[TenTec] eagle

[Don Jones]

Yea what Lee said! Perfect! 
I have three watt meters here and all three of them give me different
readings. 
Bottom line, unless you are using a calibrated power meter, any power meter
a ham uses or purchases is for relative indication purposes only. 
When I researched Ten Tec and found that the output of some of their rigs
was rated at +/- 1dB, I made the same calculation Lee obviously did. When I
purchased my OMNI VI Opt 3 the seller advised me he was only getting 80W out
of the rig. I was not concerned and bought it anyway.
When I got it here, I powered it up using a TT 961 power supply and got 100W
out indication from my new VI on my "power meter". 
My guess is that my higher power supply has a slightly higher output voltage
than the seller's Astron power supply resulting in a possibly higher power
output indication on my un-calibrated power meter. 

73, 
Don Jones 
Arlington, WA 


-----Original Message-----
From: wa3fiy at radioadv.com [mailto:wa3fiy at radioadv.com] 
Sent: Friday, April 01, 2011 12:01 PM
To: mike bryce; Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment
Subject: Re: [TenTec] eagle

Mike, 

Are you sure your Omni VI should not have left the factory delivering only
80 watts?   For that 
matter, what was it's power output when it left the factory? 

I ask that because there is a target spec and a tolerance involved.  The
target spec for the 
Omni VI according to my manual is 100 watts max.  What is the tolerance?
Dunno.  the 
manual does not say.  For the Orion, the spec is 100 watts max. plus or
minus 1db.  That 
means that the radio may deliver anywhere from 79.4 watts max to 125.9 watts
max and be 
within spec.   I doubt TT ships radios at the extreme limits but even if
they did, who on the 
other end of the signal would know?    Since the power output depends upon
the setting of 
two pots among other things, there are a number of reasons the max output
power may shift 
over time, etc.  If it is important that the power meter show exactly 100
watts, it can be done.  
But I ask again....why bother?

BTW, I've owned a lot of radios over the years and worked on a lot more from
most major 
manufacturers.  I've not kept a record but my rapidly fading memory tells me
that the output 
power rarely matches the rated power.  Some higher, some lower according to
my so so 
equipped lab.   The numbers I see here and elsewhere whenever this subject
comes up 
represent a VERY small sample of the total number of units out there and are
interesting 
perhaps but of little meaning otherwise.  One would need to take a fairly
large sample to get 
an accurate mean and std deviation.   I used to know how to do that but
remember that 
fading memory.....     :-)

73,

-Lee-