Elecraft had the same problem with the K3. But they now do a free
upgrade to gold contacts.
Carl Moreschi N4PY
58 Hogwood Rd
Louisburg, NC 27549
www.n4py.com
On 3/19/2014 8:08 PM, Bob McGraw - K4TAX wrote:
It's not only related to Tentec products or Orion radios. For years I've
dealt with service and maintenance on products costing 5X to 10X or more
of what the Orion's. cost. These products have been found to have the
same issues. Some interconnection methods are better or worse than
others. It is a matter of cost vs. space along with a few other factors.
Just exercise the connectors, clean the pins and apply a very small
amount of contact cleaner. It will serve you well until next time.
73
Bob, K4TAX
----- Original Message ----- From: "Carl Moreschi" <n4py3@earthlink.net>
To: "Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment" <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Orion 565 Main Receiver Issue
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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