Lee,
Outstanding post! Maybe it's time to add an SDR-1000 beside the Orion.
73,
Stan, W4AG
-----Original Message-----
From: tentec-bounces@contesting.com [mailto:tentec-bounces@contesting.com]
On Behalf Of Lee A Crocker
Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2006 6:35 PM
To: tentec@contesting.com
Subject: [TenTec] Orion & SDR1000 thoughts
I have one Orion and two SDR-1000's. I've had the Orion for 2 years, and at
least 1 SDR for about 6 months.
My experience is the SDR is a better weak signal receiver than the Orion. I
have the radios set up on equivalent full size 80 and 40M vertical antennas.
I have the outputs of the rigs into a 3 channel stereo mixer so I can play
one radio into one ear the other radio into the other ear, or I can have
both radio's in both ears and use the mutes to switch. The bottom line is
what you can hear.
On CW the SDR is a slightly better radio. It is quieter and it has better
selectivity. In a recent contest I was able to work 2 DX stations (s3 or so
in
strength) in different parts of the world that were 50hz apart, each being
called by S9 plus 20 american stations. It was a very enlightening
experience. In other words there were 2 desired stations 50hz apart with a
variable number of american stations calling in the picture. I was not able
to do the same with the Orion, but it was close. This represents in my
experience a very intense level real world experience, something the ARRL
numbers really don't address.
In weak signal work without the limitations of strong stations a few hz away
the radios are closer in performance. The SDR is quieter to listen to. It
reminds me of my old Paragon. It has a point and shoot virtually real time
band scope. That means I can view about 30khz of a band on the scope in
panadapter mode and I can see signals that are virtually in the noise.
Coherent signals look different than random noise. There is a cross hair
pointer that I can place over a signal and click and the signal is centered
in the passband of the receiver. It is very easy to point and click signals
even into a 100hz passband. With a steady hand you can do it into a 50hz
passband but I find myself "tuning" to center the signal if I use 50hz.
The advantage of this is that you can cover a whole segment of a band like
the low end of 80 or 160 with just a couple dozen clicks. It is extremely
efficient having the panadapter and the point and shoot since you are
basically spending all your time listening to where stations are and almost
no time listening to where stations are not.
It is NOT a QSK cw radio by any streach of the imagination. To send CW you
need to use an external side tone. It is virtually impossible to use the
internal side tone. To send adequate CW you need to use an external keyer.
Using my K-4 idiom press I can transmit 60 wpm cw and receive in in another
receiver letter perfect. I use a 3.3ghz P4 and a presonus firebox which is
the high end of the computer/soundcard needed. It is not nearly as
convienent as the Orion to use. The Orion behaves like you would expect a
radio to behave. The interface in the SDR is a work in progress. The
controls that have been chosen in my opinion are not the best that could
have been chosen, like up down boxed instead of sliders for volume for
example, but the advantage of a software defined radio is that it is
plastic. The code is presently being rewritten to seperate the DSP and back
end functions of the radio (like the ALC AGC Frequency determining steps)
from the interface. This will allow the interface to be readily changed to
how ever you like.
One cool thing about the SDR is that it gives you a lab grade receiver. The
"S meter" actually reads out in dbm. It can be calibrated against a known
source (like 50mV for -73 dbm aka S9) and what you read is like having a
calibrated scope hooked up to your antenna. I intend to combine it with
N8LP's new phase reading SWR bridge and software control and I will have a
transmitting network analyzer of pretty good
accuracy.
The SSB signal is excellent, at least as good as the Orion. When I check
into my 75M round table the guys tend to like the SDR audio better than the
Orion though they think both are excellent. I have a studio quality
condensor mic on the SDR and the TT 705 on the Orion.
The noise blanker works better in the Orion.
As far as "service" goes I have no quibble with Ten Tec. They have taken
good care of me over the years.
I used to chat with Al Kahn on CW almost every week when I would mobile
between Chicago and Champaign Il on Fridays using my old 580 delta and we
would talk radios. He was always interesed in what I had to say.
SDR service is phenomonal. I have had long chats with the company
president, and he is interested in what I have to say, so it kind of reminds
me of TT 30 years ago. I have had a lot of help from the SDR reflector
community as well. The changes in the software are far faster and far more
extensive in terms of performance improvement. One guy wrote a really good
routine to balance out the quadrature signals. It was included in the next
release of the software. Another guy I think in Austraulia rewrote the AGC
software and it was included in short order. Another guy rewrote the CW
keyer with a lot of improved features and it was included. The point is
that this radio is not dependent on a top down approach. It is very
colaborative, and world experts who are interested in different aspects are
lending their expertise so the bench is very deep for the SDR. Recently the
software has been implamented under a versioning system so if you can
compile the code you can have a minute by minute up to date version of the
code. If you know what you are doing you can help write the code.
Another group is interesed in the DSP process. They didn't want to spend
$300 on a high end sound card so they went off and are developing a DSP
around a FPGA board. So far they are equivalent to the performance of my
$300 sound card, and that with something kludged dead bug style on some
circuit board.
A third group is very interested in using the SDR as a high performance IF
for vhf/uhf/shf stations so they have developed a card that lets you control
up to 32 relays from the SDR.
The point being is that this radio over time is the future of ham radio. No
it is not yet a contest rig.
But if you take the time to design a contest interface it is my guess it
will beat the pants off other contest setups. Already I can run the SDR
DXing 40M or 160M CW with 1500W and ragchew on 75 with 1500W simutaneously.
I can't tell in either the Orion or in the SDR that the other station is on
the air. The
antennas are both verticals about 120ft apart. The
160 M antenna is even closer. No it doesn't have a
knob. It has something better point and shoot.
As far as engineering goes TT is a well engineered product that is built
around a certain design philosophy. If you subscribe to that philosophy the
TT will trip your trigger. It lives up to the design I think very well. If
I took out a blank piece of paper and designed a radio it would have been
the Omni 5, so that's where my design philosophy starts. I never would have
designed the TS-940. The Orion is sort of an ulmitate extension of the Omni
5 design philosophy using a computer controller instead of discrete
controls.
The SDR is also consistent with my design philosophy being basically a very
high performance single conversion RX with the rest being left to digital
processing. I am a big fan of single conversion design. As such I find
them both very appealing. I owned a FT-1000D and while an excellent radio,
I never really warmed up to the way it worked with the up conversion and all
that, so my experience is colored by how I think about the design.
The SDR is not yet a mature product. It is a very high performance product,
but it still needs some ergonomic tuning. It will get there.
There was a time when we owned a receiver and a transmitter and we used AM
and CW. There were rigs like the Collins rigs that represented the pinnacle
of that style of operating. Then we had SSB and seperate RX TX. The S line
and the C line represented the pinnacle of that type of rig. What followed
was the era of the tranceiver, and I think the Orion might represent the
pinnacle of that era of ham tranceiver.
I do not see the high buck jap rigs as competition to the Orion. I see the
SDR-1000 as the beginning of a new concept in ham radio. I think the
experience is like the difference between how a 75A4 collins rig works and
how the Orion works. Both represent pinnicles of their repsective era. I
think the SDR is still becomming a mature product
73 W9OY
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