[TenTec] Choice of rigs for contests

[Rob Atkinson, K5UJ]

<<<...And the main reason has nothing to do with
performance. It's familiarity. These folks depend on a bunch of volunteer
ops descending on their QTH for a weekend of work/play. The only rigs the
various ops know by heart are those MPs. If a contest station suddenly
presented these volunteers with a bunch of nifty new software-driven rigs
to play with, there would be pandemonium as they tried to learn it in a few
hours/minutes. So I think, oddly, the last people to switch over to
superior, modern equipment like the ORION or the forthcoming IC-7800 will
be these "big guns.">>>

You have probably hit on a reason.  When I attempted to operate an Orion I 
found it very difficult to figure out.  Many front panel bits of information 
were cryptic and unintuitive which kind of surprised me since the Omni VI is 
a breeze--it practically operates itself.   I can imagine that would be a 
problem at first, at a multi-multi station with a lot of guest ops.  If the 
7800 is easy to figure out without a lot of manual study time it may wind up 
in some shacks, assuming the performance is there.

Rob Atkinson
K5UJ

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