff, WO7T
Last Updated : 30th May 2024