After seeing Denny's post, I had to chime in.
I'm also a new O II owner (the one reviewed by the ARRL). I've been
around the block a few times, but I haven;t had a lot of experience
with a lot fo radios. About the priciest thing I've played with is a
IC-756PROIII during FD. It was a very nice rig.
My main rig has been a TS-930S since I bought it new in 1984. It has
a PIEXX board in it, but not the INRAD roofing filter. I still have
that rig, my plan being to keep it at the ready in case I really
wanted to operate. This assumed that all the comments I'd seen about
how tough the O II is to learn were true.
With the '930S, I learned all about receivers and just how serious
overload problems can be. When I lived in CO, K0RF was about 10 mi
away and, during contests if he pointed his array at me, the front
end would simply crumple. All the signals would vanish on that band,
and I'd hear him everywhere on it. So, I coveted the O II receiver performance.
I was pleasantly surprised by the O II, though. While I'm far from
the sharpest tool in the shed, I think learning to run the O II is a
piece of cake. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting (my favorite).
Maybe it's because I've been around radios since I was a kid (nigh
on'ta 40 years now) and that my Dad is also a ham and a physicist.
In any event, I've yet to make a QSO, as I've been undoing 22 years
of TS-930S customization with just about everything. That and I've
recently moved, so most of my tools and radio paraphernalia is,
well... Someplace. I know I packed it, really. Even so, I've managed
to get everything together and I'm ready for CW. No 'phone yet, as I
have no cables that fit the O II and I don't want to cannibalize my
'930S cabling rendering it inop. It's on order, though.
As an aside, I installed an LDG OT11-P tuner in it (the League didn't
order it with the tuner but it came with *all* the roofing filters,
so I call that good trade-off). The tuner makes some truly awful
sounds, but they're all the *proper* awful sounds, so it's simply
something I'll have to get used to. It's also lightning fast compared
to my old '930S. The installation was easy -- I have to wonder why
LDG no longer offers that tuner.
In short, anyone comfortable with GUI's and with a modcum of
technical savvy won;t have any problems. It's simply not that hard to
lean to operate. I haven't yet learned to nuance the AGC, but that
will come. Heck, I'm still struggling with getting all my antennas
up! But, it's the first new radio for me in over 20 years, and I'm
enjoying it *immensely.* What a marvelous piece of work.
Kim Elmore, N5OP
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