[TenTec] Foot in my mouth...

[d.e.warnick at comcast.net]

Excellent post. 

This is what I meant when I said that if the current specifications are not doing the job, then a thorough review of them may be in order. 



Don't beat yourself up or apologiz e for thinking out loud. You opened a subject that allowed a lot of excellent discussion. When is the last time that you were involved in decision making by a staff or committee in which the first idea was the final answer? Your comments were an excellent catalyst to start a process that is desparately needed. Let's hope that we continue to move forward on both fronts,  technical compliance (with a possible set of new standards) & operator education. As one commenter said, there is and will continue to be a lot of the existing equipment in use for a long time. Educated hams can use it with minimal problems. 


Thanks, not only for the first post of this series, but for all your informative & interresting comments in the past 



Dave 

WA3F 


----- Original Message -----


From: "Rick - DJ0IP / NJ0IP" <Rick at DJ0IP.de> 
To: "Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment" <tentec at contesting.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 6:36:52 AM 
Subject: [TenTec] Foot in my mouth... 

What was I thinking? (!) 

  

No, I do not want government regulating our transmitter technology. 

I've had worse ideas, but this one was right up there! 

I guess I was just thinking out loud and got carried away in the wrong 
direction.  Sorry. 

  

The fact is,  the current TX rules were written in another age, when we were 
all using a different technology. 

They are no longer sufficient. 

The ARRL and Rob Sherwood are testing this stuff, but most of us (including 
me, until recently), just look to see that it meets the legal specs, and 
tick the box. 

  

I think we (the ham community) should determine what we need and perhaps the 
ARRL, DARC, etc. should drive suggestions to local legislators to get a new 
definition that would help clean up the bands.  It would be better if the 
manufactures would just do it without legislation.  I bet they would if they 
thought it would sell more radios. 

Hey, we got them to give us better receivers.  So why can't we get them to 
give us better transmitters? 

Well we can. 

  

Two tone testing (alone) is inadequate. 

Rob Sherwood has been doing some white noise testing of the transmitters. 

Transmitters previously thought to be good, suddenly are no longer looking 
so good. 

Jim has mentioned pink noise. 

Whatever it takes, but we need to improve our methodology for testing our 
transmitters. 

The ARRL has a committee for determining what and how they should test 
transceivers. 

These are the guys who can help drive the change. 

  

The fact is, there are SIGNIFICANT differences in the noise and in the width 
of the signals of transmitters currently on the market. 

When using a bad transmitter together with a 1.5KW amp, even though using 
good adjustments, it  has the same effect as when some  LID  turns up his 
mic gain and compression gain on a good radio to an excessive level and 
drives an amp.   

  

It is within our power to improve the knowledge level of our fellow hams, 
but even a good op will have a bad signal with some of the radios on the 
market today. 

How many hams know this?  I didn't know it until I began looking in detail 
to Rob Sherwood's recent work.  (don't just look at the receivers) 

IMHO, far too few hams know this.   

Most still think it's the bad hams causing the bad signals on our bands. 
It's BOTH.   

  

When we have a technical discussion about this TX problem, we need to STAY 
FOCUSED and give specific facts.  They are available.  The manufacturers 
follow these discussions too. 

If everyone jumps into the discussion and starts blaming the  LID  operator, 
*this dilutes the message to the vendors*.   They can simply point their 
fingers at the LID. 

  

All of us agree that poor operators are causing problems. 

Some of us still need to acknowledge that at least a part of the problem is 
coming from poorly designed transmitters that are being sold to everyone, 
whether a good or a bad operator.  Once we have done that, then we can get 
focused on the problem, just as we focused on Receiver Problems over the 
past two decades.   

THEN we can finally hope to see some improvements on our bands. 

  

As a side effect, maybe some of the poor operators will start to think about 
the problem too and learn how to clean up their act. 

  

73 

Rick, DJ0IP 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

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