[TenTec] Jupiter frequency jump?

[Carter Grabarczyk]

K6atz@aol.com wrote:

> Although many Ten-Tec owners have this problem, about half of the folks out
> there seem fervently religious in their belief that this could never happen.
> Now, most of the guys supporting my contention e-mail me privately so they
> don't get flamed.  But I've personally never received anything but dignified
> engineering discussions in reply on this list.  So, comments anyone?

Well, yes, I have a comment or two and thank you for asking.
  
> If you mention this to Ten-Tec tech support, you'll get nothing but a stern
> lecture about RF in the shack. 

Yes, been there, done that, got the lecture.


> But I did a lot of work moving antennas,
> improving grounding and isolating ground loops without resolving the problem.

Also true. BTW, what ultimately helped in my case was a "choke balun",
essentially a foot long piece of RG-8 in a PVC case that has 30 or 40
ferrite beads over the coax.

> This is a serious
> shortcoming in Ten-Tec radios, which otherwise are renowned for their
> quality, and I can't understand why they would rather leave this to us to
> fix.  It makes their products really unsuitable for field day or emergency
> use.

I should mention that I am using an earlier vintage Omni VI. The
matching 705(?) mic has no RF beads and seems quite susceptible to RF
(must be why I operate 98% CW or digital!). Also, the 301 remote tuning
knob has no beads or bypass capacitors; that 3 foot 301 curly cord
(antenna) just pumps RF into the unit.

To anticipate the flamers: I have been using the Omni VI since 1994 and
had the factory upgrade to Option 3 to make it the VI+. I LOVE the radio
and still have not found anything else that I would rather use or a
company I have been more pleased to deal with. 

I don't know about the economics of the Pegasus or Jupiter, but on a
$2400 radio like the Omni VI, it would seem that a few bucks of bypass
capacitors and beads would/should not be an issue.

73/Carter/K8VT