The Orion and Orion II have shown a history of problems related to
corrosion building up on the cable connections in the radio. These
connections should have been gold plated but they are not. In
particular, the cable connections behind the front panel have over 100
connections. Many times the solution is to remove the front panel,
which is not at all difficult, and unplug the cables, spray them with a
contact cleaner, and then while they are still wet, plug them in and out
10 times or more to clean them. This fixed all the intermittent
problems on my Orion. And with so many connections, almost any symptom
is possible.
Carl Moreschi N4PY
58 Hogwood Rd
Louisburg, NC 27549
www.n4py.com
On 3/19/2014 3:38 PM, art N4UC wrote:
Here's a brain teaser for all you Orion experts. My 565 running ver 3.032 has
developed a couple of problems that I was hoping would be a firmware issue but
it's looking more and more like a hardware problem. I'm looking for some ideas
about where to start troubleshooting.
In a nutshell the two problems (which may just be different symptoms of one
problem) are these:
1. All signals received by the main rcvr on 20M only are extremely garbled and
distorted. This condition is not dependent on mode and all other receiver
functions such as S-meter operation, AGC, BW and PBT functions seem to be
unaffected. Operation of the sub-receiver is normal. One interesting note is
that a signal disappears when I engage the hardware NB, which is probably just
an indicator that the NB thinks it's seeing noise and just doing its job.
2. When both VFO's display the same frequency, there is a difference in received
frequency between the two receivers. This is present regardless of band, but the
difference is not the same from band to band. The worst I've noticed is 200 hz
offset on 20M, but other bands exhibit 50-100 hz delta between the receivers in
spite of displaying the same frequencies. It doesn't matter how the two
receivers arrive at the same frequency, either by pressing the A>B button or
configuring both Main and Sub recvrs to be controlled by VFO-A.
This all came on as an intermittent condition. I would notice that during operation on 20M, received signals
would suddenly jump by 100-200 hz and I would have to re-tune to get back on frequency. I was assuming that
the transmitted frequency was jumping as well, but I haven't verified that as yet. Anyway, after the
"jump" occurred, the signals would sound warbly and quivery (technical terms for
"trashy"). No matter their signal strength they sounded watery like they were coming from over the
North Pole. If I were to select a different band and then return , the receiver would "slide" a few
hertz back onto frequency before settling.
I have
sometimes noticed that just before this would happen there would be a rise in
noise
level, like precipitation static. While the rcvr is off-frequency, there is
a
lot of noise/hash that is in sync with other signals some as far
away as 50 khz. It resembles being at field day in close proximity to
several
transmitters. Even though they are way out of the bandpass of the
filters and too far away to hear a cw tone, I
can copy them by listening to the hash.
I have re-flashed the firmware and performed a few master-resets, etc... with
no change. The problem is no longer intermittent and I'm looking for ideas
while I decide how much $$$ I want to put into repairing a really fine, but
old, radio.
73, Art/N4UC
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