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Topband: Ten-Tec Orion - Initial Impressions

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Subject: Topband: Ten-Tec Orion - Initial Impressions
From: k6se at juno.com (k6se@juno.com)
Date: Wed May 21 08:00:16 2003
I receive my new Ten-Tec Orion last Friday (16 May) and I've had enough
time to play with it and let you know my initial impressions about the
rig.

After playing with it for a few hours, it was apparent that there were a
few bugs in the software (v1.337) that was installed in the radio.  The
next day I downloaded the latest software update (v1.341) from
http://www.rfsquared.com and loaded it into the radio.  This task was
painless and went without a hitch.  The new software cured the few bugs I
noticed, but it also introduced a new minor bug related to one of those
the software fixed.  I'm sure the next software update will correct that
one.

The ability of being able to upgrade this radio without pulling the cover
and getting out the soldering iron is new to me and I like the idea.

Transmitter:

My Orion's transmitter puts out a bit more than 100 watts (as indicated
on my Drake W-4 wattmeter) into a 50-ohm dummy load on all 9 bands.  The
power output is easily adjustable in one-watt increments from 1 to 100
watts (as read on the LCD display).  While transmitting, the SWR is
displayed as "SWR 1.0:1" or whatever the value might be.  I used an
MFJ-4322 power supply which is rated at 13.8VDC and 22 amps intermittent
duty and 20 amps continuous duty.  The power supply didn't glitch when I
checked the output power into the dummy load.

On my antennas, the SWR can be much higher if I transmit far from the
antenna's resonant frequency.  I did this out of curiosity to see if the
Orion's power output would automatically be reduced like it is on most
other rigs.  Transmitting with an indicated SWR of 5:1 showed that there
was no cutback of the power output.  I ordered my Orion without the
optional built-in antenna tuner, so this was gratifying.

The PA transistors draw more current when transmitting into a high SWR
and my 22-amp power supply would trip at full power under these
circumstances.  I recommend using a 25-amp (or greater) power supply.

SSB:

I bought the optional Heil microphone that Ten-Tec sells for the Orion
and I set the MIC Gain and TX EQ to the values recommened in the manual
for that mike and made a few DX QSOs on SSB.  The audio sounded okay to
me using the monitor feature the radio has and I did not solicit nor
receive any comments about the audio.

The next day a local friend who is a DXer and I got together on 10 meters
to try to "tailor" my audio using the several different things you can
set up in the Orion in this respect.  It seemed that no matter what I
tried, he said the audio was "mushy and bassy".  He recorded one of my
transmissions and when I went to his QTH and heard the playback I was
stunned by how terrible it sounded!

Disappointed, while driving back home (with thoughts of returning the
radio and getting a refund), I remembered that I had hit the "Panic"
button the night before (this is the RECALL button on the front panel
which resets the radio to the factory defaults).  I then realized that I
forgot to reset the TX EQualization back to -14dB which was recommended
in the manual.

As soon as I got home I checked that setting and is was indeed at the
factory setting of 0 dB.  When I called my friend now on 10-meters, his
first words were, "What did you do?  It sounds great!"  There are several
things you can adust in the Orion's menus which affect the transmitted
audio.  TX EQ is the most important one!

>From what I can hear in the built-in monitor, the audio seems to have
plenty of punch and even moreso when the speech processor is turned on. 
The Orion uses RF compression and with the speech processor set at 3 or 4
(it's adjustable from 1 to 9) seems about right.  The way the audio
sounds, I would think that the radio would do quite well on SSB in
pile-ups and under weak signal conditions.  My FT-1000MP's transmit audio
doesn't sound anywhere near as punchy in its monitor.

One thing that I noticed is that the mike gain must be set much higher on
SSB to deive my Alpha 76CA amplifier than it does on CW.  About 50 watts
drive is required to get about 1300 watts out on CW.  With the mike gain
set to "45" It's adjustable from 0 to 100) as recommended in the manual
for the Heil mike,  the amp did not put out the same power it would as
compared to using my FT-1000MP as the 50-watt exciter.  Turning up the
mike gain "cures" this.  Although the manual doesn't mention it, perhaps
the power output reverts to peak power rather than average power when in
the SSB mode.  The S-meter (a real meter) becomes a power output meter
when transmitting, and indicates approximately the same on SSB as it does
on CW.

I found out that there is an internal adjustment in the Orion to
compensate for microphones with low output (the Heil dynamic mike spec
says "-55 dBv into 600 ohms".  Not sure how that compare with Ten-Tec's
electret mike).  The adjustment is accessible through a smount hole in
the bottom cover near the rear of the radio.  Someday I'll try it.

