[TenTec] Orion SSB Challenge: why no Orions heard?

[K Van Horn]

Hi Rob,

To answer your question, because it hears so much better than the rig it
replaced (an ICOM IC-756PRO II). In talking with W6OBB and the group on
3840, I sat the rigs side by side, and did a comparison for a week. With the
PRO II, I could talk with ART and one or two other stations in the group.
When the ORION was being used, I could talk to ART and 5 or 6 other stations
in the group. There was nothing wrong with the PRO II, it is an excellent
radio, the ORION simply hears much better. If you can't hear them you can't
work them. The ORION's 6khz front end roofing filter made all the
differennce in the world in that it kept all of the man-made noise that
exists at my QTH out of the later stage digital signal processing . The 20
khz wide roofing filter allowed all of the crap into the DSP of the PRO II
which then became a very noisy radio that masked the weak signals from the
west coast. At the end of the 7 day test period, I sold my IC-756 PRO II and
kept the ORION. The noise reduction software and hardware noise blanker in
the ORION also works much better than the the corresponding features in the
PRO II (i.e. the noise blanker in absolutely ineffective in the PRO II and
yes, I checked it and it was working).  No doubt in my mind whatsoever that
I did the right thing for Ragchewing and Contesting!!

73 es gud DX and Ragchewing,

Kirby,  W7SV

Houston, TX
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rob Atkinson, K5UJ" <k5uj at hotmail.com>
To: <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Saturday, October 11, 2003 3:47 PM
Subject: [TenTec] Orion SSB Challenge: why no Orions heard?


Maybe they were all bought up by contesters so you never hear them because
they are intended to be
rigs for competitive operating.  To put it another way, if 95% of my
operating were just hanging out
with the guys on the phone ragchew bands (these days 20 - 160) which BTW is
95% of my operating, I'd be running a ragchew rig, something $1.5K less.
So, since casual ragchewing is where hams talk about their rigs and
listeners find out what they are running and the Orion isn't a rig for that,
you don't hear about them.  They may be on the air, but in pileups and guys
saying CQ contest over and over again.  Just out of curiousity, for everyone
who owns an Orion but isn't into dx paper chasing and contesting, but mostly
ragchews, why did you purchase such a high end rig?

Rob Atkinson
K5UJ
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