[TenTec] Orion Update

[Richard Detweiler]

Bernard,

Congradulations on trying the Orion,

Here is some of the discussion I've been following for good info on AGC 
settings.

Thanks
richard.
K5SF


>From: Bill Tippett <btippett at alum.mit.edu>
>Reply-To: tentec at contesting.com
>To: tentec at contesting.com, orion at contesting.com
>Subject: [TenTec] Orion AGC settings
>Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 09:02:28 -0500
>
>N5TW wrote:
> >I really have to thank Sinisa for his postings on receiver settings and 
>for
>W4ZV for underlining their significance.
>
>         For some reason Sinisa posted a third on the Orion reflector,
>so here are all three together (in order):
>
>
><http://dayton.akorn.net/pipermail/tentec/2004-February/042164.html>http://dayton.akorn.net/pipermail/tentec/2004-February/042164.html
>http://dayton.akorn.net/pipermail/tentec/2004-February/042183.html
>http://dayton.akorn.net/pipermail/orion/2004-February/000226.html
>
>         Last night I was listening to YI9ZF on 80 while waiting for him to
>move to 160.  He was right at my noise floor and was QRV for quite
>awhile before 0200.  It was an excellent chance to play with Orion's AGC
>settings, and also to experiment with K6STI's DSP Blaster on Orion's
>audio output.
>
>         Here are the AGC settings I found worked best under those 
>conditions:
>
>Threshold 95 uV
>Hang .63
>Decay 20 dB/S
>
>Using these, I could take Kas from about 339 to 449, and I seemed to
>be hearing better than most.  At times he dropped below my noise floor
>to the point that I thought he had gone QRT.  Then he would again rise
>above the noise and be OK copy.
>
>         I was frankly astounded at what DSP Blaster would do!  It was not
>only helpful for finding Kas' signal using the waterfall display, but
>made Q4 copy into solid Q5 copy.  The Coherent CW feature splits the
>signal into in-phase and out-of-phase components, and when you listen
>to this with stereo headphones, it almost makes the signal sound like
>it "jumps" out of the noise, even though it is only a theoretical and
>measured 3 dB difference.  I saved both my settings for Orion and
>DSP Blaster so I can experiment more with this in the future.
>
>         I got everything set up on 160 after Kas QRT on 80, but he did
>not show up on 160 immediately.  Both RA6AX and A45XR had decent
>signals and A45XR was peaking 569 at 0229 near his sunrise.  He runs
>a kW to a vertical but with just a few radials, so I expected Kas'
>100 watts to a 20m high inverted-vee would be much weaker.  I was
>amazed to hear Kas on 1837 at 0230 CQ-ing with a 569 signal!  No DSP
>or fiddling to copy him 100%, although I had left Orion's settings
>as noted above.  I worked him for #311 on Topband and listened to him
>for the next 1.5 hours until he QRT at his sunrise just before 0400.
>Kas peaked 579 so he was even stronger than A45XR was at his sunrise!
>The AGC settings were quite comfortable to use and I could copy most
>of the EU and Russian stations Kas was working (UN7AM was 579!), and
>even many that he could not copy...I felt like I was VE1ZZ!  The only
>major problem was when some strong NA stations would call zero-beat
>and of course that took the AGC awhile to settle down afterwards.  I
>believe it would be possible to use similar AGC settings in a contest
>especially if you didn't have extremely strong stations inside Orion's
>passband.  I may give this a try if I decide to do ARRL DX CW on 160.
>
>         Again thanks to Sinisa for causing me to play with the Hang and
>Decay settings.  I had discovered the effect of Threshold myself but
>probably would not have tried such high settings for Hang if he had
>not made those posts.  I've now had Orion nearly 6 months and am
>continuing to learn new things about how to use it properly!  I also
>continue to learn more about K6STI's DSP Blaster which is a fantastic
>program IMHO.
>
>                                                 73,  Bill  W4ZV
>
>
>
>
>
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