[TenTec] Re: K2/ORION/746PRO

[George, W5YR]

Good summary and statement of viewpoint, John.

Having used an IF DSP radio since I bought the Doug Smith designed Kachina
505 DSP in 1998, and progressing through the Icom 756PRO, PRO2 and now
adding the 746PRO, I have learned first-hand each time what you said: you
must spend time with these rigs and RTFM if you expect to even begin to use
them to their potential. These are not your Father's radios, to mix
commercial punch lines. I operate a PRO of some sort daily and almost daily
I learn something new or relearn something old. Usually it amounts to a
different or better way to use some control or combination of controls to
deal with some operational problem of QRM, QRN, etc.

While my experience does not include the ORION, I suspect that it is very
much in the same camp as the PROs, being an IF-DSP architecture. These
radios are "easy to operate" in the sense that driving a modern  car is easy
once you have learned how and gained experience in a variety of operating
situations.

Your comments about testing are especially relevant. There is a natural
human tendency when confronted with something relatively new and unfamiliar
to seek comfort in numbers, preferably a single number, and seize upon "that
number" as the arbiter of good vs. evil, etc. The infamous TOI number has
recently been elevated to that status and now any number of radios are being
ranked and argued over because of tests made over a period of several years.

My experience with my PROs has been that yes, there are spurs when a lot of
strong signals are on the band. But, my experience has also been that given
the outstanding DSP filters and capabilities for modifying the filters on
the fly to suit receiving conditions at the moment,  plus the manual notch
filter within the AGC loop, allow virtually any signal to be retrieved from
the background. I routinely copy S1 CW signals with S9+40 dB signals 150 Hz
away with little or no audible effect on the desired signal and, watching a
real-time spectral analysis program output, seeing no changes in the
noise/background floor within the DSP filter. As long as the interfering
signal or spur or whatever is not within the passband with the desired
signal, the weaker signal can be copied.

I have no doubt the ORION is capable of the same DSP filter manipulation and
performance.

So, I believe that instead of looking at numbers we have to integrate the
performance aspects of the entire radio and see how well we can adapt them
to our particular needs before assigning rank orders to radios. That is what
Earl, K6SE, did with his testing. He found which radios did HIS job best and
shared those findings with us.

We are fortunate in these times to have radios that we can adapt to OUR
needs, rather than as in the old days having to adapt our operating habits
and style to fit the radio.

Thanks for laying out the good words, John.

73/72, George
Amateur Radio W5YR -  the Yellow Rose of Texas
Fairview, TX 30 mi NE of Dallas in Collin county EM13QE
"In the 57th year and it just keeps getting better!"
<mailto:w5yr at att.net>





----- Original Message -----
From: "John Rippey" <w3uls at 3n.net>
To: <tentec at contesting.com>
Cc: "John Buck" <kh7t at arrl.net>
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2003 10:00 PM
Subject: [TenTec] Re: K2/ORION/746PRO


> John, as in so many things related to our hobby, it seems to me that the
> ARRL Lab's test reports, alongside the reviews, on transceivers are
> valuable, but should not be regarded as definitive. As one small example,
> the Lab ran a correction in the June 2003 QST of the 3d-order intercept
> points it found for the IC-746PRO in the original review 14 months
earlier.
> The new data was more favorable for the IC-746PRO.
>
> The ARRL tests just one sample from an early production run of the rigs it
> reviews, so its findings are subject to the vagaries of the manufacturer's
> quality controls at an early stage. Ed Hare, the head of the Lab, has
> conceded the one-sample scheme is less than ideal. Because of these and
> other variables, I think a problem can arise if a ham should take the
Lab's
> reports and base his/her buying decision exclusively on them.
>
> Moreover, I believe a whole new testing challenge is posed by the new
> software-controlled rigs from ICOM and Ten-Tec. There have been
discussions
> on reflectors, etc., involving Ed Hare and Ten-Tec's Doug Smith over
> testing issues, and I assume this will continue as everyone becomes more
> familiar with the potentialities of these new rigs, which in many ways
bear
> little or no resemblance to analog rigs.
>
> After purchasing both an Argonaut V and an ICOM 746PRO, I can say that for
> me at least the only way to get to know these software-controlled radios
> was to buy and use them. The write-ups in QST and the Lab reports for both
> rigs proved only marginally useful, because the actual performance of
these
> two exceeded IMHO what I would have expected from just reading the reviews
> and looking at the data. In fact, from what I understand about the
> IC-746PRO, the receiver is at least as good as the PROII's, its QSK is
> smoother, and its keying bandwidth is exemplary. This info came from other
> users, however, not from QST. In contrast, I can look back at the QST
> reviews of years ago of two of my favorite analog rigs--an OMNI VI and a
> JRC JST-245--and see that those articles and accompanying data gave a
> pretty good account of what could be expected. I think now, with digital
> circuitry embedded in firmware, we are dealing with a new breed of cat
that
> doesn't lend itself to such single off-the-shelf reviews. The new
> generation of radios have much greater complexity and concomitant
> capabilities that have to be studied and explored over time.
>
> So I'm looking forward to the ARRL's report on the ORION, but I am not
> going to consider it the last word by any means.
>
> 73,
> John, W3ULS