[TenTec] Orion II key click report

[William Q Meeker]

I have been playing in the CQ WW 160 meter contest over the weekend. 
Last night another ham, about 20 miles away spotted me on the cluster 
with the comment "with clicks." I am using my Orion II (version 
2.037j) and was running close to the legal power limit (Alpha 99) 
with a separate receiving antenna so that I do not have to exercise 
the A99's relays.

After that report came through I immediately checked the setting in 
the Orion II and it was at the recommended default of 5 ms, and 
because I have never had any other reports like this in the 5 months 
that I have had the Orion II, and I know that strong stations can 
overload a receiver to cause clicks, I just continued on.

This morning, after the band closed, I hooked up my monitor scope to 
have a look. The wave form looks good, but I have not figured out 
some kind of standard so that I can measure the exact rise/fall time. 
In looking at the archives of this list I saw an old posting that had 
measured the actual rise/fall times against the settings and found 
that the actual times were less. To be safe, for now I changed the 
Orion II to 7 ms.

A few questions:

1. Has anyone measured the rise/fall times in this version of the 
Orion 2? How accurate is the rise/fall time setting of the Orion II? 
And of course, as a statistician, I wonder if this is consistent over 
different units. If several people have done the measurements, we 
could sort this out.

2. If my rise/fall times are set a 5 ms, and the wave form shape has 
the right shape on my scope, could I still be creating objectionable clicks?

3. What other things should I do to check for the clicks?

4. In the Orion II manual (October 2006 version) on page 31 is says 
that   "For external keying the rise fall times available are 3ms to 
5ms regardless of the keyer speed." I can adjust between 3 and 10, so 
I suppose that this is a typo?

Bill
K0KT





William Q. Meeker
Department of Statistics
304C Snedecor Hall
Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011
Phone: 515-294-5336
Fax: 515-294-4040
Home Fax: 515-232-1323
www.public.iastate.edu/~wqmeeker