[TenTec] Lousy eHam review

[ss409ss at aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Menzel <retire at means.net>
To: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment tentec at contesting.com

"I believe he also intimated that two of his "friends" tried Orion's and 
couldn't make them work, either.  "
 
 
 
 
 "Birds of a feather flock together... William Chaucer
 
 
 
 
 
  When I bought my FT100 in August of 99, it was out since April of 99.. Figuring the bugs would have shown by then, I dove in. Anyway, I soon found out that there were problems and slowly the solutions were arriving, but not too many comments or upgrade offers from Yaesu. In fact they were pretty quiet about the whole thing and simply sold one defective radio after another and modded them upon return.. It got so bad, that the turn around was 3 months at one time.
 
 It had muffled audio,ran hot on rx and tx, rx degradation, never was happy with any match, hi swr icon was on as soon as the TX light came on, rf issues etc..  I then upgraded the rig with all of the mods for the rf issues,fans etc, came out with one of my own for the mic and took the opportunity to add in the filters,tcxo and tone decode board. I then began to try to educate those in the same boat and that Yaesu was sticking their heads in the sand on the issues. I was met with such resistance by those who didnt YET have the problems or were just too plain dumb to notice..  The same people met with fate sometime down the road when the finals would fail from the abuse and then they would cry like babies.. The joke was on them for not listening...
 
  I will say this, after the mods were completed, I worked thousands of contacts while mobile and it ran cool, rx was the best I've ever heard, tx audio was fantastic.. A true diamond in the rough and I am not sore one bit that I had to spend 3 hours on a 1300 dollar radio to make it right. In fact I never had any final problems nor any failures. But I was thrilled as the Naysayers dropped like flies..
 
I can believe that TT or any other company can produce a lemon from time to time and that some radios never work right. It can happen.
 
  If you are going to comment on a particular rig though, your review would be much more acceptable if it provided proof or examples of what you experienced and it makes you much more credible if you do it in an acceptable fashion, otherwise you will be marginalized.. 
 
My experience above was typical of most who purchased the FT100, but I took the time out to fix it as opposed to complaining about it as Yaesu appeared to be less of a help than just taking matters into my own hands. Richy N2ZD
 
 
 
   
 
________________________________________________________________________
Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free.