[TenTec] [Orion] Orion II Noise Blankers

[Chortek, Robert L]

Have you learned your lesson?  Don't complain about noise. Just live
with it, or you may end up in jail, hi.

Bob/AA6VB 

Yesterday I cured a terrible noise problem.  I tracked it down to a
small neon sign above Laundromat in a strip-mall 1.5 miles from my
house.  I called the manager and told him about the interference.  Two
nights ago, I was walking around with my 12-year-old son inside the
Laundromat with a field strength meter tracking the noise, and when I
walked out the door, I saw six cops walking briskly toward me, while
more cop cars were screeching up in front of the building.  Even the K-9
unit was there!  

----- Original Message -----
From: "Grant Youngman" <nq5t at comcast.net>
To: "'Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment'" <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 25, 2006 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] [Orion] Orion II Noise Blankers


>> 2. For me, the hardware NB works somewhat but the s/w NB does
>> nothing.
>
> I suppose it depends on the characteristics of the noise.  I have a
very
> strong pulse noise in my neighborhood (don't know from what, it's a
strong
> "pop" about once per second) and both the HW and SW NB's take it out
> perfectly.  But my noise isn't your noise, and luckily the power
company
> fixed the arcing insulator on the pole pig behind my house a couple of

> years
> ago.  THAT was NOISE :-)
>
>> The DR is what does nothing for me. It operates, but it makes
>> the signals much less intelligable on SSB for a neg negative,
>> and is simply makes copying cw signals impossible in some
>> cases. I can't even use it.
>
> Did you mean NR? I hear a little distortion on SSB.  I can't say I've 
> found
> it makes signals "much less intelligible".  For SSB I run it at "1" or
"2"
> almost all the time, and it cleans things up very nicely.  There is
some
> distortion.   I'd rather listen to a little of that than the watery
sound 
> of
> the typical external LMS noise reducer, although I hope it gets
cleaned up
> in a future release.
>
> I spent some time rereading the manual again, and it reconfirmed some
> comments I made earlier.  Which is that on CW, if you're already using
a
> narrow filter, the NR may not add anything, and may in fact make
things
> worse.  That's partly because the NR is effectively nothing more than
> another very narrow filter around the CW signal.  And partly because
it's
> effectiveness can be diluted if threshold is set to a high value,
either
> explicity in the menu or if RF gain is reduced.  The manual is pretty 
> clear
> on this, and has a reasonable discussion about when it will and may
not be 
> a
> plus to use NR, how to set threshold and NR levels for best
performance,
> etc.  It's function is to improve S/N ratio, not get rid of the noise.
>
> Interestingly, the II manual indicates that Threshold is automatically
> reduced when NR is turned on, and although that did happen in the
Orion
> 1.xxx and was very obvious, it isn't obviously occurring in the II.
The
> radio behaves like that isn't happening at all.
>
> Grant/NQ5T
>
>
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> 

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