[CQ-Contest] More on Orion de W4PA

[Bill Coleman]

On 5/9/03 11:20 AM, Scott R. at w4pa at yahoo.com wrote:

>Focusing on whether the opposite receiver mutes is losing sight of
>everything else this radio has for contesting, period (not just SO2R).

Scott, 

This is all fabulous stuff, and if nothing else, the Orion will get high 
marks for its quality receiver.

Certainly Ten-Tec knew of the value of leaving one receiver unmuted as in 
classic SO2R operation. So, please answer my question -- what is the 
technical reason to force muting of both receivers during transmit? I can 
understand it for one receiver which shares circuitry with the 
transmitter. But what of the other receiver?

>I disagree, I've used plenty of examples for what a breakthrough this
>transceiver is, and I have no intention of changing the text as
>written on the Ten-Tec website. 

I like the part: "ORION's selectable crystal filters narrow the roofing 
bandwidth to as little as 250 Hz to avoid any compromise of close-in 
receiver performance caused by loud nearby signals. No other transceiver 
does this."

Hmm. The Elecraft K2 does. For that matter, there are many, many older 
single-conversion recievers and a few multiple-conversion receivers that 
do exactly this -- place the key selectivity components on the output of 
the first mixer. In no way is this a new concept. In fact, it is a return 
to an older design concept that was supplanted by the introduction of 
general-coverage receive in modern synthesized radios.



Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
            -- Wilbur Wright, 1901