[TenTec] Omni 7

[Toby Pennington]

The following was submitted first to the Omni 7 Yahoo relfector,  but the moderater apparently chose not to post.  I felt it important enough to potential buyers to repost on this forum. 


Sonny" <n4jdb at ...> wrote:
>
> Ten-Tec-Omni-VIIFrom first impressions the radio looks great. I sat 
down and gave a good once over. Best thing I see is the menu screen 
that is impressive. Everything settable on the rig is right there on 
the screen that should make it easy to operate and setup.
> 
> I am saving my money.

I would agree the screen is very nice and the menus operate nicely 
and smoothly. 

Received audio was crisp on SSB and CW, and no noticible raspiness 
in the received cw note like some have reported with the Jupiter. In 
fact the cw note was very sharp and crisp. 

Problems noted with a 45 minute quick perusal of the rig include the 
following:  (My opinions ONLY;)

1. Significant loss of received audio when the BW is narrowed down 
from 500hz to 200hz when listening to a cw note. This was also a 
problem with the initial release of 2.0 BETA firmware of the Orion 1. 

2. When running QSK there are significant key clicks in the speaker, 
and the RF gain has to be run down to about 55 before the key clicks 
subsided. Apparently a TX/RX timing issue which needs to be fixed. 

3. Noise bursts.....at times the rig would produce a "noise burst" 
when turning the BW encoder up and down when in CW mode. On one 
occasion I heard a squeal like sound which I could not reproduce 
later. The "noise burst" was not unlike that which occured in the 
Orion 1 with 1.372 firmware, and which was fixed with BETA 1.373b3.
Remember, this was all noticed while in CW mode. 

These units are early units and reminded me of when the Orion 2 was 
first put on display at the last hamfest. and also when the first 
Orion was put on display earlier. There were obvious rough spots 
which have been fixed with later upgrades. The Omni 7 will be not 
different, and will need some more work before it is released. 

Toby W4CAk