[TenTec] Ten Tec Junk ??!!

[Tim English]

Hello all. Having just recently been "turned on" to Ten Tec gear and reading other folks comments, I felt compelled to write my short story on how I made the switch from YaeComWoods to TT. I've been a ham and die hard CW fanatic for over 30 years now. Over the years I have owned umpteen different YaeComWoods and always sluffed off TT as being total junk mainly because of the rig's cosmetics. Too me TT rigs always looked like something someone had homebrewed in their basement and threw it into a MFJ cabinet. The only fairly good Jap rig I have ever owned was a TS-130S. Some such as the TS-690S and IC-745 were the absolute worst rigs I have ever owned for CW. I bid and won an Argonaut 509 about a year ago on eBay. I mainly bought it because it was at a good price and came with the external CW filter, rig and power supply and intended to break the items up and resell for a profit. As I was sitting in the shack cleaning the rig up getting it ready to resell I figured I had better hook it up and check it's operation out. Once I fired the rig I just couldn't believe how low the noise level was. I live just 1 block from a 250,000 power sub-station and almost always have had to contend with hash noise levels approaching S9 at times. I had to check to make sure there was an antenna connected. I peaked the resonate knob and started tuning around 20 meters. Signals just jumped out of nowhere at me. To me this was an absolute jaw dropping experience because I had always had this high noise level. I then thought well maybe this was a night when the noise was reduced so I flipped on my IC-745 and sure enough the hash was there, strong as ever but yet was non-existent on the Argo. I hooked a 6BTV vertical to the Argo and a CF zepp to the 745 and started comparing signals. I was picking and copying dx signals on the Argo Q5 that were not even audible on the 745. At this point I was hooked. I made similar comparisons between the Argo and my IC-706 and although the 706 was better than the 745 neither held a candle to the Argo. I decided to keep the Argo and had a ball working a lot of QRP DX but having never been a great fan of QRP I did some intense research on finding a QRO TT rig. After asking many questions and taking alot of poles from TT users as well as reading reviews online I settled on finding a Corsair. I found one, bought it and have never looked back at the YaeComWoods since. The Corsair exhibited the same charecteristics as the Argo in the way of low S/N only better ! And the filters... whew, let's not even go there. All I can say is AWESOME ! Although it needs a PTO rebuild it is with a doubt the best rig I have ever owned. I immediately sold the IC-745 on eBay but held onto the 706 to use in my motorhome and on 6 meters. Although I still feel TT rigs will never win a beauty contest, I just can't believe it took me 30 years to discover these fabulous rigs. 2 years ago while doing some travelling I had the chance to go by and see the TT factory. I was totally unimpressed. The place looked run down, unkept, and there were people sitting around outside leaning back in chairs smoking. The showroom was empty except for a glass showcase with a few rigs in it. There was basically nothing to see. This of course was before I discovered TT. Looks can very, very deceiving I have discovered !

That's my 2 1/4 cent's worth !
--
Tim, K8TJ



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