Some more info from last weekend:
During the ARRL X SSB, similar failures were noted during the first day.
It was found that when our BOG antenna was connected via a RIP-1 K9AY
front end protector, things went wrong.
On sunday morning, we opened up the ORION and performed the actions with
all cables as you described below.
One hour later we were back on the air and things went OK till the evening.
At that point the issues showed up again. Carefull investigation by the
team showed that:
Connected BOG antenna via K9AY front end protector in the PTT circuitry
+ using the PTT footswitch for TX = intermittent problem
Same but using F1 CQ button in N1MM for TX= never any problem
That exact combination proved why similar problems during our national
PACC contest early feb(where the footswitch was used), and the 160m SSB
turned up.
From here on we need to investigate further.
But we are getting closer :)
73 Mark, PA5MW
On 27-2-2013 23:36, Carl Moreschi wrote:
My best guess is the cable connections behind the Orion front panel
need cleaning. There are a lot of microprocessor cable connections
there and you can get almost any symptom if one of the connections
starts to fail.
Remove the front panel which is not difficult. Then unplug the cable
connections, spray them with a good cleaner, and then plug them back
in and out about 10 times to clean them.
That fixed my Orion and my son's Orion which had strange symptoms.
Carl Moreschi N4PY
121 Little Bell Dr.
Hays, NC 28635
www.n4py.com
On 2/27/2013 4:49 PM, PA5MW, Mark wrote:
The ORION at our clubstation PI4TUE recently showed some issues:
Weekend before ARRL during 24hr PACC contest:
- abt 30 times RX quiet
- sometimes TX-freq slowly drifted away during transmission by couple of
ten's (different bands and modes)
- at some point RX seemed deaf for abt 5min and we noticed we got
spotted on 6995-ish instead of being in the 7030-7040 range
We had to shutdown each time to solve the issue
ARRL DX CW contest:
First hour in the contest offered same RX anomolies
Changed PA timing settings in N1MM and raised TX delay on the ORION
to 65%
No single issue noted during the remaining 46hrs
Last weekend:
Main operator noted during transmission (160m SSB) the TX drift is back
again
Remarks:
None of the equipment (ORION, PSU, PA, PC's, Winkey, SteppIR) in the
shack is linked on their ground connections.
Equipment is effectively grounded via their mains connection to 1 mains
supply group, the several interlink coaxes and the antenna coax
connections to the building grounding system on the 220ft high roof (
huge matrix of professional lightning protection).
Several other coax interlinks have been used, but the current Aircell 7
(especially the PL259 for that) proved intermittent at some gnd
connections in the past. Cables have been cut and re-installed.
ORION is an early 2002 (?) model with slightly darker s-meter compared
to my own 2004 model at home.
Has had the PSU board upgrade with the exact required specced low ESR
caps in 2008 from Digikey
Defective headphone opamp on front pcb was exchanged in 2011, not a
simple operational task
DC supply molex connection+25 ampfuse contacts are cleaned and ok
DC suppy is normally set at 15VDC
DC supply cable has a #31 ferrite with abt 11 turns for CM rejection
Amp is an Acom 1000 set for 400W ouput
Anyone any clue about the strange behavior mentioned above?
73 Mark, PA5MW
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