Boy, isn't that the truth!!
In '92 I bought an Omni 6 and a Titan 425. During the 11 years of
very hard use, they seldom ever had any failures. I was also into
contesting, DX'ing, and 'fast' CW. During those years I bought an
FT-1000MP and four different Icom IC-781's and did four to six
months of A/B antenna comparisons at my QTH, with the intention of
keeping the one that worked best for me. The Yaesu and the Icom's
were sold and I still have my Omni 6. To me, with out a doubt, the
Omni 6 had the best receiver you could get your hands on, that until
the Orion came out (but won't go into the Orion story any more).
The Omni 6 could always hear the very weak DX signals on 80m that
the Yaesu just could not hear; the IC-781 was very close in
sensivity, but the AGC set up on the Omni 6 would wipe away
lightning QRN that would kill the 781's rcvr.
During a CQ WW DX contest, I was sitting on 7.030MHz running
European signals, both strong and very weak ones. It suddenly dawned
on me that the band had become very quiet, so I opened up my filters
on the Omni 6 and was shocked to find I had been bracketed by two
40dB over signals, one 500 hz up and the other 500hz down. I never
knew they were there...and could copy VERY weak European signals
with no problem. That performance still amazes me today.
For CW, the selectable roofing filters in the Orion are extremely
good. I have the Inrad 600 hz roofing filter in the 1khz slot for CW
and it is extremely good...just too bad I have so many other
'little' problems with the Orion.
Be careful if you use the Omni manual to 'tweek' up the receiver
path. If you do it wrong, you can mess up the way the noise blanker
circuitry works, which makes you think the receiver front end will
not handle strong signals. Truthfully, even after 12 years now, I
don't think my Omni 6 needs any 'touch up'.
The Omni 6 just has to be one of the best radios ever produced for
ham radio use.
Tom - W4BQF
"So you have enemies?
Good.
That means you have stood up for something,
sometime in your life."
--Sir Winston Churchill--
----- Original Message -----
From: <DennisKT5D@aol.com>
To: <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 5:18 AM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Omni 6 sensitivity
I had an Icom-765 for awhile which sported a very good receiver
comlete
with all the filters for cw work. It had the PBT and IF shift mods
done as well.
I sat it down beside the Omni 6+ and did some testing. Ambient
noise level on
both was almost identical with perhaps the edge to the 765. At the
time the
765 was matching up with some plans I had for reconfiguring the
shack so I was
about to decide to sell the Omni 6+. Then the CQ WW CW DX contest
came along.
After A/B comparison during the contest, I abruptly changed my
mind about
reconfiguring the shack and selling the Omni.
What I discovered was this. I could tune between two strong US
stations a
couple of kHz's apart with the Omni and copy a weak DX station, 3
to 4
s-units, easily. Switching to the 765, I absolutely could not
hear the weak DX
station. All I heard was an elevated noise floor due to the close
in strong US
stations. Clearly, to my ears the Omni is the superior contest rig
of the two. The
765 could hear as well as the Omni in non-contest conditions so
sensitivity
was not an issue. Both radios exhibited the high pitched hiss on
white noise
but again, the 765 wasn't quite as bad as the Omni. The
selectivity was what
really separated the two radios in contest performance.
If your radio doesn't seem to be as sensitivity as it should be
perhaps
there is a problem with it. The Omni's reputation is well earned
here and the
765 is gone.
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