--- Cliff Segar <csegar@mindspring.com> wrote:
> I would venture a guess that it mostly had to do
> with how the rig finally
> came to market. This rig was considered to be
> 'vapour ware' by many for
> quite a while.
This is my take on it too. Goes to show that
pre-announcing too soon will actually hurt you in the
long run. Hopefully the Orions will start shipping for
real in September. That'll be 6 or so months from when
it was first made public, once you hit a year out from
original announcement without shipping anything you
will have put a lot of would be buyers off.
> When this unit was first conceived 5
> or 6 years ago, DSP was
> quite new. Flashable DSP was only a dream.
Flashable ROM was definitely available at that time
but I'm sure didn't fit the pricing profile they were
originally shooting for. Ironically I would guess that
the SHARC DSP and ADC components of the Orion don't
cost anymore today than the ADSP2181 (I think its a
2181 - does anyone know for sure?) of the 526 did when
it was first conceived. I'm waiting to see what the
exact part number of the SHARC DSP is in the Orion,
but I would bet that its unit pricing it not
dramatically higher the ADSP2181 favored in the Ten
Tec designs thus far.
Now if Ten Tec wanted to make the industry take notice
they would redesign the 526 using the same SHARC DSP
and ADC components of the Orion, along with a super
clean synthesizer. Then as icing on the cake ship it
with built in mode level support for FSK441 (Meteor
Scatter mode), and JT43/JT44 (EME and weaksignal
terrestrial), also 1200/9600 baud packet + satellite
modes. No more external computer interfaces!! With
that kind of configuration connected to a host
computer it would be a true break through concept, as
it is now it is really just another multimode VHF
radio.
Wile they are at it update the
RX320/Pegasus/Jupiter/RX350 with the same Orion
DSP/ADC combo. RX321, Pegasus II, Jupiter II, RX351
anyone????
Duane
N9DG
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