Well, I've had my Orion since last Wednesday and I'm continuing the
evaluation.
I must say that the receive audio is a beauty to hear. I could listen to it
all day. From what reports I've gotten, the transmit audio is pretty decent,
even with just the 705 mic.
However, I'm getting more and more annoyed by apparent bugs in the user
interface and by some inconsistencies or even deficiencies in the design.
APPARENT BUGS
1) switching the headphone audio source while in Panoramic CW reception can
cause the radio to loose main Rx audio altogether. You have to go back into
Panoramic CW mode and undo what you have done. I panic reset doesn't even
seem to clear this.
2) the saving and recalling of the mode to memory is inconsistent. Saving
the sub VFO to memory causes a memory entry with NONE for a mode. Saving and
recalling a memory to/from the main VFO does work, but if you recall that
memory to the sub VFO, the mode of the sub VFO does not change. Supposedly,
the filter setup (PBT / BW) are not saved in the memory, but recalling a
memory to the main VFO seems to reset the BW to some arbitrary value (I saw
3000 Hz), that isn't related to either the VFO setting before the memory
recall or the VFO setting at the time the memory was saved.
3) saving to the digital voice recorder can cause the loss of main rx audio.
Again a PANIC reset didn't restore the audio. I did find that a power down /
restart did restore audio.
4) the mode and step setting menus and the screen display get confused if
the VFO A is assigned to the sub Rx and VFO B is assigned to the main Rx.
5) the manual notch settings seem to wrap around as you tune the multi knob,
they go up to some value around 4000 and then reset to around 0. However,
there is some carryover and it doesn't go back to zero, but has some small
offset, such as 3 Hz. Since the step size for tuning the notch is fixed,
this 3 Hz offset get carried around ( 103, 203, 303, etc) until it wraps
around the high end again and ends up with a different offset.
6) the auto notch seems ineffective against a 40m AM carrier heterodyne and
increasing the AN parameter seems to degrade the rx audio without removing
the heterodyne.
7) many of the screen elements don't completely erase when they are removed
and leave 'artifacts' behind. For example, bring up the sweep display and
then turn it off. The box around the sweep display is not erased. Also,
while transmitting, observe the SWR indication replacing the on screen
S-Meter display. When you go back to receive, there will be a dot left over
from the SWR indication to the right of the S-Meter.
8) This is probably nit-picky, but in a top of the line radio, you expect
attention to detail. Note that in the display for the main Rx, the
parameters (mode, PBT, BW, RIT) are have their right sides aligned (right
justified). Note that in the display for the sub Rx, PBT, BW and RIT are
right justified, but mode is one character position offset to the left.
9) Pushing and holding the Hi/Lo cut knob is supposed to clear the Hi/Lo cut
and return to the BW/PBT setting. However, the BW setting is not being reset
properly, but instead reflects the cut that was introduced.
DESIGN INCONSISTENCIES
1) The menus provide ways to select the audio for the speaker, and left and
right headphone, but not direct way to select which Rx audio is fed to the
AUX audio output on the back of the radio.
2) Speaking of the AUX audio output, the supplied cable and the manual show
that the DIN connector is 5 pin as in the Jupiter and Pegasus. However, the
actual connector on the back of the radio is an 8 pin connector
(fortunately, the 5 pins in a 5 pin DIN connector mate with the 8 pin
connector). A look at the schematic shows names for the other three pins,
but I haven't found any additional documentation.
3) FSK is available as a mode selection. There is not much mention of it in
the manual. There is an online document about RTTY operation, but it refers
to using a computer soundcard or modem to generate tones. In my
understanding, that mode is more correctly called AFSK.
4) PBT and BW steps have to be selected from a menu. When operating in SSB,
a large step, such as 100 Hz seems convenient, but when operaing CW a
smaller step, such as 10 is more appropriate. When changing modes, it would
be nice if these steps would change automatically.
5) The digital voice recorder appears to only save 4.5 seconds for each of
the 3 slots. That seems pretty limiting given that most of the other
onboard or accessory DVR's let you save 15 seconds or more. Also, it
appears to take 25 seconds to "SAVE" the recorded audio so that it can be
used. There appears to be no way to adjust the playback level of the DVR.
The DVR appears to require PTT (or VOX, I've not tried that) to record
audio. If you exit out of the DVR record with the PTT engaged, the rig goes
into transmit.
6) When setting parameter values in the menu that have values such as ON or
OFF, the mult knob will only work in one direction (i.e. CCW goes from ON to
OFF and CW for OFF to ON). It would be more conveneient, if the multi knob
toggled through all the possible values ON-OFF-ON-OFF, etc
7) There should be a way to set a TUNE power level. You shouldn't have to
cut the power manually before doing a TUNE.
8) There should be an easy way to enable / disable the internal tuner
without having to go into a setup menu. A lot of people have resonant
antennas for the some bands and don't need the tuner there, but need it for
other bands.
9) The sweep range is selectable among several values from 4.5 kHz to 72
kHz. First off, those ranges seem based more on computer convenience than
user comfort. Ranges list 5 kHz, 10 kHz, 20 kHz, 50 kHz would be much more
user friendly. But more importantly, it seems that when going to a narrower
range, instead of taking finer sample points, the radio just displays the
same number of sample points per kHz, but the points themselves become
blocks.
For example, (these numbers are approximate guesses) assume that the display
is about 288 pixels wide. With a sweep of 72 kHz, that means that there is a
sample every 250 Hz (4 per kHz). If you decrease the sweep span to 4.5
kHz, that would would mean that you could have a a sample every 16 Hz or so.
However, it seems that the Orion continues to sample at 250 Hz intervals and
just widens the width of each sample (to 16 pixels) in the display.
Also, though it's hard to tell, given the granularity of the display in the
narrower ranges, it seems like the display is not centered on the carrier
(or suppresed carrier) frequency. When tuning an USB signal, you would
expect all the signal peaks to be above the center of the display and with a
LSB signal, they would be below the center. However, it looks like the peask
are centered around the center.
10) given the ham band only operation of the main Rx, it is impossible to
use both VFOs outside the ham bands to do A/B switching on the sub Rx.
11) It would be nice to be able to save a handful of preset filter BW/PBT
combinations and to be able to select among them easily.
12) It would be nice if there were a way to program the CW memories directly
with characters rather than CW elements.
13) For a contest radio, the CW keyer should include some sort of
incrementing number.
14) There should be a way to reverse the keyer paddle assignment without
having to rewire the paddle jack.
15) Pressing either the VFO A -> M button and VFO B-> button brings up a
sub-menu that requires you to select which VFO you want to write to memory.
Why not just have a sigle VFO -> M button? There is only one M -> VFO
button.
73,
Mark
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