[TenTec] Ten Tec 2m transceiver, comments and impressions

[Paul Helbert]

Chuck Murcko wrote:

> Hi all. I just finished putting a 1220/1222 combination on the air.
> This has
> turned out to be a very nice rig, and has one of the best 2m receiver
> sections
> I've ever used. The exception was an old Icom with helical resonators,
> but
> that's another story.
>
> Construction was quite straightforward, save for a number of small
> hitches.
>
> 1) Things get tight at the end of assembly, when mounting the power
>    transistors to the back subpanel/RF shield. Go slowly here. Same
> goes
>    for the T-R board assembly.
>
> 2) One PEM nut was missing from a side subpanel. No big deal; the rig
> is
>    exceptionally well engineered and solid, especially if the
> instructions
>    to hot glue the VCO coil are followed. Case rigidity seems
> unimpaired by
>    missing fastener.
>
> 3) Go easy on the slug in the VCO coil; mine cracked, and I had to
> clean it
>    out and replace it with one of similar ferrite mix from the
> junkbox. My
>    fault.
>
> 4) You really have to clip lead power to the 1222 amplifier to align
> it. The
>    input tuning capacitor is impossible to get at when mounted for
> testing
>    as suggested in the manual.

I drilled a small hole in the back of the chassis which allows final
tuning to be done.  Try it, you'll like it.

>
>
> With the amplifier, I measure 40w out at 146.000 MHz and 37w at either
> band
> edge. With a small dual band antenna (Cushcraft AR-270, about 4' tall)
>
> mounted at 18' above ground, I can reliably use repeaters up to 35-40
> mi
> away, and get about 10 mi further when the band opens a bit on these
> summer
> evenings. Haven't experienced any tunnels or skip yet. 8^)
>
> All reports so far have remarked on the excellent transmit audio and
> lack of
> synthesizer noise (a *big* problem with the old Ramsey kit
> transceivers).
>
> The receiver is *very* good. No birdies or synthesizer artifacts are
> audible.
> The one thing I thought was one turned out to be a bad power line
> insulator
> outside. Excellent intermod performance and image rejection, too.
>
> Packet and PL work fine. It was a bit odd getting used to having
> simplex
> frequencies in the lower memories (The upper memories are used to
> store
> frequency pairs for nonstandard offsets, so any simplex frequency
> stored
> there is considered as one of the pairs).
>
> Is there a 440 Mhz kit in the future? This would be very nice, though
> harder
> to package for a kit than a 144 or 220 MHz unit.
>
> What I miss on this rig is general purpose scanning capability.
> Perhaps
> something like scanning between any two (or the first two) memory
> frequencies
> could be done in future. I can also see myself running out of memories
>
> eventually, though I've never used more than 30 on any ham rig I've
> had.
> Somehow I can't see the need for hundreds or thousands, myself. It'd
> be
> difficult to add too many more functions with only four pushbuttons on
> the
> front panel.
>
> All in all, the rig took about 25 hours to build and align, working
> slowly
> and carefully, though persistently. No doubt the second or third would
> go
> much faster. 8^)
>
> I haven't used this transceiver in the car yet, so I can't report on
> that
> aspect of use.
>
> All in all, a very nice rig for T-T and anyone with the time and
> expertise
> (you should probably have one other simple kit that uses small parts
> under
> your belt before starting one of this complexity). The stage by stage,
> build
> and troubleshoot as-you-go approach makes the job very
> straightforward.
> --
> chuck
> Chuck Murcko            The Topsail Group             West Chester PA
> USA
> chuck@topsail.org
>
> --
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