[TenTec] In praise of older technology

[k6jek]

I certainly got everyone riled up with this one, didn't I?

Just to be clear, these guys were not giving me grief but I still don't like being the guy who is off frequency all the time even though I often run old, old gear. The Corsair (I) is not a candidate as a National Bureau of Standards reference.

And yes, even modern stuff can be wrong and drift. I will say though that my OMNI VII seems to be remarkably better than my Paragon II so at least Ten-Tec seems to be serious about getting it on the money.

For the hell of it, one of the guys built a GPS frequency standard set up that he somehow feeds into his home brew transceivers. He's a good one to use as in zero-beat to me. Once upon a time I understood how this works but can't remember.

It all gets more interesting when running old separates that drift and don't transceive. The damned 100V drifts so much from cold (unlike say Collins) that I just feed the final carrier signal to a bench frequency counter. There is a nice test point on the 100V that made it easy. If I hit "Carrier", its version of SPOT, I get a readout which I'd venture is more accurate than your average monkey. This is easier than zero beating every whip-snitch.

And yes, I actually do believe being on frequency is better than being off.

Sorry to push all those hot buttons.

Jon