[TenTec] ARRL Contest

[Richard Detweiler]

I would back up Tom's claims,

This also was my first DX Contest with the Orion,  the OMNI-D was offline 
all the time because the Orion just blew away my best expectations for the 
Orion,

My QTH Has only a Vertical for transmit and receive,  Worked every band 
except 80M as the vertical is set for 75M.  Use the Orion barefoot.  100% 
Search and pounce, no CQing.   Used a PC interface, and had an audio 
spectrograph to help visually zero beat the the stations,  Didn't use a PC 
DSP.

Didn't make many contacts on 160M as the vertical was just too noisy,  but 
40M CW both Nights was wide open,  Litterally everything spotted was heard 
and worked except south korea and hong kong,

The metal farm isn't that good, with limited space, but I was absolutely 
impressed with the Orion's performance in overcoming my antenna short 
comings,

Had another contester 1/4 mile away on 40M both nights,  In the past, I 
could not work the same band as him,  the Omni D just would quite out or 
distort with clicks and hum no matter where he was in the CW band.  Not so 
with the Orion,  Almost never knew he was there,  For Fun once , I tried to 
see how close I could come up to his run frequency and QSO with DX stations. 
  Litterally I could bump up right next to him and make the QSO,  at about 
2KHz I would start to notice the affect of his transmitter,  but could 
clearly copy a weak DX down to about 3 or 4 hundered Hz.  After that, He 
would be too strong for the notch or PBT to eliminate his signal.  He was 
running a yaesu FT1000D, with a rotatable 40M dipole 150Ft in the air.   He 
seemed to do all right, but I hope he isn't too upset with me approaching 
his frequency a few times ;) .  I'll ask him later what my damage to him 
was...

Some things learned,

I think for me the next step is to put up some loop and sheilded loop 
antennas in the attic to see if I can overcome the low band noise problems.

Leave the NR and AN off,  Only mess with the AGC ( wish there was an option 
to override the bottons, expecially the send 1-3 memory buttons for CW/SSB 
Voice,  Used only the PC  If all of us write letters to TenTec,  They might 
listen... ).

Leave the sweep off,  Had problems earlier in the week with it locking up 
the transmit and messing up the Antenna/VFO settings.

Sometimes I run with only the 250 Hz filter and open up the BW,  Sometimes I 
go to Auto and use BW to narrow things down,

One time, I noticed the noise on 20M get out of hand,  tried 15M and was the 
same.  AGC and other things looked right, so Did a master reset,  to my 
surprise, the noise dissappeard,  Something got hosed in side the radio....  
( Had been playing with the NR,  maybee it took over the AGC...)

By the way, this might be a reason why other stations call off frequency,  
Many have to use their ear to zero beat,  For me being a little tone deaf, 
that would always put me off Frequency. That is why I use the PC 
Spectrograph,  It nails it instantly reguardless of the radio I use.

73's
Rich
K5SF

>From: "Tommy" <aldermant at alltel.net>
>Reply-To: tentec at contesting.com
>To: <tentec at contesting.com>
>Subject: [TenTec] ARRL Contest
>Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 23:24:49 -0500
>
>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
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