Jody,
Your instinct to try the Pegasus is valid. Your contemporaries who support
other choices are looking at Ten Tec with jaundiced feelings due mainly to
popularity of established rhetoric favoring dominant brand names. Why not?
The import rigs have swept clean domestic brands by putting out great
products over a long period of time. They worked very hard for that
position. Ten Tec represents the only threat to that monopoly. Starting with
their pullback to "factory only" sales, Ten Tec put everything on the line
to reestablish a North American presence based on all the correct things
needed to compete. A definitive choice.
No compromise QSK along with design simplicity makes Ten Tec a Harley
Davidson kind of company. This implies appealing to a buyer that does not
follow the pack, usually someone with technical sophistication and
discriminating taste. Or the naive who stumble into a Ten Tec before
checking trends and polling the masses. The newbie cannot afford to make a
bold move when everyone else is using other stuff in most scenarios.
A new ham that can get a Ten Tec sounding good will be crtiticized about how
they sound because people take their radios more seriously than you think.
I've also noticed that when a newbie has a startup problem, pressure is
applied to dump the Ten Tec and get something less troublesome. Yet, even on
this reflector folks working on problems wind up learning something.
Persistence pays off. As for the source code, I believe that Carl N4PY can
field that question. The DSP chips are propietary and I doubt that the
manufacturer would give up any info on those.
The Pegasus/Jupiter radio is a marvelous enigma, in that it defies
the look, weight and feel of a traditional radio, and yet is so flexible in
its capabilities. I went from an Omni 6+ to a Jupiter and have enjoyed the
Jupiter for about 15 months now. I still have and use the Omni 6+, but the
Jupiter gets the most use now. I use the Pegasus interface with N4PYs
software when the mood strikes, but prefer the Jupiter's face out of habit.
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