[TenTec] "End of an Era"

[Paul Christensen]

> Bravo to the TenTec Omni VII, Orion II, Icom 7800 & Yaesu 9000. They are 
> the last of the dinosaurs of this generation. They are in the same 
> position as the Johnson's, National's, Hallicrafter's, Hammarlund's and 
> others the day before Collins introduced the S line, way back when.  I've 
> been looking at the Software Defined Radios. The SDR 1000 transceiver 
> looks good..."

Wow, that's quite a sanctimonious and back-handed compliment if I ever heard 
one.  The SDR-1000 may very likely become a "dinosaur" sooner than you 
think.

The SDR-1000 certainly produces some good performance numbers, but much of 
the impressive high-signal handling performance comes at the expense of 
mediocre MDS.  Refer to the ARRL's last lab report and witness that the 
SDR-1000 missed their published MDS specification by 10dB -- and that's 
using their preferred low-noise M-Audio Delta sound card.

History has shown that radios without a good user interface (e.g., real 
knobs and displays) are adopted by a small set of users.  I suspect the vast 
majority of the buying population does not want to "kluge" a radio system 
together from a handful of computer components.  I've been there, and I'm 
done with it.   The SDR-1000 has been available for some time, and while it 
is going through an evolutionary process, I suspect their sales growth is 
increasing, but at a decelerating rate.

Paul, W9AC