[TenTec] Poor CW note on Pegasus and Jupiter

[Steve Ellington]

I worked on my Pegasus's rough CW note for a week and traced it to the 70mhz
oscillator. I could listen to it with my IC-706 directly. The oscillator is
very sensitive to stray fields as Carl mentioned. Just tapping on the rig's
cabinet with your fingers will modulate this oscillator! Moving my power
supply, rerouting cables, trying different computers etc. all had some
effect but I never completely eliminated the problem. Probably some rigs are
more prone to this than others but the problem is becoming well know among
cw ops as is the jumping Scout and microchirping Omni-6.
Having heard the Jupiter on the air produce the exact same note I suspect
most of them will also sound raspy. Also I had a QSO with NU5X last night
who had a Jupiter for a short time and reports the same problem.
TenTec's engineers worked on my Pegasus for several days and weren't able to
reproduce the problem until a local ham listened to the signal over the air
and gave them the bad news. Their conclusion was "they all do it".
The ARRL lab has been asked to check this out before publishing the review
of the Jupiter. I used to hope for a cure but none of these problems ever
seem to go away.
What I don't understand is why in the world is it so difficult to produce a
clean cw signal? I've been using my TenTec 1340 QRP rig for 3 evenings and
folks go out of their way to compliment it's wonderful cw note. Here is a
$95 rig that has better keying than the $3,000 Omni-6! The receiver has
virtually no noise and QSK is totally transparent.
73
Steve Ellington
N4LQ
-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Moreschi <n4py@earthlink.net>
To: tentec <tentec@contesting.com>
Date: Tuesday, December 12, 2000 6:48 PM
Subject: [TenTec] Poor CW note on Pegasus and Jupiter


>
>I have heard many times on this reflector comments about the CW note on the
>Pegasus
>and now the Jupiter being below par.  My experience in using the my Pegasus
>for over a year
>is originally I had a raspy CW note on transmit and all received CW signals
>were raspy
>sounding.  What I found was both the 12 volt power supply and computer
>monitor must
>be located at least a few feet away.  The 60 hertz power transformers in a
>power supply and
>computer monitor generate magnetic lines of flux that if close enough to
the
>pegasus
>or jupiter can cut through the oscillators and cause a poor note on both
>transmit and
>receive.
>
>Once I moved my power supply away from my Pegasus, all is well.  My son,
>N4YDU,
>lives about 7 miles from me.  He has confimed through direct listening to
my
>CW signal
>(and showing a 20db over 9 signal) that my CW note sounds perfect.
>
>I would conclude that anyone that has received reports of a bad CW note on
>their
>Pegasus and Jupiter should make sure that any equipment that has a 60 hertz
>transformer in it, should be located at least a few feet away form the rig.
>
>
>
>
>Carl Moreschi  N4PY
>Franklinton, North Carolina
>n4py@earthlink.net
>
>
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>
>


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