I need to clarify my post about my Titan 3 failures.
First, I really have no issue with 'infant mortality failures', which I
believe this was. My comments about Ten Tec service was poorly worded in that I
was not insinuating those guys couldn't help. It was meant to convey, and done
so very poorly, that it was likely that in shipment back to TT, what ever was
wrong, was jarred loose, or changed position. At that time neither TT nor I
knew about the screws. Second, I did get a phone call from the RF engineer at
TT, who does the assembly and test telling me that he probably just goofed and
put the incorrect screws in the RF compartment. Third, when I found those
screws, putting the tape on them was only to do testing to confirm that the
long screws were actually the problem. The good folks at TT were very fast to
both apologize to me for the problem and to send me the correct size screws.
I still believe the second and third failures were of the 'infant mortality'
variety in that the second failure, a filter capacitor blew off the rectifier
board. Of course you can test filter caps to death and never can find out if
they are going to fail. Ten Tec was very fast in sending me a replacement board.
When I got frustrated with the failures, Ten Tec just asked me what I wanted
them to do. I told them, and they did it with no quibble at all. They put out
extra effort over the Christmas holidays to get the amplifier shipped to me.
In 1992 I bought a new Omni 6 and a Titan 425. That equipment has thousands of
operating hours on them, including working most DX contest I could get into,
322 countries on 40m CW, high speed CW with the Titan at 80wpm, etc., and in
the 10 years of intense use, I had one problem with each of the units. You just
could not ask for a more reliable system than I had. I now have an Orion and a
new Titan 3 and based on my experience with Ten Tec equipment and Ten Tec
service and the folks at Ten Tec, you just are not going to find any better.
And that statement comes with months of literally comparing the Ten Tec
equipment on-the-air performance with the other major ham radio manufacturers
top of the line equipment.
If I sound like I'm 'married' to Ten Tec, I will tell you I am not! I was a
design engineer for many years and understand production problems. When I put
out my hard earned nickles for ham equipment, I EXPECT it to work. I've found
with Ten Tec equipment, that's exactly what I get.
Tom/W4BQF
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