Re: AW: [TenTec] Question for Contesters:

[Ulrich Hilsinger <dh0ghu@dh0ghu.de>]

Hello,

sorry, but I completely disagree with you, Sinisa.


First, there is no higher-magnitude error than a bad transmit signal.
Every other error is only harmull to the operator itself, a FT1000X can 
kill a band segment in a whole continent, at least regarding DX signals 
(of course, ORION's DSP noise blanker even blanks out some key click 
noise... but only few people use an ORION, which seems to be the only 
transceiver which is compatible to FT1000x key clicks ...).
From my point of view, a transceiver producing excessively loud key 
clicks is disqualified as contesting transceiver.

Second point, I do not know what YOU consider as severe problem on the 
ORION. It seems to me you never really tried to operate an ORION for a 
contest.
Yes, there are some minor bugs. I know the voice keyer is not working 
flawless. I know the (unnecessary) spectrum scope may cause problems. I 
know there might be situations where something's going into Nirwana.
But how often did this happen ? Never had this situation during WPX.
My impression during WPX-CW was:
- I heard very bad, but due to a very bad cold I had during the last two 
and a half weeks.
- I had some wideband noise pulses from the neighbourhood (every 30-60 
seconds for 2 to 5 seconds, up to S9), which have nothing to do with the 
receiver performance.
- The receiver of the ORION has proven its excellent performance. Even 
on 40m, I heard only very few QRM, and no "AGC pumping" at all. Compared 
to the TS850 I used for several years, this is many orders of magnitude 
better. With my bad cold, I'm shure I'd have stopped operation after few 
hours with my TS850. With the ORION, at least on sunday, I had no 
problems at all. Excellent receiver, excellent AGC, good sound, great 
filters. Same impression as I gained during the other contests I 
operated with the ORION since beginning of march, among them ARRL SSB, 
WPX SSB, DARC VHF (in parallel to ARRL SSB), and many other small 
contests and during the daily DX business.
- The transmit signal has been confirmed to be excessively good. The 
next station operating the WPX lives only 200m from my QTH, and he 
confirmed to me that he worked other stations 7 kHz from my frequency, 
and there, he only heard S1 spurs from me. I operate with 750W... With 
my old equipment, he normally was not willing to operate on the same 
band than me... (Unfortunately, his transmit signal is not as clean as 
mine, but he only operates at 10W PEP, so I can live with it ... )
I never had severe problems during contests. Directly at the beginning 
of my "ORION Carreer" I had some problems with software failures, but 
those disappeared almost completely, so probably the problem wasn't 
sitting inside the ORION but behind the shack table.. ;-). And if a 
configuration goes into Nirwana, I push the "User1" or "User2" button, 
go back to my frequency, and I'm back operation within seconds.



Third point, I do not see any reason to criticate TenTec. TenTec 
service, in cooperation with their german distributor (APPELLO, 
http://www.appello.de), is excellent. I had a warranty problem showing 
up on 17m (synthesizer had a constant offset), and only few days after I 
asked APPELLO for support, I received the replacement part. Installed it 
into the ORION within few minutes, and all was O.K. again.
I've never seen a HAM transceiver of comparable excellent construction 
than the ORION. No big cable trees, boards are easily accessible, the 
internal design is well structured.
Regarding software errors, I consider it to be absolutely normal that an 
error might occur at least during the first years (!), and the more 
software a radio contain, the more software errors it will contain. As 
long as the manufacturer distributes free updates, I do not see a severe 
problem. And TenTec is the only HAM manufacturer where I can download an 
update for free and where I may install it me myself.
In the past we haven't been using highly software defined radios. That's 
why we haven't seen software errors. In the past, radios had only 
hardware errors, but of course analogue hardware will not "hang up", it 
just will show... for example key clicks, bad IP3, killed components due 
to heat, distorted AF output, noisy AF output, ringing filters.... The 
difference is that a software error can be cured by downloading software 
(at least as far as TenTec radios are concerned), no need to solder in 
your equipment.

Have a look at what's happening with cars. Today, we have a high degree 
of software control in cars. It is known that new car types have a high 
number of errors. Customers are more and more aware of the fact that it 
is risky to buy a car which is on the market for only or less than 1 
year. Why ? Well, 100000 customers will find more errors during this one 
year than 100 quality assurance engineers will find during few months of 
testing. 1000 quality assurance engineers testing for 1 year won't be 
paid by the customers.... Compare it to TenTec. They can't pay 100 
quality engineers. How to find a bug, which appears every 5000 hours of 
operation ? You got it, they'll not find it - it could happen to the 
customer that he will find the bug....


Conclusion:
Is the ORION completely free of erros ? No.
Are those errors severe, or even harmfull to other contesters ? No.
Are his competitors free of erros ? No.
Are those errors severe, or even harmfull to other contesters ? Yes.
Is the ORION performance superior to most other radios ? Yes.
Is it a good contest radio ? Yes. Absolutely.
I do NOT see an alternative in the same price range. 10000 € for a radio 
is out of the acceptable price range, I'll better invest this money into 
a better QTH... without those stupid noises from the neighborhood....
Unmodified FT1000X are inacceptable for CW contesting, this one and all 
other radios in the 3000-€-price range have the same bad first IF filter 
characteristics with the resulting performance degradation, and both, 
ICOM and YAESU, have a customer support (at least for central Europe) 
which is less flexible and much slower than that one I experienced with 
APPELLO and TenTec.

73,
Ulrich DH0GHU







shristov@ptt.yu wrote:
> Message: 7
> Date: Wed, 09 Jun 2004 07:02:21 -0400
> From: Sinisa Hristov <shristov@ptt.yu>
> Subject: Re: AW: [TenTec] Question for Contesters:
> To: carsten.esch@appello.de, tentec@contesting.com
> Message-ID: <40C6EE3D.86C93B@ptt.yu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Carsten Esch wrote:
>  
>
> > ... better to 'fix' problems or add features during the lifetime of a
> > product via Firmware than just ignoring them like YAESU is doing with the
> > Key-Klick problem for years now in the FT-1000x design!
>
>
>
> Reality is that FT-1000x was released with a number of problems
> two orders of magnitude smaller than Orion's.  I'd put aside
> the possibility of adding any new features to Orion at least
> until it begins to look like a finished product.
>
>
> 73,
>
> Sinisa  YT1NT, VA3TTN

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