Howdy - Just made 598 contacts in the cw/wpx contest with the Orion. The
best I have done in years and the least stressful. Ability to adjust AGC
parameters (threshold and decay), and noise reduction gave me a comfortable
listening environment. The effect on 80 meters was dramatic. Set up as a
normal receiver, the stress of trying to copy though all the lightning
crashes and general noise would normally make me give up on 80. Messing with
the adjustments made 80 sound almost like 20 meter background. It is easy
and fast to make the adjustments once you know what to listen for. Practice
before a contest makes it easy and fast in the contest.
Another feature that made a great improvement is the adjustability of the
manual notch. I was able to completely eliminate an S9 signal less than 50
Hz from the desired S3 signal. Set the bandwidth at 100 Hz, roofing filter
at 250 Hz the Notch bandwidth at about 150 Hz and then slowly move the notch
center frequency toward the desired signal. The slope of the notch is so
steep that the offending signal will disappear without affecting the desired
signal. Never been able to do that before and allowed me to catch a few good
multipliers on S&P.
Been a ham for 50 years and never been able to do anything close to what I
can do with the Orion because of its DSP and software design radio concept.
Tom, W7QF
-------Original Message-------
From: Alfred Lorona; tentec@contesting.com
Date: 06/08/04 14:46:50
To: tentec@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Question for Contesters:
Nothwithstanding the regurgitation of the flexibility of an SDR, the
original question pertained specifically to the advantages/disadvantages in
a contesting environment.
Not being an owner/operator of an SRF, I cannot reply to the query. Perhaps
we can obtain some feedback from those of you who have already used an SDR
in a contest.
In the heat of battle, so to speak, how did you fare? How easy/difficult was
it to configure the rig? How often did you have to do this? Was there any
effect on operator fatigue? How would you rate the total experience compared
to a hard wired rig? Etc.
73, AL
_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
----------------------------------------------------
This message has been processed by Firetrust Benign.
_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
|