[TenTec] Orion vs SDR-1000

[Duane - N9DG]

--- Charles Greene <crgreene at cox.net> wrote:

> The SDR-1K is the first of it's breed, and subsequent
> hardware will 
> easily surpass any stand alone rig.  If I were Ten Tec and
> the other 
> manufacturers, I would be looking at similar radio, and the
> Pegasus 
> is not a similar radio.  Maybe a step along the way.

Absolutely. Hopefully the Pegasus II will be similar to the
SDR-1000 :).

No doubt that it's the first of a truly new breed. Since it
is so new it is roughly comparable to what the Triton I,
SS200, SB-104 were in the early 70's for 100% solid state
transceiver designs. A number of rough spots to be sure but
clearly the wave of the future. And for an upstart
organization's *first* design/product effort I find the
SDR-1000 to be a really remarkable performer. Easily
surpasses my Corsairs and Omni VI for audio fidelity and
filtering. But yes there is latency, that's simply a
mathematical fact of life when using a PC with a sound card
as the IF system. But since QSK CW is low on my priority list
the latency doesn't matter to me much.

And yeah you can buy brand new PC's with more than enough HP
do whatever you need to and not spend more than $750 with
monitor and proper sound card included, and with a little
judicious shopping probably do it for $500 (or about the cost
of 5 roofing filters). And when that $500 is no longer good
enough for my radio I'll give it to the kids, - can't really
do that with an unwanted roofing filter ;).

While I'd truly love to have an Orion for its clean LO and
excellent close in RX performance it is simply too limited
for what it can ever do user interface wise and the firmware
updates come way too infrequently. 

Duane
N9DG



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