[TenTec] This and That!

[Toby Pennington]

I live really close to the Ten Tec factory and have made numerous visits over the past several years,   and consider some of the employees as my friends.  I have always enjoyed visiting and talking with the different personel at  the plant.

A lot of what I have learned over the past years about ham radio has come from employees at Ten Tec,  and I have a lot of fond memories of talking with employees from the president to service techs over that period of time.   

Ten Tec does a lot of hand holding for a lot of us,  and we receive incredible service when we have problems with our rigs.  It is very comforting to deal with a company that is so responsive when we have a problem with out rigs.  The service department is the best, but.........

Our friend, Ten Tec, is having problems with its latest series of rigs,  namely the Orion 1 and Orion 2.  The firmware is buggy and not working correctly,  and updates are extremely slow in being released.  The rigs are not fully functional as a result.  

Instead of posting our frustrations on this reflector,  which I have also done in the past,  I think it would be good for some of us to actually make a visit to Ten Tec and talk over our frustrations and ideas for improvement with the president of Ten Tec,  Jack Burchfield and Gary Barbour V.P.   Or, if a visit cannot be made, just pick up the phone and calmly express our concerns without  shouting and screaming.  

I believe the main issue is not really whats wrong with the rigs at this time,  but the real problem is a total lack of communication between Ten Tec and its customer base,  to such an extent that customers do not know where they stand anymore with their purchase. 

Customers are left in the dark,  and this is clearly the fault of the management of Ten Tec.  Improving in this one simple area would go a very long way in helping to bring the Ten Tec family of company and customers together in a common effort.  Orion owners would like to know whats going on.....what is being worked on, and what is the timeline for an update for certain issues.  

Let hope our friend, Ten Tec, can make adjustments and begin to communicate with its customer base..... Toby  W4CAK