End of the Line?

[Steve Ellington]

> I'm in the market for a new rig now, am considering the Omni-VI, but for
> the first time ever, I'm just not sure about Ten-Tec anymore.  Anyone have
> thoughts on this matter.

Reminds me that back in 1990, after builing this new house, I felt I
deserved a new rig. Having read every article available and listend to the
qsk of many rigs on the air, I narrowed the search to either a Paragon 1
or the TS-940s.  Early one Saturday I drove 120 miles to  R&L Electronics,
Hamilton Ohio to try them both out. R&L was at that time a TenTec dealer.

I explained to the salesman how I wanted to test the rigs. First he needed
to provide me with a monitor receiver to listen to the keying on each rig.
Then he had to set both rigs side by side for comparison. I brought my own
keyer for the test. A Paragon was brought out and hooked up. We turned it
on and the receiver came to life but upon keying it, there was no output.
The sidetone did work however and I immediately noticed the distorted
sawtooth sound of it. No amount of persuation would make it emmitt RF. Red
faced, the salesman put it back in the box for shipment back to the
factory. 

Then I tried the 940. The sidetone was a perfect sine wave and keying was
perfect. No clipping, clicks thumps or chirps. QSK was perfectly smooth
and almost transparant. Needless to say, I bought the 940 and headed home.
Three days later, the finals went up in smoke. I called R&L who graciously
offered me a loaner 940 until mine came back from the factory. 30 days
later mine came back. The trouble turned out to be the cooling fan had
been installed too far back on the shaft and locked up thus causing
excessive heat. I used the 940 for 5 years with no further problems.  

Two months ago, I called R&L asking about trading my OMNI-6 in on a new
FT-1000mp. The salesman explained that would not take any TenTec equipment
in on trade for anything! When asked why, he muttered something about
their equipment not being up to todays expectations. Whatever that means.
I ended up trading with "THe Ham Station" in Evansville In. 






Steve Ellington N4LQ@IGLOU.COM  Louisville, Ky