[TenTec] Orion & SSCW - Comments?

[Duane A Calvin]

Alan & crew,
        The Orion I had over this past weekend to play around in the SS
worked quite well despite a few glitches.  This rig has bounced around
the country a lot, and I think all the jolts have caused a problem in the
headphone audio which started disappearing about 8 hours into the
contest.  I have a tough time copying fast CW with a speaker, so I didn't
put in much time beyond that.  But for those 8 hours I found the RX
selectivity with the factory standard filters was excellent.  S9+20 QRM
disappeared along with any evidence that it was there once it was out of
the passband.  I tended to keep the passband around 300-400 Hz most of
the time.  I did only S&P.  There is no question that I will be upgrading
to one as soon as I recover financially from a recent bout of guitar
acquisition syndrome (GAS).  
        Oh, one comment - here's a suggestion for TT (I'll send
separately):  in firmware 1.363 the auto-notch was fairly ineffective and
slow to resolve on a heterodyne and remove it.  The 1.365 level seems
significantly better.  Wouldn't it be nice for us CW ops to have a
variable attach on the auto-notch such that you could run CW contests and
when encountering a tuner, kick it on with a slower attach so it would
take out the het but leave the CW signals?  There were a few times when I
tried that with 1.363 during the contest, but it didn't seem to work well
in that situation either.  1.365 will take out CW nicely.
        Now the really tough question will be whether to keep the Omni
VI+ as 2nd/back up rig or not?  (Just like should I keep the '73 Martin
D35, or sell it to offset the cost of the OM42?  Gosh these are tough
decisions, but good ones!)

        73,  Duane



On Mon, 3 Nov 2003 17:37:40 -0600 "A. Sewell  N5NA" <n5na at arrl.net>
writes:
> Any comments on how the Orion performed in SS this past weekend?
> 
> I don't have any deep technical comments but mine performed great!  
> I never
> remember being able to pull out so many weak signals.  I could 
> always find a
> spot to squeeze into.  I even found the noise blanker will take out 
> key
> clicks!
> 
> I did have two interesting occurances.  I was CQing with no takers 
> so quit
> and tuned up the band.  I discovered I wasn't hearing anything but 
> noise yet
> there were all kinds of signals on the sweep display.  I cycled the 
> power
> and the signals returned.  This only happend once.
> 
> Another time no one was answering my calls.  I checked and had zero 
> output
> power.  Again, cycling the power returned everything to normal.
> 
> 73,
> 
> Alan  N5NA
> 
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Duane Calvin, AC5AA
Austin, Texas