The transmitted SSB bandwidth is menu-adjustable from 900 to 3900Hz.  The
factory default is 3000Hz, which I fear might be a bit too wide.  I have
set mine to 2700Hz, about the same as most modern rigs.  It made very
little difference in audio quality.

CW:

On CW, the radio is a pleasure to operate.  It's built-in programmable
memory keyer works well and the dit-dah weighting is easily adjustable. 
The CW waveform rise/fall time is easily adjustable from 3ms to 10ms (the
factory default is 5ms).  I haven't set it up for the "K6SE key click
test" yet, but I intend to and will let you know the results.

Although I have never really used QSK (the Alpha 76CA can't do that), I
did try it (barefoot) and I can say that you can hear the other guy while
you're transmitting at any speed.  The keyer is adjustable from 10 to 60
wpm.

The sidetone audio (front panel level adjustable) sounds good.  When you
set the pitch of the sidetone, this automatically sets it up so that when
you tune in a signal at that same pitch, it is centered in the receiver's
passband.  The SPOT switch is automatiically set to the same pitch as the
sidetone.

I presently have my sidetone pitch set at 410Hz.  CW signals at that
pitch stand out and sound much louder and clearer than they do on my
FT-1000MP (where I have the pitch set at 400Hz).  I plan to try the Orion
with the pitch set to 310 Hz and see what it sounds like (I can hear weak
CW signals better at the lower pitches because the higher-pitched band
noise is then attenuated.  Also, you don't hear any of that ringing that
narrow filter users complain about when they have their tone set to a
higher pitch).  The sidetone/spot pitch is adjustable in 20-Hz steps from
310 to 1210Hz.

Receiver:

The more I use the receiver, the more impressed I am.  The adjustable
noise reduction is truly amazing.  On 160m SSB with the NR turned off,
the S-meter reads about S-8 on ambient noise.  Turning the NR on at its
lowest setting (it's adjustable from 1 to 9) lowers the noise to about
S-5.  At "9", the noise is S-4 (although you hear the usual DSP "thingy"
at the high NR settings).  The FT-1000MP doesn't even come close to this.
 My JPS NIR-12 outboard audio DSP does a good job on the MP, but does not
appear to work nearly as well as the Orion's NR.

I have a "tick-tick" noise from my neighbor's electric fence which is
eliminated by the Orion's adjustable DSP noise blanker at its lowest
setting (adjustable from 1 to 9), but I also notice that the NR also
eliminates it at its lowest setting, so the NB stays off.  I haven't
played with the hardware NB yet.

On CW, the S-meter reading is about S-1 on 160m because I have the
receiver bandwidth set to 100Hz (fully adjustable in 10Hz steps from 100
to 6000Hz) and you can't see any difference in S-meter readings when you
switch the NR on and off.  I have a very weak signal on 1830kHz (3rd
harmonic from a local AM BC station on 610 kHz) that I use to "test"
receivers on 160m.  With the NR off, the signal is barely audible.  With
the NR on at its lowest setting, the signal appears to jump out of the
noise.  Turning the NR to 9 (wide open) makes the signal Q5 copy (if were
a CW signal).  This is FAR superior to my FT-1000MP and Elecraft K2
which, up until now, have tied for first place in the "test" compared to
a number of other modern rigs.  I'm impressed!!  None of the DSP
"thingies" are heard at the 100Hz bandwidth when the NR is set to "9".

The receiver has a RX EQ control in the menu which works identically to
the TX EQ control.  These controls act like a bass/treble tone control
acts like on a hi-fi audio system.  This enhances the receive audio
output almost as much as it does for the transmitter audio.  The receiver
really sounds great on SSB, even with BW set as narrow as 1800Hz.

There are four band stacking registers for each of the nine bands covered
by the Orion (the FT-1000MP has two).  This makes it convenient to set up
for quick QSYing , so I set mine up for two CW frequencies and two SSB
frequencies for most bands.  You can set the Orion's tuning step from
very slow to very fast (7 different ranges).  Mine is set to the slowest
rate, so punching the bandswitch button makes it easier to QSY from one
end of the band to the other.

I learned an early lesson on the Orion.  I was using the "User" memories
to store the parameters for which I had everything set up for.  Pushing
the "panic button" ("Recall" to factory defaults) does not wipe out what
you store in the User memories, so it's easy to restore your favorite
setting by punching just one button (User1 or User2).

