Hello all. Having just recently been "turned on" to Ten Tec gear and reading
other folks comments, I felt compelled to write my short story on how I made
the switch from YaeComWoods to TT. I've been a ham and die hard CW fanatic for
over 30 years now. Over the years I have owned umpteen different YaeComWoods
and always sluffed off TT as being total junk mainly because of the rig's
cosmetics. Too me TT rigs always looked like something someone had homebrewed
in their basement and threw it into a MFJ cabinet. The only fairly good Jap rig
I have ever owned was a TS-130S. Some such as the TS-690S and IC-745 were the
absolute worst rigs I have ever owned for CW. I bid and won an Argonaut 509
about a year ago on eBay. I mainly bought it because it was at a good price and
came with the external CW filter, rig and power supply and intended to break
the items up and resell for a profit. As I was sitting in the shack cleaning
the rig up getting it ready to resell I figured I had better hook it up and
check it's operation out. Once I fired the rig I just couldn't believe how low
the noise level was. I live just 1 block from a 250,000 power sub-station and
almost always have had to contend with hash noise levels approaching S9 at
times. I had to check to make sure there was an antenna connected. I peaked the
resonate knob and started tuning around 20 meters. Signals just jumped out of
nowhere at me. To me this was an absolute jaw dropping experience because I had
always had this high noise level. I then thought well maybe this was a night
when the noise was reduced so I flipped on my IC-745 and sure enough the hash
was there, strong as ever but yet was non-existent on the Argo. I hooked a 6BTV
vertical to the Argo and a CF zepp to the 745 and started comparing signals. I
was picking and copying dx signals on the Argo Q5 that were not even audible on
the 745. At this point I was hooked. I made similar comparisons between the
Argo and my IC-706 and although the 706 was better than the 745 neither held a
candle to the Argo. I decided to keep the Argo and had a ball working a lot of
QRP DX but having never been a great fan of QRP I did some intense research on
finding a QRO TT rig. After asking many questions and taking alot of poles from
TT users as well as reading reviews online I settled on finding a Corsair. I
found one, bought it and have never looked back at the YaeComWoods since. The
Corsair exhibited the same charecteristics as the Argo in the way of low S/N
only better ! And the filters... whew, let's not even go there. All I can say
is AWESOME ! Although it needs a PTO rebuild it is with a doubt the best rig I
have ever owned. I immediately sold the IC-745 on eBay but held onto the 706 to
use in my motorhome and on 6 meters. Although I still feel TT rigs will never
win a beauty contest, I just can't believe it took me 30 years to discover
these fabulous rigs. 2 years ago while doing some travelling I had the chance
to go by and see the TT factory. I was totally unimpressed. The place looked
run down, unkept, and there were people sitting around outside leaning back in
chairs smoking. The showroom was empty except for a glass showcase with a few
rigs in it. There was basically nothing to see. This of course was before I
discovered TT. Looks can very, very deceiving I have discovered !
That's my 2 1/4 cent's worth !
--
Tim, K8TJ
--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
text/plain (text body -- kept)
text/html
---
|