New portable rig? Lab599 TX-500

Saw this posted yesterday over on QRZNOW.com

https://qrznow.com/discovery-tx-500-hf-50mhz/

Looks interesting yet strange at the same time. Couldn’t find any other info and I don’t do instagram…

73, Todd KH2TJ

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This looks very cool! Wondering why the cw jack is so large and appears to have six pins?
Will be interesting to see if it makes it to market.
73, Keith KR7RK

Looks very ruggedized and could be very cool. Can’t wait to see the specs on it. It looked quite thin but longer than the KX-3? I wonder what the power output is. A nice teaser video.

Keith KB3ILS

For the new paddles that have dit, dah, di-dah, dah-dit, di-dit and dah-dah levers. Having 6 combinations enables much faster sending without having to move your fingers faster.

:slight_smile:

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If you follow some of the links it says the current draw is only 110mA with backlight on… there is also a low res picture of it sitting on some scales which read 576 (I guess grams but hard to see)… Reportedly going into production Oct-Nov??

Reading through the comments its expected price will be around US$700 and be a FT817 competitor (except only HF), so with a name with 500 in it, I guess it’ll be a 5 watt rig but so far I have not found confirmation of this so it could be only 500 mW. It looks like it can be powered from a 3S LIPO as the marked input voltage is 9-14v.

LAB599 appears to be a company from Ukraine, I wonder if they (or their agent) will be at Friedrichshafen in a weeks time?

Certainly a very nice looking rig.

I don’t see a loudspeaker grill in the rig, so that may mean that the speaker microphone is needed even when running CW, or headphones of course.

73 Ed.

It’s called QRP, so I’d guess it’s a 5 watts output rig, but it’s not clearly stated.
73,

Guru

Hi Guru,
My guess is that it is 5 watts, however 500mW would still be QRP as would 10 watts (on SSB). We will have to see when more information arrives. The pictures of how the case is produced are really interesting. No folded tin sheets in this rig!

I hope someone is displaying the prototype at Friedrichshafen!

73 Ed.

Update: No one was displaying this rig at Friedrichshafen that I could find.

Perhaps it will be at Iberradio in Avila in September? IberRadio – Feria de las Radiocomunicaciones

Wow! To me, this one ticks a lot of boxes on my ideal SOTA rig check list. At least judging by the photos and videos available at the moment. They show many things that I miss in my FT-817. Let’s see how/when/if it turns out.

I fully agree. Very interesting. Could be a mcHF clone / derivate. And the rugged case :+1:

Specs here : https://lab599.com … and 10watts …

73, de Bruno F6HHK

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vaporware

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Or at least heavily delayed. :zipper_mouth_face:
Fortunatly no crowdfunding rip-off.

No mail adress. No responses. If you have a question you only can make it in their Youtube channel and wait for the answer forever and ever…

Weird connector selection.

Their domain is registered in Russia.

But can anyone copy that higher speed?

The missing button is one that sends 8 dots. It would be needed a lot.

To me it seems it’s not vaporware, at least the user manual, the firmware and the updating software is available on their website: Lab599 Downloads

Maybe one can test this transceiver before the delayed IC-705 from Icom is widely available?

This is truly a mystery of faith as I cant seem to figure how to buy one?
John VE3IPS

I asked few friends from Ukraine, and they can not find any information about this rig and about the company.