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Re: [TenTec] My new ORION

To: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment <tentec@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TenTec] My new ORION
From: <wq7x@cox.net>
Reply-to: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment <tentec@contesting.com>
Date: Tue, 24 May 2005 13:30:48 -0400
List-post: <mailto:tentec@contesting.com>
Bill,

Thanks again for great input. 
Distortion. 
Roofing filter 6kHz or 2.4kHz SSB mode.
20m. Lsn to week signal at 14.220 with preamp ON.
Distortion, so I tune up 7kHz and there we go S9+37dB station.
Turn off preamp and dist. gone.
No problem, but long term DSP should handle this.
2.0 please. Hi Hi.
73! Mark WQ7X
> 
> From: Bill Tippett <btippett@alum.mit.edu>
> Date: 2005/05/24 Tue PM 12:37:16 EDT
> To: tentec@contesting.com
> Subject: [TenTec]  My new ORION
> 
> I wrote:
>  >Mark, I suspect this is related to the same DSP
> overload issue.
> 
>          While making my daily bike ride to the Post
> office, I was thinking more about this issue.  In
> both the CQ 160 CW Contest in January and in the
> ARRL DX CW Contest (SOSB/160) in February, I do NOT
> recall having any distortion problems.  I was then
> using 1.373b4 since I'm a beta tester and I found
> this comment in the version history:
> 
>  > Version 1.373b4
>  > - Eliminated passing of AGC info to DSP. This was causing Out Of Band
>  > distortion when used.
> 
> Nevertheless, I HAVE noticed in-band distortion at
> times since then and believe there could be at least
> 3 different issues involved in your situation:
> 
> A.  Which roofing filter were you using when you
> noticed the problem?  If you are using anything in
> Orion's 500 Hz slot, that is a known problem for
> degrading IMD and you can solve it by simply
> disabling that position.  If you want a narrow
> filter with even better IMD than the stock 1 kHz,
> Inrad's #762 improves Orion's already exceptional
> IMD performance by 6-10 dB at 2-1 KHz spacings.
> 
> http://users.vnet.net/btippett/inrad_.htm
> 
> B.  Is the distortion on in-band signals
> or are you hearing out-of-band generated IMD
> products (sounds like code other than Morse)?
> 
> If the former, this is the same problem I've heard
> but there may be a simple work-around.  Until I
> learned how to use the "new" RFGAIN control, I
> always set AGC Threshold fairly high (e.g. 20 uV
> on 160m and never below 3uV on 10m).  After I
> learned how to use the new control, I simply
> set 3uV for everything and then used only RFGAIN.
> It may be that I began noticing the distortion
> problems after doing this.  The problem you can
> run into is that you can "waste" the DSP's dynamic
> range by setting Threshold too low, and there is
> no limit on the upper end due to the FW bug.  A
> simple work-around may be to set AGC Threshold
> to 3uV or higher (no need for it to ever be lower
> than 3uV on ANY band), then listen on the band
> of interest with RFGAIN fully CW.  Turn RFGAIN
> back fully CCW (0%), and advance it until the band
> noise sounds the same as full CW.  This should be
> well below 100%, and now the DSP will have more "top
> end" before distortion occurs.  I agree it should
> be impossible to overdrive the DSP but this might
> be a work-around until Ten-Tec fixes that bug, and
> it also seems to explain why I never had problems
> in 160 contests in some of the worst QRM known to
> mankind.
> 
> If the latter in B above, and you do not have
> a bad roofing filter, then there may be something
> else wrong with your unit.  But it is definitely
> a specific problem and not generic to all units
> or Orion would not perform so consistently well
> in 4 independent tests.  It could be the "Out
> of Band" distortion problem in 1.372 mentioned
> in the 1.373b4 release is causing this problem.
> Unfortunately Ten-Tec has not yet released this
> so I cannot send a copy to you to try, and they
> are now totally focused on the 2.0 rewrite and
> we don't want to distract them from that.
> 
>          Another suggestion is to simply call Paul
> Clinton at Ten-Tec.  If you haven't experienced
> Ten-Tec service before, you're in for a pleasant
> surprise!
> 
>                                  73,  Bill  W4ZV 
> 
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