I thought I should report my recent great experience with Ten-Tec Service.
I had to send back my Orion for repairs after I made a dumb mistake. To make
a longer story short, while testing the T/R circuit in my SB-220, I think I got
110v ac on the line to the TX OUT connection and blew some T/R switching
transistors. After about 2 weeks TT sent the Orion back to me and it was
better than before. Besides replacing Q8,Q9,Q10 and Q11 on the CPU/DSP board
they updated several boards. I bought my Orion as a demo and apparently it was
made in 2002, since the serial no ends in a 2. Here are the mods they made:
Updated synthesizer board
Updated power distribution board 3-#30662
Updated ALC circuit on I.F. converter board
Updated mic power supply circuit on CPU/DSP
Added RFD filter to Mic cable 1-#81983
Checked Alignment and operation and made a 48 hr burn-in
The repair cost was very reasonable and they shipped it back promptly.
Everything works fine now.
And so does the QSK circuit added while restoring and updating my old Heathkit
SB-220. I implemented the circuit designed by R.L. Measures, AG6K. It uses a
vacuum relay for switching RF out, a reed relay for the RF in, and electronic
bias switching. It works beautifully, switching in about 2 milliseconds, and
is very quiet. I trigger it from the AMP 1 open collector output of the Orion.
The SB-220 plate current is zero between dits and dahs. Zero to 1500 watts
PEP in 2 milliseconds! Well, I do use an 8 millisecond ramp setting on CW and
there is a 15 millisecond delay set in the Orion. Hey, this is old stuff, but
it was a fun building project. I will put the amp on Ebay later for sale.
My thanks to Paul Clinton and his service group at Ten-Tec. Keep up the good
work.
Paul Gallier, WQ1C
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