[TenTec] Help request on Orion I

[Lee Armitage]

I sent the email shown below last night and received an auto responder that the Service Department at Ten Tec was closed for the next four days for Christmas.

It is an Orion I S/N 04C10584 running 1.372 firmware. The jumper wire mod has not been done for Version 2.

I thought perhaps another Orion owner reading this reflector may have had the same problem and could give me some direction.

I have only had the Orion I for a week and am in the early learning stages with the manual. Definitely an Orion newbie.

Power supply is Astron RS-35M with 13.78 output with rig on.

I did a Master Reset and cleared user memory when I got the rig last week.

The only thought I have had and this is a wild guess on my part is to download the 1.372 firmware from Ten Tec or get it from a local friend that has it on CD and reinstall the firmware. Does this make any sense? 

I would prefer not to spent $150 round trip shipping to Ten Tec if this an operator error on my part.

Thank you in advance for any ideas or suggestions anyone has. 

Lee Armitage 
N0LYW/AE
Western Colorado
970-234-8989




----- Original Message ----- 
From: Lee Armitage 
To: service at tentec.com 
Cc: Lee Armitage ; Steve Van Houweling ; Steve Grewe 
Sent: Friday, December 22, 2006 1:43 AM
Subject: Orion I S/N 04C10584



Good Morning Paul,

Lee Armitage, N0LYW, here. We spoke yesterday about the fact that when you turn this Orion on after it as been sitting overnight the screen remains blank for about two minutes until full clear display after the led's light up in the analog S meter. The first thing you see if the freq that the radio is tuned to after a full minute and a half or more.

If the radio has been used and is turned off and within a few minutes turned back on, the Ten Tec screen comes up and then the freq pops up which seems normal to me.

My guess is what happens when the radio has sat overnight is that the screen is so cold that when it is tuned on the Ten Tec screen does always display but is not visible and then a minute later the freq SLOWLY comes into view. The room temp is usually 65 to 75 F, not that cold.

I could live with the screen situation, but wanted to mention it in case it is related to a more serious issue outlined below.

Sometimes when I walk away from the radio, leaving it ON,  for an hour and return the six control knobs located directly above the main tuning knob are all disabled. I cannot change volume on either receiver, the MULTI knob will change nothing regardless of what is selected on the screen and the RIT/XIT knob will not work. Before I walk away all of these knobs are working perfectly and nothing has been changed by myself to disable these knobs.

I can turn the radio off and back on and this may fix the situation, but not always. When it has failed and I do the off and on routine with the radio, you can see the MAIN AF knob try to move the volume screen bar indicator, but after a slight jiggle, nothing more happens. The MULTI knob remains disabled.

Essentially, when one knob works, all six work. When any knob has failed all six have failed.

Then at other times, the off and on routine, fixes all the knobs and the work perfectly for quite a while.

I believe the CUT and PUT/BW knobs also fail along with the other four knobs and will confirm this next time I have this failure.

When the six knobs have failed other parts of the radio seem to continue to function normally, but I have not done any extensive test of this.

The previous owner, Steve Van Houweling, WB0UGO, said that if the radio needed repairing within the first 30 days of my ownership he would cover half the cost, so I am trying to determine if this problem pre-existed my ownership. I noticed the blank screen when I first took it out of the box and turned it and had to wait over a minute to see anything and then if very slowly showed the freq.

The six knobs going dead happened the second day I used the radio.

I will give you a call Friday morning and see what you recommend.

If we can trouble shoot and repair it here by telephone I am happy to pay you the normal consulting fee for this help.

Other than these issues which I am sure are solvable, I love the radio and it easily outperforms the FT1000MP it replaced.

Thanks and 73,
Lee Armitage N0LYW
Western Colorado
970-234-8989