[Orion] RX problems

[Richard Detweiler]

Hi Yuri:

Welcome,  It's nice to hear your back.  ( This is public reply)

I've tracked down a couple issues and reported them to Gary and company,  
The problem appears to be occurring during the polling of the rig from the 
computer interface,  disconnect that, and it seems to go away forever even 
with the sweep on.

I'm fairly certain there is a memory overrun in the routines that 
communicate with the PC.

Try this if you have the optional 500 or 250 Hz filters, Start up your 
favorite logging program that polls the Orion,  Go to the filter menu,   
then to the C.F. adjust for either of them.  rotate the multi knob to full 
positive offset,  about +250Hz on the 250Hz filter and about +500Hz on the 
500Hz filter,  back off and go to max a few times and see if some text shows 
up where the offset is displayed...  The text appears to be polling commands 
to/From the PC.

If it does, then you are seeing the problem that I beleive ultimately causes 
the RX / TX to lock up.   You will have to do a power reset to clear the 
buffers again.

Another Symptom of the problem is the text "DSP T/O 0" is displayed next to 
the Send 2 key,  If that shows, it was when the sweep was running, again 
with the PC Polling the rig.  The TX and RX are hosed...  That will need to 
do a power reset to clear up.

Hopefully Garry and Company at Ten Tec has a line on this by now and is 
rapidly producing the fix,  Some communication from Ten Tec about 
known/reported problems and the status of resolution would do wonders for 
lifting our spirits....  Also, an e-mail reflector for when we submit a 
problem note to at least Say ditnbits got the message.

By the way, how'd you do on the contest?  Were you QTH restricted this time?

I think I finally learned how to use the Orion for SSB Contesting this last 
time,  Got the SSB channel down to 1Khz to fully quiet the QRM and still was 
getting good audio.  Got lots of the DX on just 100W and the vertical.  But 
not good at all on the 80/160M bands,  Really need to get those loops 
finished,  Got the stuff, just need to build them.  Played alot with the 40M 
splits this time too,  N1MM does a good job of setting up the Orion for the 
splits on the spots.  Was picking them off like flies...

There is a new posting on E-Ham about the Orion,  Thought it was 
interesting,  It reflects some of the things you said about the Orion in 
your artical but makes a different point.

73's
Rich
K5SF


>From: K3BU at aol.com
>To: orion at contesting.com
>Subject: [Orion] RX problems
>Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 22:14:53 EST
>
> >>Does anyone have any idea on what I did wrong?  <<
>
>
>You did nothing wrong, just that Orion is too smart. It thought that you
>needed break, so it went to sleep :-)
>
>I had the same thing happen in ARRL phone three times, one time I went 
>away,
>came back to dead (just noise) RX. Looks like when we think that band is 
>dead,
>no signals, we better turn it off and on just to make sure Orion is not
>"thinking". But don't worry, everything will be fixed by next release of 
>free
>software update.
>
>One case I had TX to quit transmitting after I was switching AGC.
>Another "feature" is when you key down and try to adjust the power level
>while watching the power meter - meter gets nervous, keeps fluctuating. 
>Looks like
>it is under software control (it has "hang" time programed to 300 mS).
>
>73 Yuri, K3BU
>_______________________________________________
>Orion mailing list
>Orion at contesting.com
>http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/orion

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