[TenTec] Argonauts and TT radio naming....

[Ten-Tec Inc. Amateur Radio Sales]

WN3VAW:
 >- Others are telling me that the late-80's 535 Argonaut II was #4.

 >- I have another email stating that the Argonaut I was the 505, 509, and
 >515 inclusive; Argonaut II was the 535

Actually both of these lines are correct, but not at the same time.

Does that makes any sense?

The Argonaut V is the 'fifth' Argonaut.  The first three were the
505, 509, and 515.  The 535 was the fourth, and the 516 is the 5th.

Which leads immediately to two more questions:  Why was the
4th Argonaut called Argonaut II, and what about the Argo 556?

There were two reasons we called the 535 Argonaut II - one was
that the 505, 509 and 515 could be a 'series' of Argonauts, and
the 535 was the 'second' series of Argonaut.  Also, the Argonaut II
was merely the QRP version of the Delta II - it was easy to retain
the "II" designation for both transceivers.

We never referred to the Argo 556 as an Argonaut, admittedly this
could be hair-splitting.   When it was decided to name the 516, we
counted only the rigs that had been called "Argonaut" (505, 509,
515, and 535) to come up with the "V" designator.

We considered a whole bunch of other ideas for names beforehand
but nothing really stuck - and that's generally how we name our
transceivers.  We kick around ideas until something that sounds
like 'it' to a number of us presents itself.   Often the name for the
rig comes from Al Kahn, K4FW - who named both the Pegasus
and Jupiter rigs as well as a number of the previous models.

Straying a bit here....but we came up with the name for Orion in
much the same manner.  After deciding not to call it the Omni VII
or some other Omni designator we tried various ideas out, until the
suggestion of Orion was put forth by Stan Brock from our sales
department - and everyone immediately liked that one.

The blame has been assigned!

Scott Robbins, W4PA



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