Rob,
I certainly agree with Steve on the fact that I thought your comments were
quite helpful and in a very straight forward manner, answered some of the
questions that was posted. I'm not a phone operator so certainly do not have
the experience in that mode to add anything to your comments.
I think it should be pretty widely understood that when a company has to get
defensive about their products, wherein the customers are 90% amateurs, the
company is basically admitting there is fault with their product. All
products have fault. But if the product design is basic and good, then there
is really no need to defend it. One typically defends faulty designs. The
Omni 6 series of Ten Tec transceivers, in my opinion, is among the best ever
produced for CW operation. But I did not say they were perfect. I have A/B
tested Yaesu and Icom rigs against my Omni 6, after six months of testing
with each of them, the Omni 6 stayed, the Yaesu and Icom were sold. I
convinced myself that of the best available, the Omni 6 was the best for CW
for me. And yes, I made personal compromises to keep it.
One person who, in my opinion, goes overboard in defending the Orion.
recently mentioned how contesters were winning contest with an Orion (he
conveniently forgot to mention the other radio) and was wondering how one
could do that with a radio that didn't have 100 wpm full QSK and didn't have
perfect firmware. I don't know who was asking or expecting the Orion to run
100 wpm full QSK, but who ever it was didn't realize that when you put
digital or DSP into a radio design, your not going to get top notch high
speed CW or full QSK. One would expect, however, that a class hardware
design such as the Orion, certainly would send CW at speeds over 40 wpm
without the elements of a CW character shifting width and delay constantly.
One would also expect a radio manufactured by Ten Tec, whose reputation was
partially built around it's products CW performance, that it's CW
performance would be an extension of their previous products.
As far as expecting the firmware for the Orion to be perfect, I certainly
can not speak for everyone, but I sure did expect it to be perfect. That's
why I paid the same price as everyone else, for a complete operational ham
radio. One of whose 'features' was upgradeable firmware. I mis-interpted
'upgradeable' to mean future enhancements could be added; I did not realize
in actuallity it meant that two or three years down the road Ten Tec would
finally get around to making all of the features advertised for the Orion,
work as advertised.
I am very happy with the hardware design of the Orion (with the exception
that I personally agree with W8JI who say's DSP filtering performance is a
compromise). With the Inrad 600 hz roofing filter installed, the receiver
performance is exceptional. But because of firmware problems my Orion sits
on it's shipping box on the floor gathering dust, still waiting after 14
months, for the firmware to become perfect. If that's not going to happen,
then I just made a 3800 buck mistake. And that will be the first time I have
made a mistake in purchasing ANY equipment from Ten Tec.
Tom - W4BQF
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