[TenTec] RE: Orion Concern

[AC5E@aol.com]

I am not really concerned about the Orion cosmetics. I let my wife look at 
the first pix posted on the web and she said it looked very nice. That's high 
praise from her - but her next words were "I wonder how it hears compared to 
my Six?" 

That's my concern also. While bells and whistles are nice, and I too prefer 
CW on USB, hearing the other station is by far the most important part of a 
rig's performance. 

Back when I was a kid, tube rigs with extremely simple diode detectors 
preserved phase differences between several stations. That made it 
comparatively easy to pick out and work the weak W1 from under the big signal 
W0 in the next county over. Just as those same phase differences make it easy 
to pick out one voice among several similar voices in a crowd. 

"Modern" detectors COULD do the same thing. But generally they do not. Except 
for the JRC's, most imported rigs essentially put all the audio "in phase," 
so to speak. So copying weak ones under a strong signal becomes far more 
difficult than it could or it should be.

 Yep, the FT 1000D is a fine rig. So is the '757 PROII. But I can HEAR the 
weak ones as well and copy the weak ones under the strong ones more easily 
with my SX-101 than I can with either of these rigs. Thankfully, even the 
Paragon I is at least on par with my boat anchors - as are the OMNI V and VI. 

So I sometimes find a neighboring ham trying to work a station under a 
pileup, and work the DX first because I can hear him come back to me while my 
neighbor with the multi TOL imports can't pick out his own call under the 
pileup. The DX says "alpha" and works every alpha but the right alpha for Joe.

Yes, the stats are important. But the bare stats don't tell me how the rig 
will play in a contest or in a DX pileup. At the end of a 'test, I often find 
that I have worked quite a number of stations who called me while I was 
calling one of the stations that insist on running "the rig with the best 
numbers."   

So I'm waiting until I get my hands on an ORION and can compare it with my 
present rigs. Next year at this time I may own four ORION's - or none. It all 
depends on performance. 

73  Pete Allen  AC5E