Several years ago, I was driving to a conference in Charleston, South
Carolina, and while preparing for the trip realized that I could stop in
Sevierville and visit the Factory. So, I did. I was turned loose in
the ham shack, and played around with an Omni VII, and an Eagle. I was
most impressed with the Eagle. It was just what my Argonaut II could
have had as a descendant. During the Fire Sale, I bought an Omni VII,
and it took about 2 months for the novelty to wear off, and for the
Corsair II to relegate it to the shelf. I found a home for it with a
friend who just got his license. I thought that the Omni VII would be
easier to use because it is bigger than the Eagle. Along the way, I
bought an Argonaut VI, and had a lot of fun with it. I suspect that the
receiver in the Argo VI is better than the one in the Omni VII. When I
worked T32C on 40 meter CW, I had the Corsair II on the 250 Hz filter,
and the audio filter at max. Some lid was QRMing them very close by,
but with the passband tuning, I was able to make the contact. The
Corsair II is very easy to use, now that I know its quirks. But, there
is no way that it would now be considered by most hams even for general
use, much less contesting.
I would also like a somewhat bigger Eagle along the lines that Rick
suggests. Something else that perhaps Mike Dishop and his team might
contemplate is using the front panel functions of the Argonaut II/Delta
II. This layout has almost all the functionality of an Omni V or VI,
and would help eliminate some of the use of menus. It is really too bad
that Zach Lau could not figure out how to use a variable bandpass filter
with passband tuning, and so wrecked the chances for these radios with
his QST review. I can't blame him all that much because I have had mine
since about 1992 and still find out ways of how to use it better.
But, Ten Tec needs cash flow to develop any new products, and so I am
willing to buy a current Eagle, and even another Argonaut VI in the
meantime. I think the idea of having some to sell at Dayton is a great
idea, and will help to counter all the sour grapes spread on the various
forums. Fixing the hangtime problem in some newly released firmware
might also help. But, I have ordered the parts for 3 interfaces since
Rick gave me a useful schematic to deal with this issue.
73,
Steve WA9JML
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