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

[Ron Castro]

I can see RF and power supply problems causing the first failure, but that 
A9 board capacitor problem seems to hit everyone eventually!

         Ron  N6IE
      www.N6IE.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John K Gotwals" <john at gotwals.com>
To: <tentec at contesting.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2008 10:26 AM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Orion II A9 Board Failure...Again!


>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]
>
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