[TenTec] ??QSK GONE AWAY

[ac5e at comcast.net]

Hi Tommy: Well, K5TO is 66, I'm 69 myself, and way too much playing with high powered short barreled rifles has left me about like Red Skelton's Cauliflower McPug. So it's easier for me to run a little slower than I would maybe prefer, and turn the volume up a bit to compensate for the built in sirens. And turn the sidetone down a bit so my ears lack of AGC is not so much a distraction. 

I hope the Orion does maintain a 3:1 dot dash ratio at all weights, since so many would be fast boys drop the weight to below 2:1 and some go as low as 1.5:1, making copy difficult and sometimes impossible when conditions are less than perfect.  A string of 50 WPM dits mixed with static is not very informative. Just tried playing with weight and from the sidetone it appears the manual may be correct, since the sidetone at least sounds more like Farnsworth with wider spacing between characters. 

On the NR - every Master Reset I have done has turned the TX off, the aux in gain to 4, keying loops off, the NB off and the NR to 1. And reset the AGC to default. Among other things. And hitting User 1, or User 2, does not get me back to where I want to be. So I just use the cheat sheet with my preferred settings and spend much less time trying to figure out why it don't work like I think it should. (Yes I have Carl's program but I am sot in my ways and prefer to operate the radio directly)  After the reset and all that the NR worked very well. Or at least it did last night. Lemme check - yep seems to work FB this morning as well. 

I agree, the VFO knob is a little tetchy - but not nearly so much so as it could be, and not enough to cause me problems if I lay a steadying finger on top of the rig and turn the VFO knob with thumb and forefinger. Short of taking 5 steps to make a change I don't know how you could make it less sensitive, since it's one opto-isolator step to toggle on/off/ or go up/down now.  

Besides,  it would not be that touchy if I didn't insist on drinking three or four pots of coffee a day. Caffiene  raises Ol Ned with fine motor control, and with a man's ability to keep 10 shots in the X ring. And gives you a terrible headache when you suddenly have to do without!  As in suddenly having to drink that dishwater the hospital calls coffee. 

Anyhow, the Orion is not perfect. But it's the best rig I have had here and that includes most of the "performance" rigs. So I will keep it until something better comes along. 

73  Pete Allen  AC5E





--
Never squat with your spurs on