Another thought - one thing you could have done is to notch that
individual signal - after all, that's how a lot of the Japanese rigs deal
with birdies on their more $$$ radios!
73, Duane
On Sat, 22 Jul 2000 06:37:46 -0400 "Larry Kayser" <kayser@sympatico.ca>
writes:
>
> Greetings All:
>
> Today I packed up my Pegasus radio and am sending it back, not
> because the
> radio doesn't work but because of an undocumented feature that makes
> the
> radio less than useful here.
>
> When the Pegasus arrived I hooked it up and immediately began to
> debug many
> hours of software development - the radio responded nicely. The
> design uses
> three independent oscillator systems which was a surprise for a
> modern radio
> but some extra work and the radio became self calibrating to within
> 1 Hz of
> the desire frequency.
>
> Shortly thereafter I connected the Pegasus audio line up to a (now)
> standard
> DSP program that let me observe the audio spectrum coming out of the
> radio,
> to prepare for another project I am running here. Low and behold
> there was
> a very steady and somewhat weak audio signal constantly in the
> middle of the
> passband. After some testing this "tone" is from the internal
> sidetone
> software in the DSP system. When I connected up the DSP computer
> the
> software quickly sounded an alarm, it had found a continuous carrier
> signal
> in the Audio out of the receiver. The Pegasus has a problem.
>
> It is important to note that this tone was NOT audible when
> listening with
> headphones or a speaker. The signal could only be "seen" when a DSP
> program
> was watching the audio coming from the radio.
>
> An email was sent to Ten Tec, and they responded that the problem
> had been
> sent to the DSP programmers. Silence for nearly six months!
>
> A second request for action, also acknowledged and sent to the DSP
> programmers. More silence for a Month.
>
> The Pegasus radio was removed from the system and with considerable
> sadness
> packed for return to Ten Tec. The Ten Tec Pegasus radio has been
> replaced
> by a radio, with DSP design, that does not have the side tone signal
> bleeding into the audio output.
>
> From here it looks like the vaunted Ten Tec product support ethic
> has not
> managed to make its way into the DSP Programmer part of Ten Tec.
> The lack
> of response from this part of Ten Tec bodes for poor future
> expectations.
>
> Even more surprising is the tough and demanding QST product review
> that has
> again missed a key area of product testing of radios for the new
> millennium.
>
> This experience has not been pleasant. The wasted hundreds of hours
> working
> on software for the radio are hard to accept, the failure of this
> undocumented feature to be noted in product testing is also a bit
> much.
> Other than for this one feature, undocumented, the radio is a great
> CW
> radio. I only made one SSB QSO with the radio and I received a
> comment that
> the audio was "constrained" which is probably fair as the microphone
> was
> from a Korean War era aircraft... From my perspective it could use
> some
> narrower CW filters.
>
> A sad day.
>
> Larry
> VA3LK
>
>
>
>
> --
> FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/FAQ/tentec
> Submissions: tentec@contesting.com
> Administrative requests: tentec-REQUEST@contesting.com
> Problems: owner-tentec@contesting.com
>
Duane A. Calvin, AC5AA
Austin, Texas
ac5aa@juno.com -or- ac5aa@earthlink.net
Day: dacalvin@us.ibm.com
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/FAQ/tentec
Submissions: tentec@contesting.com
Administrative requests: tentec-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-tentec@contesting.com
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