[TenTec] Buying a New Orion

[Mark Erbaugh]

Bill,

>          The funny thing is, Orion's outstanding front-end performance (as
> is true
> for the K2) has absolutely NOTHING to do with computer technology.  It has
to
> do with superior analog design of the front-end that has been around for
> literally
> decades.  The mistake some manufacturers have made has been to think that
> 128-bit CPU's at 50 GHz can overcome basic limitations in the analog
front-end.
> Sadly, some of them still believe that (but that's good news for Ten-Tec).

I agree with you for now, but I do think that that will be changing,
especially as the interface between analog and digital moves closer to the
antenna. To my knowledge, all existing radios must do some analog RF
processing before they convert the signal to digital to perform the DSP
magic.  When I got my first PC ( an Apple ][ ) in 1980, I was intrigued by
the possibiliy of doing audio signal processing, but the speeds and dynamic
range weren't there with a 4 MHz clock and an 8-bit processor.  Since that
time, we've seen the advent of digital audio and then digital video.  Modern
desktop PCs have no trouble keeping up.  Digital RF has got to be just
around the corner.

73,
Mark