What's Got My Attention - Late 2025 Edition

It's late November and we're past the hyperventilating wonder of the 2025 releases of new radios like Yaesu's FTX-1, or yet another Xeigu (this time the 6200). I'm looking around at the pile of press releases, new product announcements and feature enhancements that might interest me, and there's only three that have held my attention through much of the year - two radios and a firmware upgrade. 

The two radios are updates to existing products, but build on the success of the current platforms (which were already very good), and offer truly new and useful capabilities.

The first is an update to the classic, and ubiquitous, Icom IC-7300. The IC-7300Mk2 will be released in a few months, and I understand evaluation models are already in the hands of testers. The 7300Mk2 builds on the success of the original 7300, which is still for sale and is a great buy at current prices. The Mk2 adds reduced power draw on receive, reduced phase noise, an external RX antenna port, an ethernet port, USB-C, built in software server support (basically the server piece of Icom's RS-BA1 rig control software), HDMI video and audio output, and a few firmware gimmicks like CW decode. 

Back of the Mk2 model, showing the new connectors

As long as Icom doesn't screw with the original IC-7300 features that I really admire - the excellent but little understood 'Emergency Mode', and a native quiet scan function that makes the 7300 the default choice for folks looking to run ALE, the Mk2 looks like a great, and truly useful, upgrade to the original IC-7300. A great radio made greater.

Next, the newly released (and still scarce) Lab599 TX-500MP. A few years ago Lab599 teased out that they were taking their successful TX-500 field radio and re-configuring it as a true manpack rig. This new concept incorporates a built in battery pack and antenna tuner. Lab599, like most companies, got hit hard by Covid, and had the extra whammy of being a Russian based company, with Russia-based manufacturing. The Ukrainian dust-up also impacted them, and drove them to move production out of Russia and to the UAE. Through all this, Lab599 was able to keep production running and introduce a few new projects. The announcement of the manpack version generated an incredible amount of interest within the intersecting QRP/POTA/SOTA/EMCOMM communities. 

TX-500MP. Look Ma, no VFO dial!

While many low power HF radios hint at being built for the outdoors, none are ruggedized in a true sense. They are not shock resistant or even remotely water resistant. They are just small and easy to drop in a backpack. Lab599, however, started their product design for the original TX-500 with the premise that it was going to be used outdoors in harsh conditions. This resulted in a radio that was highly water and shock resistant. While the radio (sadly) has never been certified to meet to any industry or MILSPEC water resistance standards, it never-the-less has developed a reputation as a highly water resistant and rugged unit. 

The original TX-500 was (and still is) a successful radio, but it looks as though Lab599 wanted to take the product design further and develop a fully integrated and fully sealed rig. My suspicion is that Lab599 is after government and commercial contract with this radio, customers that want a more fully enclosed and 'idiot proof' rig. The first thing you notice with the TX-500MP is the lack of knobs, and for good reason. Rotating knobs, like a VFO knob, tend to be major points of failure on any radio - they get knocked off or bent, and the encoder seals leak, letting in water or dust. 

Lab599 recently posted pictures of TX-500 radios that had been used by Siberian
reindeer herders, and returned for repair. The radios all worked, but
many were missing their VFO knobs. Do you think any current production
Icom or Yaesu HF radio could withstand this much abuse?

Eliminate rotary dials and replace them with push buttons, and it becomes much easier to fully seal the radio against water and dust intrusion. The TX-500MP isn't a radio for someone trying to hunt POTA stations or work contests. It's a radio designed to support voice or digital operations on pre-determined frequencies or channels. As far as I know, ham radio operators have never had access to a fully water resistant HF radio unless it's a very expensive commercial, marine or military rig. The TX-500MP brings a high level of field ruggedness to the ham radio world at a reasonable price. There's one on my shopping list.

My last item of interest falls into the 'teach an old dog a new trick' category. Elecraft's flagship HF rig, the K4, came with a neat audio tool built into the firmware called called Controlled Envelope Single Sideband, or CESSB. CESSB is a compression technique that increases signal output by up to 4 dB, with no distortion or splatter. In the real world it can almost double the effective received audio. Think of a 100 watt QRP rig 'sounding' like a 200 watt rig, in terms of signal power at the receive end. Last year Elecraft started to hint that, because the KX4 and both the KX2 and KX3 share the same digital transmit processing lineage, it might be possible to implement CESSB in the smaller KX QRP radios. In the last few weeks, Wayne Burdick, N6KR, one of Elecraft's founders and the principal designer of the KX2 & KX3 radios, announced that they will be releasing a CESSB firmware upgrade for both the KX rigs. The firmware is still in testing, but Wayne reports they see no critical issues that will keep it from being released. This would have the effect of making a 10 watt KX2 sound like a 20 watt rig at the receive end. 

An extra 10 watts for free? I'll take that!

Elecraft as a company continues to impress. The KX line of radios is over 10 years old. While that's not 'old' for a ham radio (Icom still sells an HF radio that have been in production for over 20 years), most manufacturers end firmware updates and support within just a few years of introduction. Elecraft is the exception. They still tinker with the firmware and push out bug fixes and updates as they appear. That they are about to release a major performance upgrade to two legacy radios, do it for free and fully support the upgrade is remarkable. It's one of the reasons I'm a big Elecraft fan.

When the CESSB update comes out, I'm looking forward to testing and tinkering with it on both my KX2 and KX3. It may well satisfy my 'lust' for a QRP rig that provides more than just 10 watts. I can finally take that Xeigu G90 out of my Radioddity shopping basket.

So of all the ham radio hoopla of 2025 - new HF rigs, new HTs, new mobile rigs, new antennas, etc. - these three releases are the only things that really grabbed and held my attention. Everything else was, honestly, boring or disappointing..

W9BYH out