[TenTec] love my Omni V

[Joe Roberts]

John:

No idea what to do about the extra display digit. That is a freaky 
problem, to be sure!

As for mods, I'd say use the rig for a while and see if anything jumps 
out as needing work. For me, excess audio gain and maybe excessive IF 
gain are bugaboos of this rig. It is a super hot RX and it is easy to 
run it into distortion with all controls up.

Have a look at the W3TS mods and the mods listed on the Ten Tec Wiki, 
but I wouldn't mess with anything until you familiarize with how the rig 
works stock.

One thing you need to know is the RF gain control is your friend. Adjust 
for best perceived s/n ratio. I usually run it at 1:00 or wherever the 
band noise starts to drop out. There is a point where band noise seems 
to drop more than signal and that is where I want to be.

I also found that the controls can be a bit touchy. A few degrees 
movement of the BP/Fade or IF Shift knobs can make a big difference 
under certain conditions and these settings are quite interactive. RF 
gain and AF gain also have tiny sweet spots sometimes.

I installed the product detector bias mod recently discussed here and on 
the Yahoo Omni V group. Seemed to help with what I took to be 
overdriving of the product detector, but I have no way to quantify or 
measure before/after. Now I can run RF gain up higher if I want to. 
Appears to be useful or at least it fooled me!

The best thing I did to my Omni V was to recap the logic board, display 
board, and IF/AF board with modern "digital age" low ESR high frequency 
caps. This greatly reduced internally generated noise.

I can turn my AF and RF gain all the way up on a dummy load and only get 
a minor hiss. Before the recap it was quite noisy. Maybe yours is better 
than mine was.

I think I put a bigger cap in the slow AGC to increase the time 
constant. Stock value was too fast for me on sideband.

It is also a good idea to take an afternoon to clean all of the internal 
connectors with Deoxit...and don't forget to clean the power connectors 
every now and again. I use a baby toothbrush dipped in Deoxit on the 
male pins of the board connectors, then connect/disconnect once or twice.

What I would really love to see is a mod to make the noise blanker work. 
I've heard there was a late NB board with three wires going to the 
control pot that works, but mine is purely ornamental. Useless.

Overall, I love my Omni V too. It doesn't have the superb audio quality 
of an older Omni C or Triton, especially on SSB where it sounds a bit 
mechanical in comparison, but overall it is a great performer. I kept it 
while selling off many other rigs in the meantime, because it works so well.

It really doesn't "need" too many mods.

Joe N5KAT