[TenTec] "Experts" and testing.

[AC5E at aol.com]

I tend to agree with my old boss that an "expert" is someone who can look 
wise, keep his mouth shut, agree with the prosecution's case, and collect a fat 
fee after the trial is over, but I have no problem with truely unbiased 
experts. 

But unbiased experts are like unbiased people.  They are mighty scarce and 
hard to find. Now, so I won't step on toes - about 40 years ago I bought a new 
car. Three or four days later a neighbor stopped by with a big important car 
testing magazine. And my new heap was rated dead last,  totally unacceptable.  
So I bought the magazine and read the tests. 

My new wheels were "unacceptable" because the "expert tester" found a paint 
defect called orange peel on the rocker panels of the test vehicle. The same 
expert tester praised another car to the skies, even though it had to be towed 
back to the dealer twice during the test. And even though the sporty wheel's 
paint job had both fisheyes and the orange peel he lowrated my car about.  
Somehow, I got the impression that the "expert tester" was more'n some biased.  
Especially after I put more than 300,000 miles on that "unacceptable" car with 
just normal maintainence. 

Now, this afternoon a local ham called me and wanted to compare his new low 
end rig with my Omni VI+. Sure, no problem. I met him here at 19:00 and by 
19:20 we had three rigs connected to a switch from the quad. Changeover time was 
around 100 ms, estimated. 

The bands were almost dead at that time, but there was a QSO in progress on 
14.1974.  We agreed the weaker station was copyable if you paid attention: R3 
plus on the Orion, R3 minus on the Omni VI Option 3:  and R1 or totally 
unreadable on his new rig.  Yes, we could tell something was there, but not what. 

During our discussion someone threw something on that sounded like more like 
Halloween Fright Nite than slow scan. The weaker signal dropped to R3- through 
the ooohwoooh racket on the Orion; R2 on the Omni VI, and disappeared 
entirely on his rig. 
 
Of course, that's subjective testing. But it gets to the heart of the matter 
- what will this equipment do for me.  While all the numbers are mighty 
interesting and sometimes quite informative - I want to know what the item under 
test  will do that some other similar item won't.  And all too often to suit me 
the text damns a really fine piece of equipment with faint or no praise. 

Now that's my two kopeck's worth. 

73  Pete Allen  AC5E