After I set up the band stacking registers (which takes a bit of time for
36 frquencies/modes/BWs, etc.), I hit the Recall button to get back to
the factory default settings.  I pressed User1 to restore my favorite
settings, which it did, but I was chagrined to find that I lost all of
the band stacking work that I had done.  I redid all of the band stacking
again and then I stored everything (hoprfully) in User1 memory).  Then I
did a Recall.  After the radio reset itself to the factory defaults, I
pressed User1 to get everything back to my preferences.  The first thing
I checked were the band stacking registers -- they were all there just
where I had set them!!

Moral of the story: Whenever you change ANYTHING, make sure you store it
in one of the User memories before you do a factory default recall.  The
User feature seems to be very useful.

This coming weekend I plan to put the receiver to the ultimate test
during the CQ CW WPX contest.

Now, the down side:

Hardware bugs:

1) There is an annoying tone from the front panel headphone jack.  My
guess is that it's around 1500Hz.  It's more noticeable with narrower
bandwidths (because the received noise level goes down). It's there when
the audio gain is turned all the way down and increases as the the audio
gain control is turned up.  There is also a very weak audio hiss
saudible.  I use a Kenwood SP-230 speaker which the headphones plug into
and the tone is much weaker there.  It's obvious that the output at the
radio headphone jack is much greater than that at the external speaker
output jack.  The SP-230 has selectable audio filters in it which
eliminates the problem.  However, this prohibits using the Orion's
"panoramic stereo reception" feature (which I haven't tried yet) because
the external speaker output is monoaural.

2) There is a feature in the menu to adjust the center frequency of the
narrow (250Hz and 500Hz) crystal filters.  The factory default setting is
"0" (adjustable from -250 to +250 -- Hertz, I assume).  I have both
filters (Ten-Tec - not INRAD), and both of them require the -250 setting
on UCW and the +250 setting on LCW.  I have the UCW setting stored in
User1 memory and the LCW stored in User2 memory so that I can choose
either.  The down side of this is that if I want to switch from upper to
lower CW to eliminate closeby QRM, It takes about 5 or ten seconds for
the User recall to complete.  When it does, the signal has to be tuned in
again because of the ~500Hz shift due to the xtal filters requiring an
offset correction, so to speak.  The only answer to this that I see is
that any narrow xtal filters that you use in the radio must be exactly
centered without resorting to any "fudge" factor.

Software bugs:

1) After doing any Recall (either User or Factory reset), the LCD
contrast dims noticeably when the recall completes.  Going to the menu
and adjusting the contrast immediately restores the LCD brightness.

2) When you go to the menu to adjust the CW sidetone pitch, as soon as
you change it the readout goes to 5 digits (where it is normally 3
digits, i.e., below 1000Hz).  The reason for this ids that the 3-digit
reading jumps two character spaces to the left, and the last two digits
of the original reading are still there and are not overwritten.  It was
ok with software v1.337 (where the sidetone pitch and the spot pitch
readouts differed by 10Hz, which was fixed by v1.341), but appeared when
I loaded v1.341.  If you exit the menu and then re-enter the menu, the
display is ok.  You can also change the sidetone pitch by adjusting the
spot pitch (they follow each other), which is easier to do anyway (you
don't have to enter the menu to adjust the spot pitch).

3) To do a split operation (transmit on one VFO and receive on the other)
requires doing three things:

  a) Press the A/B button to put both VFOs on the same freq.
  b) Select one VFO for rx and the other for tx.
  c) Adjust the tx VFO for the split offset.

With the FT-1000MP, this is a one-button operation, where all you have to
do is press the SPLIT button and it enables VFO-B as the tx VFO and puts
it up 5 kHz from VFO-A (offset is adjustable in the MP's menu).  I
believe that Ten-Tec can do this in the software by adding an item in the
menu to turn on/off the capability for the A/B button to split tx/rx on
the two VFOs and another menu item to set the amount of +/- frequency
offset the user desires.

My K2 works fine on SPLIT, but it's also not as easy to set up for split
use as the MP is.

The first 2 software "bugs" I've mentioned are minor nuisances.  The
third one is a major nuisance (IMO).

My big problem now is deciding whether to sell my MP or my Elecraft
K2/100.  My main dislike about the K2 is its non-steep filter skirts
(other gripes I had were taken care of wonderfully well by mods developed
by the K2 engineers).  The steep skirts achieved with Elecraft's new
audio DSP module may be enough make me keep the K2 and sell the MP.

73, de Earl, K6SE
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