[TenTec] Sherwood Reports

Fri Apr 29 17:58:26 EDT 2016

I run both a Flex 6500 and Orion here.  For the Orion I run an SDRplay 
receiver as a panadapter with it.  I find both radios perform extremely 
well and I like them both.  If I could only have one it would be the 
Flex 6500 since it is a lot more versatile.  I use 4 panadapters running 
all the time.  I have one for whichever band I am on, another one always 
on 21 mhz, another always on 28 mhz, and another on 50 mhz.  I can see 
band openings at a glance with this setup.

Carl Moreschi N4PY
58 Hogwood Rd
Louisburg, NC 27549
www.n4py.com

On 4/29/2016 5:40 PM, Duane Calvin wrote:
> So, at the risk of getting my britches burned, buy a 6500 for a little more
> than what the Orion II was selling for (and less if you consider two main
> receivers in the Orion II) and get it all.  And get 4 receivers instead of
> just two, with real live performance that is top notch.  That's where I put
> my $ when I moved from my Orion I, and I've been very pleased after a little
> adjustment in my operating.
>
> 	73, Duane  (donning my asbestos britches)
>
> Duane Calvin, AC5AA
> Austin, Texas
> ac5aa at ac5aa.com
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of
> Rick at DJ0IP.de
> Sent: Friday, April 29, 2016 4:04 PM
> To: 'terry foskey'<n5tf at yahoo.com>; 'Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment'
> <tentec at contesting.com>
> Subject: Re: [TenTec] Sherwood Reports
>
> That is kind of correct.
> It has a receiver preselector, but it is not like those we are accustomed to
> in our ham band transceivers.
>
> We hams expect a dedicated preselector (bandpass filter) per band, just
> slightly wider than the ham band.
> The 6300 has several BPFs in its front end but they are all several MHz
> wide.
> So it basically is a barn door, open wide.
>
> The problem is, there are commercial applications (and Government
> applications) conflicting with our ham band applications.
>
> We are generally interested in listening within our own bands and we want to
> reject everything outside of it.  The other guys often want to monitor
> several MHz of frequency at once and a BPF would be detrimental.  In order
> to please both worlds, you would need filters for both applications.  This
> is only available in the more expensive version (i.e. 6500 and 6700), but
> not in the entry level 6300.
>
> This is an age old problem.
> All the way back in the 1950's and 60's, OEMs such as National and
> Hallicrafters were faced with this problem... shall we optimize for ham band
> only or for general coverage (GC)?  As a result they often built two models
> of each receiver design, a GC and a Ham-Band-Only.  Obviously the
> ham-band-only was better for our use but we didn't have GC.
>
> Throughout the late 1960's and 1970s, our hybrid transceivers were all
> ham-band-only.
> They all used downward [IF] conversion.
> About 1980 saw the emergence of ham radio transceivers with GC receivers
> within.  In order to accomplish this, they switched to upward conversion
> (i.e. IF usually 45 MHz or higher).
> The result was a 3rd order dynamic range about 20dB worse than the previous
> generation of transceivers... but nobody knew it....  except perhaps Ten-Tec
> who refused to go down that detour street.  The Corsair and Omni V and VI
> continued to be ham-band-only with downward conversion ande were much better
> than all of the JA radios, especially with our European problem with
> shortwave broadcast stations.
>
> With the Orion the term roofing filter was introduced and the world once
> again became aware of the virtue (for us hams) in downward conversion.  The
> past 10 years has seen all JA brands except for Icom migrate back to
> downward conversion.
>
> Then the SDR (direct conversion, not heterodyning like the Orion) came onto
> the market and the world immediately jumped on its ability to receive a
> broad frequency range simultaneously.  This new feature apparently fogged
> over the eyes of most hams.  Though they saw merit in the ability to have a
> broadband receiver and display, then failed to realize that once again they
> were compromising ham band performance.
>
> All of that translated into plain vanilla English:  Seems we still can't
> have our cake and eat it too.  Unless we're willing to spend a lot of money,
> we're going to have to accept compromise (i.e. ham-band only instead of
> broadband - or broadband with lesser performance instead of ham-band-only).
>
> What we need:  direct conversion from hf to baseband (af) but with darn good
> ham-band bandpass filtering... in our first RX, and then a second RX with a
> wide BPF for monitoring multiple MHz.
>
>
> 73 - Rick, DJ0IP
> (Nr. Frankfurt, Germany)
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of terry
> foskey via TenTec
> Sent: Friday, April 29, 2016 10:37 PM
> To: tentec at contesting.com
> Cc: terry foskey
> Subject: [TenTec] Sherwood Reports
>
> I had a Flex 6300, one thing that I didn't like the idea of was it had a
> different receiver front end than that of 6500 and above...seems like I
> recall it had no preselector, never tried it in a heavy RF environment but
> it would be interesting to evaluate in a contest station environment or
> Europe.
> Terry
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