[Orion] Bugs and Firmware Suggestions for Orion

[Joe Giacobello]

James, a lot of the issues you raised are valid.  It's my opinion that 
the operator-radio control interface is a major shortcoming of the 
Orion.  Nevertheless, N4PY's software does streamline many of the 
improvements that you suggested.

73, Joe

James C. Garland wrote:

> 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
>
>
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