[TenTec] Orion Finished?

[Tommy]

Duane and Buck...

Thanks very much for your suggestions and comments.

I received my Orion in July of last year and it's been on probably more time
than it's been off. Prior to firmware update v1.370, the loss of RF output
power was quite common and an acknowledged and a worked on firmware problem
that Ten Tec continued to work on since as far back as September. However to
get it to stop transmitting, you had to be operating CW, using split VFO's,
and have the sweep running.

That problem was completely fixed (or from my operating experience, 25 hours
using the above specific set up during the CQ WPX contest, it was.) with the
release of v1.370 in May of this year.

The loss of audio and the loss of RF output power has just started occuring
with the installation of v1.371 and again, it takes specific operating
conditions to exhibit the problem. With my Orion, this ONLY occurs when I'm
driving my Titan 3. It does not occur if I run the Orion barefoot. When
xmitting, with the Titan 3, there are random  loud audio pops, similar to a
large appliance in your home turning on/off, in the sidetone as your
xmitting. Randomly you lose audio and ramdomly you lose RF power. It does
not seem  to matter which VFO you are using and it does not seem to matter
if the sweep is on or off.  By spending a lot of time this past weekend,
doing memory resets, master resets, going back to v1.370, going through the
resets, and then going back to v1.371 and doing the resets again, I finally
found out that this problem ONLY occurs when you have the factory default
audio of Left/Right/Speaker set for BOTH. If you change those three items to
MAIN, the problem goes away.

In my opinion, none of the above can be considered hardware problems as they
are fixed or caused by firmware updates.

I know the guys  at Ten Tec (Gary) worked feverioushly on fixing the 'split
VFO' problem and I am confident they will do the same for the 'BOTH'
problem.

The CW rise time information was brought to my attention by another well
known ham, I just verified it on my Orion. Since he 'discovered' it, he
should be the one to publish the information, if he so chooses.

Thanks for your suggestions guys.

Tom - W4BQF


> Tom
>
> I haven't had those kinds of problems.  Maybe you should send yours  back
to
> TT for a check up.  You shouldn't be losing RF power or  audio.
>
> On the CW issue, I don't have an o'scope. The CW note sounded a little
hard
> at 5 ms but sounds nice to me with a 6 ms rise/fall.  Could you elaborate
on
> the problem?
>
> k4ia
> Craig  "Buck"
> Fredericksburg, Virginia USA