[TenTec] V2.060b Release Comments

[Merle Bone]

I agree that this V2 release for the Orion - V2.060b - has a lot of new changes to like.

The "Split" indicator and Band-stacking Register IDs are a good ergonomic improvement. 

I ran some SSB tests of the "Signal Processing" with a friend tonight and got very good reports on the audio quality all the way up to a 9 setting. He said there was a "little echo" sound at 9 but clear and good quality audio (He knows me well and knows how my voice sounds). The local power meter and his remote S-Meter both indicated about a 3-4db increase in power from no processing to processing at level 8 - but no "processed audio" sound. The V1.373b5 gets about 6-7dB of power improvement with no "compressed audio" sound. So there is still some room for improvement in this area for SSB DX work - but  good performance in this release.

There is some "audio artifact" on the CW keying sidetone.

The "Monitor" audio seems improved. Checking it against my friend on the other end of an SSB circuit it seemed to what he was hearing on the other end. Previously it had some distortion which was not apparent on the other end of the SSB circuit.

The AM receive is excellent! Opening up the bandwidth made a huge improvement!

The "Noise Reduction" does seem to be nicely improved when using it with SSB - which is likely to be the best use of this feature. There seems to be very little "attenuation" of the signal through level 8.

The QSK speed seems to have been improved in this release. I can copy a carrier between code elements  to about 27WPM and between characters up to 40WPM or greater. Nice improvement. 

All in all this seems like a real improved V2 release for the Orion. I plan to run it for a while - first time I haven't gone directly back to V1.373b5 since the early V2 beta testing. With a little more average power improvement on Speech Processing and finding a way to keep signals taken out by the notch filters from "pumping the AGC." and this could be the best release "ever" for the Orion - from my usage perspective.

Thanks TEN-TEC!
73, Merle - W0EWM