[TenTec] Omni 6 sensitivity

[Tommy]

Boy, isn't that the truth!!

In '92 I bought an Omni 6 and a Titan 425. During the 11 years of 
very hard use, they seldom ever had any failures. I was also into 
contesting, DX'ing, and 'fast' CW. During those years I bought an 
FT-1000MP and four different Icom IC-781's and did four to six 
months of A/B antenna comparisons at my QTH, with the intention of 
keeping the one that worked best for me. The Yaesu and the Icom's 
were sold and I still have my Omni 6. To me, with out a doubt, the 
Omni 6 had the best receiver you could get your hands on, that until 
the Orion came out (but won't go into the Orion story any more).

The Omni 6 could always hear the very weak DX signals on 80m that 
the Yaesu just could not hear; the IC-781 was very close in 
sensivity, but the AGC set up on the Omni 6 would wipe away 
lightning QRN that would kill the 781's rcvr.

During a CQ WW DX contest, I was sitting on 7.030MHz running 
European signals, both strong and very weak ones. It suddenly dawned 
on me that the band had become very quiet, so I opened up my filters 
on the Omni 6 and was shocked to find I had been bracketed by two 
40dB over signals, one 500 hz up and the other 500hz down. I never 
knew they were there...and could copy VERY weak European signals 
with no problem. That performance still amazes me today.

For CW, the selectable roofing filters in the Orion are extremely 
good. I have the Inrad 600 hz roofing filter in the 1khz slot for CW 
and it is extremely good...just too bad I have so many other 
'little' problems with the Orion.

Be careful if you use the Omni manual to 'tweek' up the receiver 
path. If you do it wrong, you can mess up the way the noise blanker 
circuitry works, which makes you think the receiver front end will 
not handle strong signals. Truthfully, even after 12 years now, I 
don't think my Omni 6 needs any 'touch up'.

The Omni 6 just has to be one of the best radios ever produced for 
ham radio use.

Tom - W4BQF

"So you have enemies?
Good.
That means you have stood up for something,
sometime in your life."
--Sir Winston Churchill--

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <DennisKT5D at aol.com>
To: <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 19, 2004 5:18 AM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Omni 6 sensitivity


>   I had an Icom-765 for awhile which sported a very good receiver 
> comlete
> with all the filters for cw work. It had the PBT and IF shift mods 
> done as well.
> I sat it down beside the Omni 6+ and did some testing. Ambient 
> noise level on
> both was almost identical with perhaps the edge to the 765. At the 
> time the
> 765 was matching up with some plans I had for reconfiguring the 
> shack so I was
> about to decide to sell the Omni 6+. Then the CQ WW CW DX contest 
> came along.
> After A/B comparison during the contest, I abruptly changed my 
> mind about
> reconfiguring the shack and selling the Omni.
>   What I discovered was this. I could tune between two strong US 
> stations a
> couple of kHz's apart with the Omni and copy a weak DX station, 3 
> to 4
> s-units, easily.  Switching to the 765, I absolutely could not 
> hear the weak DX
> station. All I heard was an elevated noise floor due to the close 
> in strong US
> stations. Clearly, to my ears the Omni is the superior contest rig 
> of the two. The
> 765 could hear as well as the Omni in non-contest conditions so 
> sensitivity
> was not an issue. Both radios exhibited the high pitched hiss on 
> white noise
> but again, the 765 wasn't quite as bad as the Omni. The 
> selectivity was what
> really separated the two radios in contest performance.
>   If your radio doesn't seem to be as sensitivity as it should be 
> perhaps
> there is a problem with it. The Omni's reputation is well earned 
> here and the
> 765 is gone.
>
>
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