[TenTec] Orion - Questions

[Ken Brown]

I have some questions for those who have Orion documentation, or know a 
lot more about the Orion and may be able to confirm or deny a few of my 
perhaps naive assumptions. Here are my naive assumptions:

1) Every oscillator in the Orion is either a DDS oscillator or a 
digitally controlled PLL oscillator. So that data loaded into some DDS 
or PLL circuit is what determines the output frequency of those oscillators.

2) The Orion is a firmware upgradeable radio.

If those two things are true, why is not the following so easy to do as 
to be called trivial? I would think that one of the great cost savings 
advantages of a firmware controlled radio would be that they could use 
filters with a greater tolerance of center frequency, therefore making 
fewer of the crystal filters coming off the production line rejects.

Shoot, even my Kenwood TS-440, bought in 1988, had some DIP switches 
inside that I thought were used to move the BFO to just the right places 
on the SSB TX filter skirts. Yes they have a lot of phase noise, but the 
TX and RX frequency readout was always correct. That was seventeen years 
ago. I know the Orion must be quieter and a better receiver, but is it 
not also more flexible with respect to filter center frequencies that a 
17 year old JA rig?

>It's not that simple because Orion's firmware
>expects the old 500 and 250 slots to use 9.000750
>MHz center frequency instead of the 9.001500 MHz
>the first bank filters use.  The filters would
>not be centered unless there were an internal
>firmware change, and I doubt Ten-Tec would want
>to do that since then the 500 and 250 slots would
>not be IF centered.  Good idea but the different
>IF frequencies for the first versus second filter
>banks would not allow it. 
>
Just curious,

DE N6KB