Re:
>%5BTenTec%5D%20RE%3A%20Topband%20Digest... etc.
> Hi Yuri,
> What the heck is this subject line??
I dunno, I thought reflector "mailman" would figure out and translate, but I
guess not. I tried to resubscribe back to reflector, but so far no luck, three
tries and zilch luck.
> IMHO, DX contests are won by stations who can copy weak stations that are
> Adjacent To Strong Stations. (i.e. EU stations running 5 watts to indoor
> dipoles right next to W1AW)
True too, but if your wunderradio cannot discern the weak signal that is, or
not, close to strong station, how good is that? That is the whole point of
Earl testing the radios for discernability of weak signals in the presence of
the
typical BAND noise in REAL life (controlled) situation. TopBanders, VHFers,
moonbouncers know about weak signal reception and requirements, and if weak
signal has a noise barrier that it can not "jump" than all your bells and
whistles in the rest of the radio are useless and you got one dumb SOB radio
(that
might look nice and you love it), but you have no clue what and why Earl is
hearing someone in the noise and you are not.
The handling of weak signals next to strong is more and more desirable, but
if Ten Tec can improve on ability to hear deeper into the noise ("cheap"
Electcraft K2 did), than there is a winner and I too am selling pile of my
radios
and getting two of Onions (ooops, Orions :-)
Again, back in the old days I could build RF stage or preamp with 6EJ7
(EF183) or cascaded triodes that would run circles around preamp with say 6BE6
or
6BA6 (modified Drake line). The reason? Lower internal noise and steeper
characteristic of the tubes, giving superior S/N right there at the input,
before
mixers, phase noise, filter delay, product detectors, audio stages got involved.
> I would not hold my breath waiting for radio manufacturers to submit
> prototype or initial run radios to you for testing. I think you know why.
I am not sure why, but I thank you for your compliment, you must know more
about myself than I do.
When TS870 came out and Kenwoodsky engineers were proudly 'splaining the
design at Dayton, I pointed out that DSP cannot replace good filters in their
design and that radio would overload and choke on strong signals. Nooo, they
"knew
better". Sure enough, when radio came out, it was HORRIBLE on overload on low
bands. Later, they would not admit, but there was engineering change in
distribution of gain between RF and IF stages (and PROMs), which helped some.
But
they used wide crystal filter in 8 MHz IF and crapy ceramic filter in 455 MHz
IF. The result was that still, radio choked on crap that got through the
filters, overloaded stages and DSP was all confused, overloaded and distorting
signals. I replaced both filters with INRAD 2.1 kHz and that radio jumped $2000
in
performance class. Huge difference.
If you mean that manufacturers would be afraid of criticism or heavens
forbid, improvement suggestions by consulting with me or others in know, then I
can
understand your "compliment".
As far as WD4K receiving "many compliments" to his comments about "factless
testing" I can understand that, just like so many more people (90%?) eat
McDonalds stuff while fewer (10%?) eat steaks and decent food. Their respective
comments would reflect their opinion about the quality of food and I bet 90%
would
vote McDonalds "beef" superior to decent steak. They are "right", right?
Earl was against posting his comments to this reflector in expectation of
precisely this response and flames from the TenTecian cult followers. But I
think
there should be discussions about problems and designing features about the
radios, especially with presence of company like TenTec that should be
interested in improving the design in the quest for that Ultimate radio we all
dream
about. They are in the unique position to work with us (or US) hams especially
with their service and support dept. and policies. We would rather support US
manufacturer and see them succeed (until they get swamped with commercial
customer orders and dump us poor SOBs? :-)
You can only gain, get better radios from such input and appropriate response
from manufacturer. But many times, ham radio stuff seems to follow reversed
logic, oh well!
> 73,
> John W0DC
Yuri, K3BU
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