It's not only related to Tentec products or Orion radios. For years I've
dealt with service and maintenance on products costing 5X to 10X or more of
what the Orion's. cost. These products have been found to have the same
issues. Some interconnection methods are better or worse than others. It
is a matter of cost vs. space along with a few other factors.
Just exercise the connectors, clean the pins and apply a very small amount
of contact cleaner. It will serve you well until next time.
73
Bob, K4TAX
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Moreschi" <n4py3@earthlink.net>
To: "Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment" <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2014 3:16 PM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Orion 565 Main Receiver Issue
The Orion and Orion II have shown a history of problems related to
corrosion building up on the cable connections in the radio. These
connections should have been gold plated but they are not. In particular,
the cable connections behind the front panel have over 100 connections.
Many times the solution is to remove the front panel, which is not at all
difficult, and unplug the cables, spray them with a contact cleaner, and
then while they are still wet, plug them in and out 10 times or more to
clean them. This fixed all the intermittent problems on my Orion. And
with so many connections, almost any symptom is possible.
Carl Moreschi N4PY
58 Hogwood Rd
Louisburg, NC 27549
www.n4py.com
On 3/19/2014 3:38 PM, art N4UC wrote:
Here's a brain teaser for all you Orion experts. My 565 running ver 3.032
has developed a couple of problems that I was hoping would be a firmware
issue but it's looking more and more like a hardware problem. I'm looking
for some ideas about where to start troubleshooting.
In a nutshell the two problems (which may just be different symptoms of
one problem) are these:
1. All signals received by the main rcvr on 20M only are extremely
garbled and distorted. This condition is not dependent on mode and all
other receiver functions such as S-meter operation, AGC, BW and PBT
functions seem to be unaffected. Operation of the sub-receiver is normal.
One interesting note is that a signal disappears when I engage the
hardware NB, which is probably just an indicator that the NB thinks it's
seeing noise and just doing its job.
2. When both VFO's display the same frequency, there is a difference in
received frequency between the two receivers. This is present regardless
of band, but the difference is not the same from band to band. The worst
I've noticed is 200 hz offset on 20M, but other bands exhibit 50-100 hz
delta between the receivers in spite of displaying the same frequencies.
It doesn't matter how the two receivers arrive at the same frequency,
either by pressing the A>B button or configuring both Main and Sub recvrs
to be controlled by VFO-A.
This all came on as an intermittent condition. I would notice that during
operation on 20M, received signals would suddenly jump by 100-200 hz and
I would have to re-tune to get back on frequency. I was assuming that the
transmitted frequency was jumping as well, but I haven't verified that as
yet. Anyway, after the "jump" occurred, the signals would sound warbly
and quivery (technical terms for "trashy"). No matter their signal
strength they sounded watery like they were coming from over the North
Pole. If I were to select a different band and then return , the receiver
would "slide" a few hertz back onto frequency before settling.
I have
sometimes noticed that just before this would happen there would be a
rise in noise
level, like precipitation static. While the rcvr is off-frequency,
there is a
lot of noise/hash that is in sync with other signals some as far
away as 50 khz. It resembles being at field day in close proximity to
several
transmitters. Even though they are way out of the bandpass of the
filters and too far away to hear a cw tone, I
can copy them by listening to the hash.
I have re-flashed the firmware and performed a few master-resets, etc...
with no change. The problem is no longer intermittent and I'm looking for
ideas while I decide how much $$$ I want to put into repairing a really
fine, but old, radio.
73, Art/N4UC
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