[TenTec] Rig Chart

[Steve Ellington]

Strange how we followed similar threads. I too had a HW-101 and loved to
listen to cw on it along with my Drake 2b. Then I bought an Argo 509, my
first TT rig and fell in love with it. I used it QRO by feeding it's output
to the SSB adapter input on my Johnson Valliant II.
Then one day I read the color brochure about the FT-757. QSK, Keyer wow...I
fell for it. I picked one up at the Louisville hamfest from R&L Electronics,
rushed home and fired it up. After about 10 minutes, I was ready to pull out
my hair. Like you say, the keyer wouldn't go over 25wpm, the QSK really
didn't exists and cw sounded horrible.
A few days later, I called R&L. They wouldn't give my money back but offered
to give me full credit trade in on a Corsair. The Corsair was a real relief.
I wrote a long letter to Yaesu expressing my displeasure. Within a month,
their full color advertising had dropped the QSK claim but I never got a
reply.
Of course, the SSB boys loved the 757 and many of them are still going
strong. Phase noise doens't seem to bother the SSB crowd.
Steve Ellington N4LQ.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Hyder -N4NT-" <N4NT@chartertn.net>
To: "Steve Ellington" <n4lq@iglou.com>; <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2002 12:26 PM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Rig Chart


> Hi, Steve--
>
> Here ya go.  For years I used first a Heathkit HW-101 and then an
> SB-102.  My friends kept urging me to get into the modern world, so
> about a year after it came on the market, I bought a Yaesu FT-757.  It
> was everything a ham could want -- a QSK rig with a CW filter and
> built-in keyer. . .  But the keyer wouldn't go over 25 wpm and even at
> that speed the dots were all choppy.  I used the rig with an external
> keyer.
>
> As time went on, I noticed that I was operating less.  One day when I
> turned the rig off, I noticed that my body seemed to relax.
> Investigation showed several things, first that the rig was not able to
> hear weak signals on 10 meters (even with the RF pre-amp switched on)
> that my SB-102 could hear.  The biggest thing I noticed was that on a CW
> signal, there was a fuzziness -- a weak hashy noise -- modulating the CW
> note.  With most rigs, as the signal gets stronger the noise diminishes
> but not so with this noise, the stronger the signal the stronger the
> noise.
>
> Listening to that rig would make the muscles in my body begin to tense
> until I would wind up with a headache.  I drop-kicked the rig out the
> shack window and replaced it with a Triton 544 -- no more headaches, no
> more choppy dits.
>
> I know that since that time the manufacturers have gotten better with
> the noise problem -- the "phase noise" perhaps.  But I question whether
> they have gotten rid of it.  The thing to remember is that the human
> ears and eyes are able to discern things that instruments often can not
> measure and the human brain can discern things that we are not aware of.
> The ARLL can run all the tests in the world comparing rigs but the only
> true test is to sit two rigs side by side in the shack and use them.
> After a while, I notice that I tend to use one rig much more than the
> other.  I often don't know why and can't articulate a reason, but
> something about the way the rig sounds or the ease of operation will
> lead me to use it instead of the other.
>
> 73, Mike
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Steve Ellington" <n4lq@iglou.com>
> To: <al_lorona@agilent.com>; <tentec@contesting.com>
> Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2002 9:39 AM
> Subject: Re: [TenTec] Rig Chart
>
>
> | I had a choice of 50khz or 20khz and chose the 20khz spacing. As for
> "phase
> | noise", I've heard it discussed for years and I'm still not sure what
> it
> | sounds like unless it sounds like the transmitter products emitted by
> the
> | Pegasus/Jupiter.
> | Steve Ellington N4LQ.
> | ----- Original Message -----
> | From: <al_lorona@agilent.com>
> | To: <n4lq@iglou.com>; <tentec@contesting.com>
> | Sent: Sunday, April 07, 2002 1:53 AM
> | Subject: RE: [TenTec] Rig Chart
> |
> |
> | >
> | > In the last few years I have become convinced that the two-tone 3rd
> order
> | > dynamic range numbers in ARRL reviews measured with a 20 kHz tone
> spacing
> | > are absolutely irrelevant in demanding amateur radio conditions. The
> two
> | > tones have to be much closer together in order to get a better idea
> of
> | what
> | > the receiver will tolerate. I'm glad to see that the ARRL is
> apparently
> | > getting the message, as I heard recently they were going to start
> | measuring
> | > it with something like a 5 kHz spacing. We should publish the 5 kHz
> specs
> | > for each of the receivers in Steve's chart.
> | >
> | > I define 'demanding conditions' as similar to those in a contest
> where
> | there
> | > are lots of very strong signals very close to the frequency your
> receiver
> | is
> | > tuned to.
> | >
> | > I'm going to assume that the rest of the DR specs were all measured
> with
> | the
> | > same receiver bandwidth, although Steve's chart does not explicitly
> state
> | > this. If not, the numbers don't mean anything to me.
> | >
> | > Every one of the receivers listed has way more than enough
> sensitivity for
> | > any of the HF bands. Since about 1980, MDS numbers have been
> rendered
> | > irrelevant.
> | >
> | > An important spec missing from the chart is that of local oscillator
> phase
> | > noise, which is difficult to measure and even more difficult to
> explain
> | > exactly what it does to the way a receiver sounds. In general, the
> more
> | > phase noise, the more problems that poses to a receiver. One of the
> | > by-products of phase noise is reciprocal mixing. You can definitely
> hear
> | it,
> | > but describing what it sounds like is hard. That's why during the
> recent
> | > thread about which receiver was 'quieter' I kept telling myself one
> of the
> | > parameters going into such a qualitative spec has to be the effects
> of a
> | > receiving system's phase noise; hence the difficulty in quantifying
> the
> | > receiver's 'quietness'.
>
>
>