[TenTec] Is the Orion Noisy?

[Bill Tippett]

W0EWM:
 > If you read the full text of
 > Rob's post (Yahoo ICOM-7800 Group MSG# 4755) you will also
 > find Rob's comment "After working with T-T, they redesigned
 > the front end to my spec, and eliminated the two amps, and
 > put all 7 roofing filters in one bank." I'm guessing Rob has
 > a reasonable working knowledge of the performance issues of
 > the  Orion and Orion II.

NQ5T:
 >That may well be.  And I wouldn't posit otherwise.  So even after it was
redesigned to his spec, it's still "noisy".

         With all due respect to Rob, it was ARRL that
first discovered the IMD problem with the 500 Hz filter.
It was my initiation of the Inrad #352 600 Hz filter kit
in January 2004 that solved the problem.  Inrad later
offered this as a complete unit (their #762 filter) and
implemented the single bank idea in Orion II.  Rob
didn't get an Orion to measure until late April 2004
when he was writing his Dayton paper.

         Unfortunately Rob made one suggestion to Ten-Tec
regarding AGC attack times which has made the latest V2
unusable in my opinion.  I could live with its other bugs
but the AGC Attack "fix" has made the most recent V2
sound extremely scratchy (noisy?) to my ears.  I'm hoping
Ten-Tec will reverse that "fix" one of these days.

                                         73,  Bill  W4ZV

P.S.  My comments on V2 are for Orion not Orion II, but
supposedly they share much of the same basic code.