[TenTec] FT-920 vs. Pegasus Question

[John Rippey]

Well, I cannot speak about the Peg/Jupiters but I did own an FT-920. I 
recently sold it. If you are mainly a phone person, the FT-920 will work 
well for you. On CW, it is a horse of a different color. On receive, the 
front end does not hold up in contest situations even with the optional 
Yaesu 500 Hz CW filter. (A filter board is available from Inrad which I 
hear greatly enhances its CW selectivity, but I did not pursue this 
option.) On transmit, my unit had an extremely wide CW bandwidth, which I 
measured (crudely) to be in the neighborhood of +/- 2.1 kHz. This is way, 
way too wide and would cause all kinds of annoying key clicks for other 
ops. QSK, of course, was not up to Ten-Tec standards.

By the way, I found the ergonomics, the built-in antenna tuner and the DSP 
(audio) implementation to be excellent, so the radio did very well in all 
areas except basic CW performance. And at $900 used, its price is appealing.

The new Ten-Tec Argonaut V, one of which I recently purchased, is superior 
in its CW receive/transmit performance to the FT-920 and has better 
implementation of (IF) DSP. But it has just 20+ watts output, does not go 
to 6 meters, and has no built-in antenna tuner. How it matches up against a 
Peg/Jupiter, I don't know. Unless you think you need that extra 80 watts, I 
would recommend you consider a new/used Argonaut. HF only, of course.

73,
John, W3ULS