[TenTec] Top receivers

[Bob McGraw - K4TAX]

Floyd, I agree with you and with many of the other writers.  The receiver 
performance has been pushed ahead and largely demanded by "users" in a 
competitive market while the transmitter performance is largely controlled 
by outdated Government regulations.

Yes, it is time to clean up the bands and push for cleaner transmitters and 
power amps.  However, how does one control the outdated transmitters in use 
today?  Put a time limit on them saying they must meet the current specs or 
be trashed by a certain date?  They have done that for other applications 
and equipment such as the switch from analog TV to digital TV.  That was 
expensive for everyone, specially the broadcasters.  But look how it forced 
the price of digital TV's down.  The price dropped some 75% in just 2 years. 
Imagine a top of the line ham transceiver for under $2K.  Of course one has 
to look at things differently, i.e. a business vs. a hobby.  Then there are 
countries which mandate when a vehicle gets X number of years old they are 
crushed thus can no longer be used.  That was done to largely effect a 
reduction in air pollution and it worked.  Maybe that would work for ham 
radio.

I'm all up for cleaner bands and cleaner signals.  I believe today we have 
to forgo the idea of 12 volt radios to attain that desired result. 
Technically there is no problem with that concern either.  As one wrote, 
there's the 200 watt class radio that only outputs 75 watts when running in 
class A mode.  Are we willing to accept that fact or are we a culture that 
is too number driven?

I don't like Government intervention any more than anyone else, but some 
effort by manufactures, pushed by Government regulations and us buyers that 
pay our hard earned money for these boxes need to demand better 
transmitters.  That's "better" in terms of cleaner, lower noise, and lower 
IMD products and operators that  operate them correctly.  It is a very large 
topic and will need to be addressed on an international basis.


73
Bob, K4TAX



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Floyd Sense" <floyd at k8ac.net>
To: "Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment" <tentec at contesting.com>
Cc: "John K3GHH" <k3ghh at arrl.net>
Sent: Sunday, May 13, 2012 4:33 PM
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Top receivers


> Interesting article, and I know it addresses only the receivers, but
> sometimes it's just hard to keep quiet.  I guess that with the current
> state of the art in these high-end transceivers, it would be reasonable
> to assume that the transmitter sections must reflect the same high level
> of performance.  Sadly, that's not the case.  Specifically, the CW
> waveforms generated by the FTDX-5000 that I owned and tested were simply
> terrible.  The actual elements transmitted bore no relationship to what
> was heard in the sidetone when operating QSK mode.  While the QST
> reviewer accepted the Yaesu claim that units after the second run had
> the problem corrected, that turned out not to be true and units from the
> fifth run and later still had the problems in spades.  Yaesu offered a
> "fix", but owners had to pay shipping both ways to the west coast and
> the turnaround time was measured in weeks.  One fellow who had the fix
> installed reported that he could no longer hear anything from the
> receiver when operating QSK above 20 WPM.
>
> My intent is not to complain about the 5000, but to point out that it's
> not safe to make any assumptions about the quality of the transmitted
> signal based on the ranking (or price) of the transceiver.  I've
> recorded the CW signal of both an FTDX-5000 and Orion II on a separate
> receiver and analyzed the recordings with an editor.  The Orion
> waveforms are textbook and changing the CW rise/fall time in the menu
> actually affects the resulting waveform as you'd hope.  That was not the
> case with the Yaesu.  I am not a Tentec cultist and the Orion II is my
> first Tentec transceiver.  But, I've owned all three of the transceivers
> mentioned in the article and to me there's no doubt about which is the
> all-round best.
>
> 73, Floyd - K8AC
>
> On 5/13/2012 5:50 AM, John K3GHH wrote:
>> Did list members notice the article recently mentioned in the ARRL
>> Contest Update? I haven't pored over it thoroughly, and am not
>> qualified really to understand it, but the FTDX5000D and K3 come out
>> on top; the Orion 2 is then said also to have "extremely high
>> performance," and the article's comparison table includes only these
>> three radios. Finally, the Perseus SDR is mentioned.
>>
>> http://www.edn.com/article/521690-High_performance_HF_transceiver_design_A_ham_s_perspective.php
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> TenTec mailing list
> TenTec at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
>