[TenTec] Observatons

[Tom Whiteside]

I am sort of amazed at all the comments about the new firmware.   From reading these, you'd come to the conslusion that the new version is not the way to go - my experience with the new firmware has been VERY different...  I have loved my Orion for the receiver I but have always added caveats when recommending it due to the instabilities - the worst being loss of audio in the subreceiver at the worst possible times.    With the new version, the sweep works and I have yet to need a reboot despite very heavy usage since the update.

Weak signal 160M work is my principle winter love and I would swear, if anything, the new firmware is better with weak signals.    I'm not a fan of the old style S-meter backing off with threshold but can live with that.    NR seems quite effective to me - now it gives me more control over the aggressiveness level than before.   I mostly prefer to control those parameters myself but sometimes use NR.    Comments about the audio notch performance not being as good and not affecting the S-meter do seem justified.    QSK and amplifier keying are working perfectly here with the new version.   I had some of the same artifacts trying to use the monitor on SSB but the actual transmit audio sounds super good to me using a separate receiver.  And now, the compression level adjustment really seems to do something and is well behaved.

I would *NEVER* go back to the old firmware myself!

Tom N5TW