[TenTec] My new ORION

Mon May 23 21:51:35 EDT 2005

Considering that Rolls Royce went into receivership in 1971 and was
eventually acquired by Volkswagon, who spun the struggling company off to
BMW in 1998 while Ford and Chevrolet div. of GM have been around since their
humble beginnings, I find the relevance of comparison a mute point.
Icom has many other products of various cost and performance levels, which
Rolls Royce had no low end products. The IC-7800 is their flagship, top end
transceiver, while TenTec has the Orion, which costs significantly less but
seems to fill the price notch for folks who don't mind waiting two and a
half years and still having an unfinished product with a number of bugs
which have gotten to a point that a total rewrite of the software package
was decided to be necessary. Anyone who thinks that this will finally be the
answer to all your prayers is in for another disappointment. TenTec doesn't
have the deep pockets of ICOM, YAESU, KENWOOD, or some of the other
manufacturers of Ham Transceivers.
The biggest problem with the Orion is the fact that Doug Smith wasn't
allowed to complete the project to perfection. With 2-3 years of R&D that
went into the first prototypes and now another 2 1/2 years of production, it
seems that many folks are quite happy with their Orion's as they developed
so far. Personally, I found the one I bought used, about a year ago, too
cumbersome to comfortably set up and operate under all the various
conditions and modes that I use. It was truly not user friendly and did not
respond as any other transceiver I ever used, making the learning curve too
steep for my old mind. There must be a lot of Orion advocates that are quite
a bit sharper than I, even after being in this hobby nearly 45 years now. I
also must commend them on their patience with the releases of software
upgrades that actually turned out to be downgrades in quite a few cases.
I have no real commitment to any one manufacturer and over the years, I've
used more equipment made by different manufactures than most others I know
with like seniority in this hobby. When the Orion was in my shack, I also
had my trusty Omni VI Plus, my 12 year old Kenwood TS-950SDX, an Icom
IC-7800, and a TS-830S. Every rig has all available options and filters as
applicable, along with the SM-230 monitor/bandscope.
Every review is somewhat subjective as to ergonomics, appearance,
performance, and ease of operator use of all the design features as
required, so I can only give my opinion, for what it may be worth.
The Omni VI Plus is the leader of the pack in the reception of weak signals.
It is lacking in some of the desirable bells and whistles, especially the
lack of dual VFO's, but is my favorite for CW DX'ing on 160 & 80 Meters.
TenTec should have never discontinued the manufacturing of this transceiver,
but continued with more refinements as an Omni VII. It hears better than all
others but is very close in all but the most extreme conditions. I just
ordered and received the #765 INRAD roofing filter kit for it, but due to
other priorities, I haven't gotten around to installing it yet, but I
anticipate even more versatility with this in conjunction with the TenTec
#221 I've already got in my model 564 VI Plus
The lack of the dual VFO has been overcome by using the Omni VI Plus as an
external RX to the TS-950SDX, which has 150 watts output to amply drive my
HF-2000 Amp, where 100 watts falls a bit short. The TS-950SDX is the top dog
for most everything else than weak signal CW DX'ing on 160 & 80 Meters, but
at times I've found it equal to the Omni VI Plus in that area. It has the
best SSB audio, both RX and TX, with it's adjustable DSP and Comb filtering.
The ole TS-830S has a great low noise RX and plenty of goo on TX, but it is
circa 1980 and still requires "tuning" the 6146's to resonance. It's also
needed its share of repairs over the decades and I have kept it around more
as a backup and the fact that it has a great receiver and isn't worth all
that much on the used market today as most hams of the past couple of
decades would not want to go through a tune up procedure whenever any large
excursion in frequency or band change was desired. I saved the IC-7800 for
last. It is probably the fanciest transceiver I've ever had the opportunity
to have in my shack. The bandscope still didn't seem to equal that of the
SM-230 and the display actually hurt my eyes. The rig did everything the
specs indicated it would. I got it at a magnificent price, but still nearly
3 times that of an Orion. As hard as I tried to like it, it looked more
impressive than it actually worked. I even hooked it up to a Viewsonic 21"
LCD monitor for awhile, but I think they went way overboard with bells and
whistles, although still quite user friendly, I put it on an equal
performance with the TS-950SDX and not quite as good with the total DSP and
I guess I like the sound of crystal filters. I actually broke even on the
sale of it and that wasn't a bad experience.
The Orion was also sold off as I just couldn't see myself waiting for more
software upgrades when I felt it didn't hear any better than the Omni VI
Plus or the TS-950SDX, nor did it have enough RF output to drive my amp to
legal level. I'm probably talking about a fraction of a dB there, but again,
the Omni VI Plus, with a bit of tweaking, puts out about 115 watts, which
seems to be just adequate to get 1500 watts output on every band without the
concern of overdriving or flat topping. I run the ALC with the TS-950SDX,
but that seems to change a bit on some bands.
Those who stuck in reading this so far, I hope you've gained some insight
that the IC-7800 is not the ultimate answer to being the best transceiver
available, but my feelings are that neither is the Orion, although I hope
some day it may be. To those of you happy with their Orion's as they exist
today, I am happy for you. Bottom line is that is exactly why some of us
drive the brands and types of cars that we do. Some like GM, some Ford, some
Chrysler, and others might like the Rolls Royce. FYI, I once drove a Silver
Shadow Rolls Royce about a decade ago. Back then I owned a Goodyear
certified Auto and Truck service center and had lots of opportunities in the
upscale neighborhood that my store was located to drive some real exotic
vehicles. That included Ferrari's, Lamborghini's, and Roll's. The Rolls
Royce was by far the nicest, smoothest, quietist vehicle I ever drove, but
now we're quite far away from the subject and again it's all subjective and
we're all different in out likes and dislikes. FYI, I drive a Buick (with an
IC-706MKIIG).
73, -=Rog-K9RB=-
A-1 Operator's Club, active all bands and modes.
#1 DXCC Honor Roll - Mixed, Phone, and CW.
312 on RTTY, 5BWAZ, 5BWAS, 206 on 160M.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Joseph A. & Ruth O. Ryan" <ablee at bellsouth.net>
To: "Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment" <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 7:53 PM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] My new ORION

