[TenTec] Orion II A9 Board Failure...Again!

[John K Gotwals]

I purchased my Orion in August of 2005 from Ten-Tec. In March of 2007 smoke 
came out of the Orion, and it was returned to the factory for repair. In the 
invoice, Ten-Tec wrote "Replaced fried 10 volt regulator, resistors, 
capacitor on logic board."

In July of 2007 the Orion would not power up, and it again was returned to 
the factory. This time Ten-Tec wrote on the invoice "Replaced bad capacitors 
on power distribution board." They also wrote "Checked with customer 
regarding possible power supply problem."

It is now late June of 2008, and the Orion is working fine. My power supply 
is an Astron RS-35A, which seems to be working normally. I should mention 
that I use an Acom 1000 with my Orion, and before I made some major antenna 
changes I did have a fair amount of rf in the shack.

John, N9JG

= = = ORIGINAL MESSAGE = = =
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:19:27 -0700
From: "Ron Castro" <ronc at sonic.net>
Subject: [TenTec] Orion II A9 Board Failure...Again!
To: "Ten Tec List" <tentec at contesting.com>
Message-ID: <DC35B7F9E1AD4AFA8BF7B1C980E9693D at OwnerPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

About 10 months ago, the capacitors on the A9 Power Distribution board 
failed, and I sent the radio back to the factory to get it fixed.  Well, 
just 10 months later, the same thing happened again.  This time, I decided 
to fix it myself with premium capacitors purchased through Mouser.  The fix 
worked!  The 470 uf, 16 Volt, 85 degree C caps, C6, C7 and C9 were replaced 
with ultra-low ESR 50 Volt, 105 degree C units that fit perfectly in the 
board.
[snip]