[TenTec] What is Ten Tec Doing Today?

[David and Dianne on Comcast]

Bob,

With all due respect to you and no offense 
intended, this is my "op-ed" to your posting of 
October 10^th . Let me first say that I am a big 
and long-time TT fan (20+ years) and have owned 
and still own much of their equipment...Omni V.9, 
(2) Corsair II's and an Omni VII. I also enjoy 
reading your comments on the reflector which are 
very helpful. But I have a disagreement with your 
comments on certain aspects of TT's recent 
perfromance.

In May 2012 I bought my Omni VII understanding 
beforehand that it was both getting 
long-in-the-tooth and lacking in some 
long-promised performance enhancements that I was 
concerned about. Nevertheless, after discussions 
with John H. at Dayton, I was assured that the 
Omni VII was to be both long-lived in their 
product line and soon to be improved via firmware 
enhancements to address my pre-purchase concerns.I 
bought one.

In the first 18 months of ownership, my Omni VII 
has been a good rig and in some surprising ways 
preferable to my early K3. But it needs to address 
one major RX shortcoming and several other feature 
enhancements. As for patience, I am near the end 
of mine. Months turn to years. Nothing is done. 
IMO TT has dropped the ball regarding the Omni VII 
enhancements discussed long before I ever bought 
mine in 2012.

As for real time sweep, while it would be a nice 
and I would probably purchase one, it was never a 
game changer for me as I knew what it was going 
in. As for improving Ethernet performance, as I do 
not use the rig remotely, it is also not of a 
concern to me. But I certainly understand how it 
would be a major issue if you bought your Omni VII 
for this express purpose.

So then what concerns me the most with my Omni 
VII? One issue is small and one is big.

The Omni VII brochure states in it, to this day 
that: "/TX Speech Monitor: //Modulated IF after 
filtering, processing/". The Omni VII manual 
states in it, to this day that: "/A monitor 
function has been provided for the operator to 
listen to the sound of actual transmitted SSB 
audio/".It originally performed this way but it 
does not now and has not for many *_years_*. It 
was quietly changed to a "pre-filtering and 
pre-processing" SSB monitor long ago. Inquiries to 
TT over several years by many have brought verbal 
promises to have it revisited, but to date they 
have not done so.

Is this a really big deal...no, but it's 
disappointing to me and it's misleading to 
discriminating potential buyers.

But my biggest issue with the Omni VII is its poor 
RX AGC performance. The Omni VII RX AGC is highly 
susceptible to QRN transient and impulse noise 
spike swamping. Over the past two summers during 
the height of the QRN season, it was often nearly 
unusable here at my QTH.

If anyone has */never/* used a pre-DSP analog 
receiver, they probably believe that this kind of 
RX AGC performance is the norm and/or that the HF 
bands are always this noisy. When compared to an 
analog radio side by side, one will find out that 
neither is the case. Thus why I keep the CII and 
Omni V in the stable. I urge anyone to review the 
Bob Sherwood presentation at the Drake Forum at 
Dayton in 2007 as he tells the story there: 
http://www.sherweng.com/index.html.

Circa late 2008, Elecraft enhanced their then new 
K3 with firmware to address their impulse 
transient RX AGC issue and remedied their problem 
in a matter of */days/*. I have an early K3 and it 
does not so suffer. Why can't Omni VII owners get 
something similar without waiting months and 
months and now years? The Omni VII RX AGC is 
terrible in this regard.**

Ten Tec has turned the Omni VII enhancement 
process into their version of "Waiting for Godot" 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot). 
With no more Jupiter and Orion II, the recent 
shrinking of its HF transceiver product line 
raises other concerns with me as well.

As many zealous TT followers have stated here 
emphatically, it's TT's business and they can do 
what they want. True. But it's my money and I can 
spend it where I want.

IMO it's time to instill a sense of concern and 
urgency with TT management. Despite what some 
readers may think I have implied in these comments 
above, I really do want them to continue and to be 
successful....and to be better.

What's Ten Tec doing today? I'm not at all sure.73 
de N1LQ-Dave