Grant, thanks for your comments. Re the AGC controls, my experimentation
certainly indicates that AGC is always on in one form or another.
Re varying opinions, mine is hardware related because I can compare the
Orion to the Timewave DSP59+. The fundamental difference is the Timewave
helps, the Orion DSP hurts. There's no kinder way to put it. Again, my
frame of reference is narrowband CW weak signals on the low bands -
primarily 80 and 40 - in the current Colorado atmospheric conditions.
This morning I discovered the hardware noise blanker deal. Tonight and
tomorrow I'll see if that has had an effect on the NR situation. I refer
to the fact that the hardware NB is not turned off when set to OFF but
still enabled. Its effect on signals is only turned off when the
hardware NB is disabled (no :H appearing above the NB switch). For
previous posts my hardware NB was set to off, but not disabled. Could be
I've been yapping away about poor NR performance when I was thinking I
had no NB, but unknowingly did. This smacks of the infamous Yaesu NB
problem on their current high end rigs where it is always on, and cannot
be shut off even when the button says OFF, seriously impairing rx
performance. At least the Orion hardware NB seems to go off when disabled.
Well. I'm getting a real initiation on this rig! Lest folks think I'm
unhappy with my purchase, I'm not. Great rig. Just working my way thru
the details. Next I'll be asking about that relay clacking away in my
ear on QSK, and how to get rid of it.
73 Art
---------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 08:08:02 -0400
From: "Grant Youngman" <nq5t@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [TenTec] Orion NB vs NR
To: "'Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment'" <tentec@contesting.com>
Message-ID: <000f01c6e940$19e562c0$aa75180a@SonyVaio>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> > The NR so far leaves much to be desired and, I say again, is
> > significantly less effective than my Timewave DSP59+ (which
> > has no NB function at all).
>
There are varying opinions on this. NR characteristics differ depending on
the specific firmware release (pre 1.372, 1.372, 1.373Betas, v2 early, v2
current, etc). And there has been a lot of discussion about why you should
not expect NR to do much on very narrow CW settings.
> > information and measurements. Hank implied that apparently
> > there are 2 AGC loops, one of which is not disabled when we
> > users set AGC OFF.
>
There is an AGC control point in the analog front end to protect the ADC.
You can't turn that "off". If you did, strong signals (I think it kicks in
at 9+30), could just overload the ADC and cause a terrible mess. I also
suspect the DSP AGC isn't "Off" either, at least not in the same sense the
AGC in an analog radio is off.
Grant/NQ5T
_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
|