[TenTec] ARRL Contest

[Tommy]

IMPRESSED!!!!!

This contest was the first time I've had some decent antennas, my Titan 3, and my Orion all set up and running to suit me at my new retirement QTH in south GA. I chose to work primarily 80m CW to really wring out the Orion receiver. My previous contest experience consist of years running contest from my old QTH in VA and a couple of years at the 80m position at W3LPL. All of my previous contest I used either my Omni 6 or my IC-781 and did pretty well (but certainly no 'big gun').

I want to say a lot of 'nice' and 'pretty' things about the Orion, but that would just take too long. With VERY strong USA signals and VERY weak Eu and JA signals on 80m, the Orion was (and I hate to  use this word) just awsome! At several different times, I sat 400Hz above W3LPL (40Db over) and picked out 100w Eu AND JA signals in rather poor band conditions. Run the BW at about 330Hz, tweak L CUT to about -100, then readjust BW back down to 330Hz...W3LPL disappears and the rather weak DX signal just pops out of the noise. Very impressive performing receiver.

The only 'glitch' was when I was in the 'run' mode, I put the TX on VFO B and was able to tune the main RX with VFO A. With my sidetone set for 700Hz, stations continiously called me anywhere from 100Hz to 450Hz below my xmit frequency...never could figure that one out! I also kept the sweep turned off, partly because it's pretty useless with it's current v1.369 firmware (I dont care either), plus I'm not sure that TT has fixed the 'power dropout' when running split VFO's with the sweep turned on.

I think someone mentioned this previously, but I would love to have 'sweep-ON', a menu selection. When the sweep was turned off, the space on the display could read the AGC settings.

I really did not think the Omni 6 receiver could be improved on in big signal/weak signal contest conditions, but it certainly has been over-shadowed by the Orion in my station.

Member, TT Worshipers Cult

Tom/W4BQF