[TenTec] Pegasus, a sad day......

[Duane A Calvin]

Another thought - one thing you could have done is to notch that
individual signal - after all, that's how a lot of the Japanese rigs deal
with birdies on their more $$$ radios!

	73, Duane

On Sat, 22 Jul 2000 06:37:46 -0400 "Larry Kayser" <kayser@sympatico.ca>
writes:
> 
> Greetings All:
> 
> Today I packed up my Pegasus radio and am sending it back, not 
> because the
> radio doesn't work but because of an undocumented feature that makes 
> the
> radio less than useful here.
> 
> When the Pegasus arrived I hooked it up and immediately began to 
> debug many
> hours of software development - the radio responded nicely.  The 
> design uses
> three independent oscillator systems which was a surprise for a 
> modern radio
> but some extra work and the radio became self calibrating to within 
> 1 Hz of
> the desire frequency.
> 
> Shortly thereafter I connected the Pegasus audio line up to a (now) 
> standard
> DSP program that let me observe the audio spectrum coming out of the 
> radio,
> to prepare for another project I am running here.  Low and behold 
> there was
> a very steady and somewhat weak audio signal constantly in the 
> middle of the
> passband.  After some testing this "tone" is from the internal 
> sidetone
> software in the DSP system.  When I connected up the DSP computer 
> the
> software quickly sounded an alarm, it had found a continuous carrier 
> signal
> in the Audio out of the receiver.  The Pegasus has a problem.
> 
> It is important to note that this tone was NOT audible when 
> listening with
> headphones or a speaker.  The signal could only be "seen" when a DSP 
> program
> was watching the audio coming from the radio.
> 
> An email was sent to Ten Tec, and they responded that the problem 
> had been
> sent to the DSP programmers.  Silence for nearly six months!
> 
> A second request for action, also acknowledged and sent to the DSP
> programmers.  More silence for a Month.
> 
> The Pegasus radio was removed from the system and with considerable 
> sadness
> packed for return to Ten Tec.  The Ten Tec Pegasus radio has been 
> replaced
> by a radio, with DSP design, that does not have the side tone signal
> bleeding into the audio output.
> 
> From here it looks like the vaunted Ten Tec product support ethic 
> has not
> managed to make its way into the DSP Programmer part of Ten Tec.  
> The lack
> of response from this part of Ten Tec bodes for poor future 
> expectations.
> 
> Even more surprising is the tough and demanding QST product review 
> that has
> again missed a key area of product testing of radios for the new 
> millennium.
> 
> This experience has not been pleasant.  The wasted hundreds of hours 
> working
> on software for the radio are hard to accept, the failure of this
> undocumented feature to be noted in product testing is also a bit 
> much.
> Other than for this one feature, undocumented, the radio is a great 
> CW
> radio.  I only made one SSB QSO with the radio and I received a 
> comment that
> the audio was "constrained" which is probably fair as the microphone 
> was
> from a Korean War era aircraft...  From my perspective it could use 
> some
> narrower CW filters.
> 
> A sad day.
> 
> Larry
> VA3LK
> 
> 
> 
> 
> --
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> 

Duane A. Calvin, AC5AA
Austin, Texas
ac5aa@juno.com -or- ac5aa@earthlink.net
Day:  dacalvin@us.ibm.com

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