[TenTec] Orion in CQ 160 CW

[Bill Tippett]

         Excerpted from full contest report at:
http://dayton.akorn.net/pipermail/3830/2004-January/087156.html

CONTROL:

With 9 different RX directions plus the two TX antennas, I need to work out a
better control system for next year.  Orion has some great capability in
Diversity mode which I need to take better advantage of with better RX antenna
control.

EQUIPMENT:

First time using Orion in the CQ 160, although I've been using it since August
with good success in both CQ WW contests on 10 meters.  I turned off my 
Beverage
preamp during the contest and never heard any IMD products, with Orion's
internal preamp ON and with max RF gain.  The danger I see with Orion is that
the DSP filters are so sharp at ~500 Hz that it is easy to miss off-frequency
callers, and I suspect I missed several this weekend.  I think the solution is
to use Orion in Diversity with a narrow filter on the Main RX / preferred
direction Beverage, but use the Sub RX with a wider BW / different passband and
secondary Beverage direction or perhaps an omni TX antenna.  Also for the first
time, I tried using Orion's Sub RX to scan the band when runs became slow and
this worked quite well.  This can become much better after more practice and
after I figure out a better control scheme for RX antennas feeding the Sub RX.
BTW, my Orion had zero crashes or other problems using Ten-Tec's latest beta
software.

                                         73,  Bill  W4ZV