[TenTec] Question about FSK with Orion II

Richard Williams richardw at mho.com
Sun Feb 19 12:07:01 EST 2006


Ken,

I use the Orion II with a Hal DXP38 for RTTY and FSK keying (had the Orion I 
previously with the same setup).
After reading your email, you got me wondering what I did;  so I unplugged 
the DIN and found it to be 8 pin and the cable having green, black, gray and 
yellow RC plugs on the other end.

The idea of opening up the 5 Pin DIN and moving the wire from pin 5 to 7 
would work fine except for the fact that a 5 pin DIN does not have a pin 7.

Thinking back, I just made up a new cable and used one of the ends from some 
old Radio Shack colored RCA patch cables  to split out the leads.  Looked in 
an old Radio Shack catalog and the part number for a set of four was 
42-2309.  I must have found only three (as I used a gray instead of a red - 
which was part of the set of four).

I never used the one supply by TenTec and the one that came with the Orion 
II is still in the box; but if you don't want the "hassle" of making one up, 
I would just replace the 5 Pin DIN with the 8 Pin DIN supplied and re-wire 
it the way you want.  You can get audio in, audio out, PTT and FSK on the 
four different leads.

The rig before the Orion was a FT-1000 Mark V and I had used the same cable 
on it.  Maybe the 8 pin DIN had the same pinouts as the Orion, or I just 
rewired it when I got the Orion.  Was no big deal I guess, because I don't 
really remember.

What was a "big deal" was trying to use a switch to move one mic between the 
Orion and the TenTec 526 6N2 radio.   Took me about 4 "re-wires" and the 
need for a relay to finally get the damn ground problem rectified and 
eliminate hum on the Orion audio (the Orion uses a seperate ground for mic 
ground and PTT ground, and the 6N2 uses a common ground).

Dick K8ZTT
Franktown CO 




More information about the TenTec mailing list