Tim: You are seeing exactly what the rest of us Orion II owners are seeing.
The notch is outside of the AGC loop, so the S-meter does not respond. The
NR function is mediocre and not as good as in the original Orion with v. 1.x
firmware according to those who have made a comparison. This and several
other of the "things that need fixed" (as they say down south!) are on my
website at:
www.ronc.users.sonic.net
To TT's credit, they are getting the list whittled down, but here are some
that are still there:
Low frequency audio response on SSB not as good as original, not to
factory advertised specs.
S-meter calibration is way off: about 12 dB 'stingy' below S9, 20 dB
'generous' above S9.
Distortion in AM detector
AM maximum received bandwidth used to be 12 kHz, now only 6 kHz.
"Click-clack" sound in CW sidetone.
Otherwise, a fine radio that easily beats the competition.
Ron Castro
Chief Technical Officer
Results Radio, LLC
----- Original Message -----
From: "NZ8J" <nz8j@woh.rr.com>
To: "Ten Tec" <tentec@contesting.com>
Sent: Monday, May 29, 2006 1:36 PM
Subject: [TenTec] Orion II NR and Notch - Thoughts?
I just received a new Orion II and have some observations on the NR and
Manual Notch functions.
The NR seems to work better on CW than SSB in my case, although in both
instances the audio is distorted and/or breaks up more often than not.
Seems to depend on signal strength, weak signals are most susceptible to
distortion although strong signals will distort as well. This is with
the NR set as low as 1, it gets worse the higher the NR is set. I don't
recall this with my original Orion; the NR seemed to work much better
with little or no distortion.
The manual notch will eliminate tones just fine, but will not reduce the
level of the tone like I seem to remember the original Orion did. It's
like it is outside the agc loop, although the manual and all advertising
talks about it being at IF level with the tone reduction being
"reflected on the S-meter" I take this to mean it takes the tone out,
not just the audio.
Other than the NR and notch issues, the radio really works well and I am
happy with it, it's just a little frustrating to see improvements in
some areas at the expense of degradation in others. I am using the
latest firmware, I wonder if what I am seeing is representative of what
others experience and if it has been this way through all versions of
the O2 firmware.
I used the radio during the CQ WPX CW contest this weekend and the
receiver is just super, it's a pleasure to use it on cw.
I'd like to hear from other O2 owners on the above two issues to get
your inputs and experiences and if there are any "tricks" to using the
NR. Please respond either on the list of off line to nz8j@woh.rr.com
Thanks
Tim
NZ8J
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