[TenTec] Orion and SSB

Thu Dec 23 21:04:52 EST 2004

Hi Robert and Happy Holidays,

Glad to hear things are improving with your Orion. Kinda hard to 
equate moving your WiFi that operates at 2.8GHz to reducing the 
noise in your SubRx? But you really never know what other unfiltered 
'garbage' those things might be producing! 
Fortunately/unfortunately, I had been living with dial-up out here 
in the sticks until this past August when I finally got DSL here. 
Then installed WiFi router, sitting three foot away from my Orion 
and other rigs, and did not notice any change is noise level when I 
hooked that up. I've also been using the Astron 70 amp linear supply 
since I got this station set up; it's an overkill to just use to 
power the Orion or Omni 6 or the Plus, but it's the kind of overkill 
I like to have. I did hear and read a service note from Astrom about 
their recommendation to physically ground the negative lead to the 
power supply chassis, but have not done that yet on my power supply. 
By the way, I also have ferrite clamp on's on every lead going to my 
Orion, even including the speaker leads and never saw any 
improvement here. Actually I did not expect to see any improvement 
because I have no RFI problems in my station. But then too, I've 
never seen ferrites that were able to cure firmware problems!

The failures you have at 'crucial times' is one of my main 
complaint's about the Orion. Since I love to do contesting, that is 
just something I did not pay $3500 to have to put up with. Plus Ten 
Tec still has not lifted  a finger yet to try to solve the issue of 
running their own Titan 3 amplifier in the Orion's keying loop.

I now have a solution for me...I recently purchased a late serial 
number Icom IC-781...it has extremely clean receiver audio, the QSK 
at normal speeds and at high speeds is just excellent, and so far, I 
have not yet had to do a Master Reset! Strange as it may seem to 
some on this reflector, my Corsair 2, my Omni 6, and my Omni 6 Plus 
seem to work flawless here in this set up and even with the Titan 3 
in those rig's keying loop. I just must be doing something wrong 
since the Titan 3 works in three different Ten Tec rigs keying loop, 
but will continue to randomly fail when used with the Orion keying 
loop.

Nope, for me, the Orion will probably never be 'my radio'.

Opps!! I better shut up before Toby tells me I should go to the Icom 
reflector.

Hope you have a great Christmas Robert!

73,

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: "Robert Carroll" <rlcarroll at patmedia.net>
To: <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 8:22 PM
Subject: RE: [TenTec] Orion and SSB

> Hi, Tom-
>
> The outcome here has been looking up.  After the last firmware 
> load the
> receiver was definitely a better performer but I still had 
> horrendously
> timed rx and sub rx failures--usually when calling the VU4 or some 
> nice 160m
> DX.  By the time I would get things running again the dx had gone.
>
> Finally the subreceiver started to fail in "noisy" mode.  It 
> actually
> sounded like it was alive but there were no signals--and the band 
> like noise
> was fake, because if you disconnected the antenna the noise on the 
> main rx
> disappeared but the sub rx still had the noise--which at times 
> could sound
> like ignition noise, thermal noise, or an old motorboating 1930's 
> antique
> with dried out bypasses.  TenTec decided this was a hardware fault 
> and sent
> me a replacement though used board.  This cured the noisy failure 
> but the
> "silent failure" for both receivers and loss of transmit and some 
> other
> truly bizarre failures occurred.  Ten Tec called and said the 
> Astron 35
> supply I happened to be using often had a faulty connection 
> between the
> negative lead and metal and suggested I change supplies.  I moved 
> to an
> Astron 70A unit and the situation seemed marginally improved, but 
> again I
> had failures--of course at crucial times.  I had already put 
> ferrite on the
> lead to the amp relay as I had seen some mail saying several 
> people had
> found this crucial.  Still the failures.  So I put ferrite on 
> everything
> coming into the Orion including the data port.  I also moved a 
> WiFi
> router/amp which was nearby.  Since then it has not failed in any 
> way--and
> this is over a four day period.  This was unheard of for me.  So, 
> I am not
> sure just what I did that helped, or even for sure that it won't 
> sink back
> into the former condition tomorrow, but I am greatly encouraged. 
> To top it
> off I managed to work the VU4 this AM.  A nice Christmas present.
>
> My son-in-law and daughter just got back form a few days in 
> Atlanta and
> bought a house while they were there.  I guess I better accelerate 
> my pace
> of getting this place ready to sell.
>
> '73 and Happy Holidays
> Bob W2WG
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: tentec-bounces at contesting.com 
> [mailto:tentec-bounces at contesting.com]
> On Behalf Of Tommy
> Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 7:40 PM
> To: tentec at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TenTec] Orion and SSB
>
> Amazing isn't it? The only complaint's you hear come from people 
> who
> are having problems....man...that must be a brand new concept!
>
> 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: "John Gwin" <jtgwin at comcast.net>
> To: <tentec at contesting.com>
> Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 7:27 PM
> Subject: Re: [TenTec] Orion and SSB
>
>
>> Exactly the same here - full legal power, Heil mic, no problem,
>> unsolicited complimentary reports.
>>
>> And did you notice, its usually the same folks having trouble and
>> complaining?
>>
>> Mine works fine.  Thanks, T-T.
>>
>> -W4SK
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Ron Spencer" <ronspencer at nc.rr.com>
>> To: <tentec at contesting.com>
>> Sent: Thursday, December 23, 2004 6:10 PM
>> Subject: [TenTec] Orion and SSB
>>
>>
>> We often hear of the troubles people are having but rarely do we
>> have that
>> balanced with comments from those not having trouble.
>>
>> I have the Orion and am using, with no troubles, a heil pro
>> headset. In fact
>> even got some compliments on the audio during the 10 meter
>> contest. And yes,
>> that's running 1500 watts.
>>
>> Best of luck to those having trouble in tracking it down.
>>
>> 73     Ron    N4XD
>>
>> -- 
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>>
>>
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