[TenTec] Orion Filter Controls

[Bill Tippett]

N8ME wrote:
 >Instead of having Hi Cut and Low Cut share a knob and BW and PBT share a
knob, it would make more sense if Hi Cut and BW shared a knob and Low Cut
and PBT shared a knob, so that you could have Hi Cut and Low Cut knobs
active at the same time, or PBT and BW.  Generally, when you want to adjust
BW, you are more likely to want to adjust PBT. Similarly, when you want to
adjust Hi Cut, you may also want to adjust Low Cut.  Maybe TT figured that
having the related controls on the same knob, thus made more sense, but I'd
rather not have to be pushing the knob all the time to change the function.

         If I were king I would separate the BW and PBT controls and eliminate
CUT entirely for reasons cited previously.  For every 1000 times I touch the
BW/PBT/CUT knobs, 999 times are to adjust BW, 1 time to adjust PBT (I don't
operate much SSB), and zero times to adjust CUT.  These are personal
preferences and we all use our radios differently.

 >Another nice touch would be to have the radio automatically default to the
knobs as Hi Cut and Low Cut or to BW and PBT (assuming the functions are
reaaranged as suggested above), depending on the mode. Normally in SSB, you
would find Hi Cut and Low Cut more convenient for eliminating adjacent QRM.
With CW, you're most likely just going to adjust the BW to eliminate QRM and
PBT to tune in non zero beat signals.

         Here's one reason NOT to do that.  When using extremely narrow BW's on
SSB, you really need to fix PBT to +150 to 160 for maximum intelligibility.
What you are doing is shifting a very narrow passband to a better area
of the voice spectrum.  Instead of your 1700 Hz filter spanning 0-1700
Hz, you shift it  so it spans 150-1850 Hz, which is much more 
intelligible.  I believe
PBT is the only way to accomplish this in Orion.  In the FT-1000MP, you could
do this in Menu 8-9, so certainly another alternative is do it via a menu, 
but now
we're talking:

1.  A front panel labelling change.
2.  A front panel firmware change.
3.  A menu firmware addition (to allow passband offsets for SSB RX).

         Don't hold your breath on this one!  I'm happy with it "as is" and 
simply
ignore CUT...it's fine with me that some folks like it.  BTW, I assume 
everyone
knows you can reset PBT to zero simply by depressing the knob when enabled
...same for RIT/XIT.

                                                 73,  Bill  W4ZV