I don't think comparing an Orion at $3,300 or so with an ICOM 7800 at,
what, $11,000.00 is
worthwhile.  To me it's like comparing a Ford or Chevrolet to a Rolls
Royce...but then.....whatever
rings your chime...I personally appreciate my Orion above all others....It
replaced a Kenwood TS950SD.
73's
Joe, KX4JR

At 07:26 PM 05/23/2005, you wrote:
>Grant,
>1.I'm talking about narrow dynamic range as well.
>Right now Orion will not handle week signal at 1kHz or 5kHz spacing from
>the strong signal S9 +35dB. This is the fact.
>Everything is distorted-period.I'm not talking about specification. This
>is real life test with 1.372 firmware.
>IC7800 will handle week signal under the same condition.
>I know -I did it.
>2. Orion will handle week signals close to strong one
>perhaps even better than IC7800 but only with different firmware. I will
>not go back to 1.371 I will take  new one 2.0.
>3. I don't care about your radio I care about majority of Orion's with
>1.372. This is known problem and Bill has described it very well.
>4. Everybody would prefer to turn the function ON or OFF
>with one PUSH of the botton-this is normal way.
>You should not need to push "AN" first to get black backround on it and
>than push it again to turn it "ON".
>
>Also, tell me how many times do you have to turn the knob
>in order to lower  the AGC treshold from 10uV to 0.37uV- is it about 200
>times? This needs to be corrected as well.
>Anybody else has this problem???
>
>I like my radio but it has problems.Even Ten Tec will tell you that.
>Also,I'm sure that Ten Tec will improve ORION.
>But they need good feedback.
>If everything is so good like you are trying to tell everybody, than why
>good number of ORION's was returned to Ten Tec for refund. We need to help
>Ten Tec to stop this
>trend. We will not do good job if we close our eyes and pretend that
>everything is great.
>Ten Tec and Elecraft are the only two Co. that understand
>how to design good RX. So, Ten Tec just needs to finish
>this great radio.
>Mark WQ7X
>
>
>
>
_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec