[Orion] Bugs and Firmware Suggestions for Orion

[James C. Garland]

Hi Gang,
I've been using my Orion over the weekend and noticed a couple of bugs. 
Also, I have a few firmware suggestions that would make the rig more user 
friendly.

A. Bugs:
1. Pressing and holding the PWR button for a few seconds causes the s-meter 
to lock at 100.
2. Pressing the "MAIN RX" button to expand the step size has no effect when 
the step size is 100 kHz.
3. AM tuning in the subreceiver is always 2.5 kHz, no matter what step size 
is selected.

B. Suggestions for Firmware revisions.

1. Activating NR, NB, or AN now requires two button pushes. The first 
highlights the selected button, and the second changes the button's state 
(e.g., from OFF to ON). It would be better to combine these functions, so 
that one button push highlights the button and also changes its state. This 
is the way the Notch button currently works.

2. Mode selection on the Orion is inconvenient, because to change modes 
requires two button pushes. First, the MODE button is pressed to select the 
Mode menu. Then another button is pushed (e.g. USB) to select the mode. 
After pressing the second button, the radio reverts to the menu display.
A better idea, in my opinion, is to use the Mode button to toggle the mode 
menu on and off.  As long as the mode menu is on, the user can then select 
modes repeatedly by just pushing the desired button. The mode menu would 
stay active until the mode button was pushed a second time to turn it off. 
While active, modes could also be selected by turning the MULTI control.

3. The STEP choices are not optimal, because the gap between 10Hz and 100Hz 
is too great. The 10Hz setting is too slow for SSB and the 100Hz setting is 
too fast for SSB. I'd reccommend a step sequence that 
went  1-10-50-100-1K-10K-100K

4. When changing modes, the AGC setting doesn't change. This is 
inconvenient, because one nearly always uses different AGC settings for CW 
and SSB. It would be desirable for a mode change to also change the AGC to 
whatever setting was previously used in the newly selected mode.

5. The pushbuttons for audio mute are still too sensitive to small 
rotations. It's hard to mute the receiver and subreceiver, because one's 
finger tends to turn the knob a tiny bit. It would be better to disable the 
feature that automatically unmutes the receiver when the knob is turned. 
Then unmuting would require a button push.

6. The PWR button is used to set output power, and turns from 1 to 100. I 
would recommed changing it so it turns from 0 to 100. Then one could 
disable the transmitter by just turning the power to zero, instead of 
having to go into a menu to do so.

7.  To transmit a carrier of a particular power, one now has to push the 
TUNE button, followed by the POWER button. It would be easier if one could 
just toggle a carrier on and off by pushing and holding the POWER button 
for 1/2 sec. The radio would then transmit a carrier at whatever power the 
POWER button was set to.

8.  The S-TONE button should have a push-and-hold feature for toggling the 
sidetone on and off.

9.  (this is an old request). PLEASE change the taper on the volume 
controls to an audio taper, so that one doesn't have to keep cranking the 
knob to turn the volume down.

I'd appreciate any thoughts the group might have on these suggestions.

73,
Jim Garland W8ZR