Good morning:
Most discussion on the reflector takes place on the weekend, so it was
interesting to see how this thread developed in the meantime, as I didn't
read any of this until getting to work on Monday morning. I have spoken
with Paul WV3J on the phone today and will reserve comment on his
original message until he re-posts a message to the reflector.
In the meantime, though I wanted to respond to a couple of items
not directly related to the questions about the Centaur:
KE9UW writes:
>I woulda been disturbed by the scratches and chips. Is there a simple
>cover that can be replaced for 10 or 15 bucks that took most of the
>scratches? I always figured that I would be safe buying a TT because
>they could supply me with a new cover for most of their stuff.
That's why they are sold as demos. We make it absolutely clear that we
do not make cosmetic repairs to demo or used equipment. In particularly
heinous cases (like the demo Omni-VI we listed a week ago with a chip on
the front extrusion) we will offer an additional discount.
>Good luck. It's really difficult to deal with these well meaning, nice
>people when they just don't have the same technical rules and standards
>that you have. Although I'm sure that your reduced output on the higher
>bands is below their standards, I am reminded of the guys I know who
>tried in vain to like the Omni 5's and 6's that drifted or jumped 30,
>50, or 80 hertz from night to night on 75 Meter phone. It's not that
>important.....but darn it...it's frustrating when you spend a couple of
>hours to get it really close and then it's off again the next night. The
>factory thinks you're nuts to be nit picking like this....so eventually
>these guys drifted back to rice boxes that always end up at the same +/-
>3 hertz every night. Now we can do that in this country and it shouldn't
>matter why we want it.....the rest of the world seems to think it's
>important enough to do it and is willing to sell us expensive tcxo's.
>Now I know I'm going to hear a bunch of stuff about phase noise and
>crystal controlled oscillators....can't we do it with more stability?
No, we can't. That's why the stated spec on the Omni 5 is plus/minus 100
Hz and the Omni 6 is rated at plus or minus 50 Hz. Crystal oscillators
are susceptible to drift related to ambient temperature and temperature
shift within the rig itself. We use a standard equipment crystal oven in
the Omni 6 to stabilize the crystal oscillator. If the radio is different
30 or 50 Hz than the night before, the it is within stated specification.
Use of the crystal oven will improve stability. If we had felt frequency
stability was not an issue or important, we would not have added the oven
when we moved from the Omni 5 to the 6. To get plus or minus 10 Hz, or a
similar specification, it would be necessary to abandon the receiver
scheme we use and then we'd be vanilla, too. It has nothing to do with our
technical standards not being up to anyone else's - it is not possible to
"will" an electrical device to have better specs than design allows it to.
I have not sent this message to be argumentative. Nor do we think you're
"nuts". We have discussed this issue at length with prospective Omni-VI
owners and are more than happy to continue to discuss this issue in
detail by telephone.
73 Scott Robbins W4PA, Ten-Tec
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