[TenTec] [Ten-Tec-Omni-VII] Re: Digest Number 26

[Paul Christensen]

Just got back from the TT hamfest.  Remind me not to take a "shortcut" 
through the Great Smokie Mountain National Park again.  Travel time from 
Jacksonville was about nine hours.  Great scenic view though.

The hamfest was outstanding. Perfect Wx both days.  My tour of the facility 
was conducted by Paul Clinton.  Paul did a great job of presenting TT's 
history and in explaining every aspect of their manufacturing processes in 
detail.  I have a whole new respect for TT after witnessing the workings of 
their manufacturing environment.  One never sees this level of process 
detail when working in the service industries.

Gary Barbour and John Henry made a wonderful presentation of the Omni VII. 
As epected, much of the discussion focused on Internet capabilities.  A lot 
of though has been placed on making this a true "one plug" solution for 
Internet connectivity.  In addition to Carl's comments, the VII will have 
two roofing filters;one at ~ 20 kHz with the other at 6 kHz.  I suspect that 
performance will be very much on-par with the Icom 7800 prior to its recent 
3 kHz roofing filter upgrade.  Perhaps IP3 will not approach +40 dBm, but I 
suspect that none of us will deliberately run 10 watts into our receivers 
anyway.  IP3 of > +10 dBm should satisfy any real-world operating 
environment -- even contesting.

The rear panel of the VII looks very much like the Jupiter but with the 
obvious addition of the RJ-45 Ethernet jack.  I had an opportunity to use 
the VII and noted no problems with CW.  All the controls seemed to work as 
they should, although it requires much more than one QSO to make any 
relevant judgement.  Build quality appears very solid and the color display 
is actually more vibrant than that used on the IC-7800.

Internet audio coding will be Pulse-Code-Modulation (PCM) over UDP at a bit 
rate of about 7 kHz.  This is a lossless algorithm unlike compressed modes, 
the latter of which work well at low bit-rates, but generally introduce 
substantial latency.  Pure sine waves do not do well with the lossier 
codecs.  So, this is good news indeed.  The default PCM codec for my current 
Internet remote control station is 8kHz and I know how good that sounds --  
there's essentially zero differentiation in audio whether sitting in front 
of the rig or when using a remote laptop PC.  Any reasonable, medium-speed 
Internet connection will work well.

According to John Henry, it should be possible to use QSK with a paddle over 
the Internet and not just on the LAN side of a router.  TT has thoughtfully 
placed the CW side-tone local to the operator.  So, return audio will be 
back in the operator's ear at one-half the ping turn-around rate.

I know a lot of background work goes into making these public events a 
success.  To everyone at Ten Tec, thanks for your generous hospitality and 
for opening up your doors to your customers.  See you next year.

Paul, W9AC