[TenTec] Contesting with the v1 (not v2) Orion

[Barry Gross]

I'm a member of the Yankee Clipper Contest Club, and we often share
war stories on the reflector after the big contests.  Last weekend was
no different, and some comments made by N8RA really caught my eye:

"20M was like a zipped file, so many stations were packed in such a little
space. The Orion's ability to handle the huge range of signals and its
variable bandwidth and passband tuning was absolutely wonderful. On Friday I
had tried the latest version of Orion software, but its AGC action and gain
scaling seemed really screwed up- lots of pops and screeches on strong
signals made me revert back to a version-1 software which was much better.
Hope Ten-Tec can get this right someday..."

I thought N8RA really summed up the Orion in a nutshell and he asked
me to share these comments here.  For the (half) serious contester,
the v1 Orion really gets the job done in the toughest conditions but
the v2 Orion is STILL not quite ready for prime time.  Ten-Tec's
priorities are what they are, but there's unfulfilled potential just
patiently waiting for the day that the Orion firmware can get some
additional attention.

73,
Barry N1EU