[Orion] ORION PERFORMANCE

[Eric Scace K3NA]

Hello Oms --

   I share Bill W4ZV's opinion that your troubles with the Orion were probably due to sub-optimal receiver settings.

   At the multi-op station where I was working this past weekend, I relieved an operator and found his Orion sounded very noisy and
trashy.  It was quickly apparent that:
   -- the hardware noise blanker had been left on unnecessarily
   -- the AGC threshold setting was far too low for the conditions on the band
   -- the filters, bandwidth setting, and passband tuning was not being exploited for best results.

   Some quick adjustments later, and signal readability was greatly improved.

   One might say: "The use of this radio is not intuitive, so an operator unacquainted with it can not use it effectively."  But,
more precisely, the Orion gives the operator a number of additional controls which the operator needs to understand.  But, once one
has a good mental picture of the receiver and what each control does, it's easy.

-- Eric K3NA