Hi,
I am the person who originally pointed out that Ten Tec's presence was missed
at the Orlando Hamcation this year.
For the previous 3 years, I have spoken with various Ten Tec representatives at
the Hamcation...I only live 20 minutes from the fairgrounds.
I made this observation and publicly pointed it out because after 2+ years of
playing around with various Orion 2 updates that weren't "complete", I decided
to sell it and I was hoping to try out an Eagle. Unfortunately, Ten Tec was
not present but I did get to play with an Eagle at the HRD display.
During the past 2 years there were a few updates for the Orion 2 that were
released. Each time, I found issues with them and wound up reporting them back
to Ten Tec. I was told that they could not reproduce them and to send them the
settings on my XCVR, which I did. They still could not reproduce them. I
spent many hours using my test equipment devising tests that demonstrated the
issues that I reported. Since nobody else seemed to be complaining as loudly
as me, I guess there wasn't a problem...until I devised and submitted the tests
that demonstrated the issues. After a couple of months or so, low and behold,
a new update came out that addressed the more serious issue but not all of
them. I was told by Ten Tec that the minor issue was easy to resolve but
unfortunately it never was with 2 subsequent releases.
As an engineer that works with programmable devices regularly, I know that if
an issue is easy to resolve, it is done so that the customer is happy. In this
case it was not.
I really liked the Orion 2 and I would not have sold it had Ten Tec addressed
the one issue that drove me nuts since I could SEE it every time I used my
radio...the fact that the spectrum display did not accurately show an LSB
signal appropriately. My feeling was that the receiver was fantastic and I
would probably be happy with the Eagle.
I went to Orlando expecting to see Ten Tec and speak with them about the Eagle
but they were not there. The way I look at things is that if something simple
wasn't or could not be fixed in a timely manner and since the manufacturer is
not really promoting their equipment, I would have to shop elsewhere. From a
financial point of view, I suspect that Ten Tec lost more in sales of new
radios from not being at the show than they would have spent on attending the
show. Yes, I wrote a note to Jim Wharton and another Ten Tec ambassador about
this and received no response.
With all of this secrecy, one has to wonder.
Mike Stricker, WA1SEO
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