I have one Orion and two SDR-1000's. I've had the
Orion for 2 years, and at least 1 SDR for about 6
months.
My experience is the SDR is a better weak signal
receiver than the Orion. I have the radios set up on
equivalent full size 80 and 40M vertical antennas. I
have the outputs of the rigs into a 3 channel stereo
mixer so I can play one radio into one ear the other
radio into the other ear, or I can have both radio's
in both ears and use the mutes to switch. The bottom
line is what you can hear.
On CW the SDR is a slightly better radio. It is
quieter and it has better selectivity. In a recent
contest I was able to work 2 DX stations (s3 or so in
strength) in different parts of the world that were
50hz apart, each being called by S9 plus 20 american
stations. It was a very enlightening experience. In
other words there were 2 desired stations 50hz apart
with a variable number of american stations calling in
the picture. I was not able to do the same with the
Orion, but it was close. This represents in my
experience a very intense level real world experience,
something the ARRL numbers really don't address.
In weak signal work without the limitations of strong
stations a few hz away the radios are closer in
performance. The SDR is quieter to listen to. It
reminds me of my old Paragon. It has a point and
shoot virtually real time band scope. That means I
can view about 30khz of a band on the scope in
panadapter mode and I can see signals that are
virtually in the noise. Coherent signals look
different than random noise. There is a cross hair
pointer that I can place over a signal and click and
the signal is centered in the passband of the
receiver. It is very easy to point and click signals
even into a 100hz passband. With a steady hand you
can do it into a 50hz passband but I find myself
"tuning" to center the signal if I use 50hz.
The advantage of this is that you can cover a whole
segment of a band like the low end of 80 or 160 with
just a couple dozen clicks. It is extremely efficient
having the panadapter and the point and shoot since
you are basically spending all your time listening to
where stations are and almost no time listening to
where stations are not.
It is NOT a QSK cw radio by any streach of the
imagination. To send CW you need to use an external
side tone. It is virtually impossible to use the
internal side tone. To send adequate CW you need to
use an external keyer. Using my K-4 idiom press I can
transmit 60 wpm cw and receive in in another receiver
letter perfect. I use a 3.3ghz P4 and a presonus
firebox which is the high end of the
computer/soundcard needed. It is not nearly as
convienent as the Orion to use. The Orion behaves
like you would expect a radio to behave. The
interface in the SDR is a work in progress. The
controls that have been chosen in my opinion are not
the best that could have been chosen, like up down
boxed instead of sliders for volume for example, but
the advantage of a software defined radio is that it
is plastic. The code is presently being rewritten to
seperate the DSP and back end functions of the radio
(like the ALC AGC Frequency determining steps) from
the interface. This will allow the interface to be
readily changed to how ever you like.
One cool thing about the SDR is that it gives you a
lab grade receiver. The "S meter" actually reads out
in dbm. It can be calibrated against a known source
(like 50mV for -73 dbm aka S9) and what you read is
like having a calibrated scope hooked up to your
antenna. I intend to combine it with N8LP's new phase
reading SWR bridge and software control and I will
have a transmitting network analyzer of pretty good
accuracy.
The SSB signal is excellent, at least as good as the
Orion. When I check into my 75M round table the guys
tend to like the SDR audio better than the Orion
though they think both are excellent. I have a studio
quality condensor mic on the SDR and the TT 705 on the
Orion.
The noise blanker works better in the Orion.
As far as "service" goes I have no quibble with Ten
Tec. They have taken good care of me over the years.
I used to chat with Al Kahn on CW almost every week
when I would mobile between Chicago and Champaign Il
on Fridays using my old 580 delta and we would talk
radios. He was always interesed in what I had to say.
SDR service is phenomonal. I have had long chats with
the company president, and he is interested in what I
have to say, so it kind of reminds me of TT 30 years
ago. I have had a lot of help from the SDR reflector
community as well. The changes in the software are
far faster and far more extensive in terms of
performance improvement. One guy wrote a really good
routine to balance out the quadrature signals. It was
included in the next release of the software. Another
guy I think in Austraulia rewrote the AGC software and
it was included in short order. Another guy rewrote
the CW keyer with a lot of improved features and it
was included. The point is that this radio is not
dependent on a top down approach. It is very
colaborative, and world experts who are interested in
different aspects are lending their expertise so the
bench is very deep for the SDR. Recently the software
has been implamented under a versioning system so if
you can compile the code you can have a minute by
minute up to date version of the code. If you know
what you are doing you can help write the code.
Another group is interesed in the DSP process. They
didn't want to spend $300 on a high end sound card so
they went off and are developing a DSP around a FPGA
board. So far they are equivalent to the performance
of my $300 sound card, and that with something kludged
dead bug style on some circuit board.
A third group is very interested in using the SDR as a
high performance IF for vhf/uhf/shf stations so they
have developed a card that lets you control up to 32
relays from the SDR.
The point being is that this radio over time is the
future of ham radio. No it is not yet a contest rig.
But if you take the time to design a contest interface
it is my guess it will beat the pants off other
contest setups. Already I can run the SDR DXing 40M
or 160M CW with 1500W and ragchew on 75 with 1500W
simutaneously. I can't tell in either the Orion or in
the SDR that the other station is on the air. The
antennas are both verticals about 120ft apart. The
160 M antenna is even closer. No it doesn't have a
knob. It has something better point and shoot.
As far as engineering goes TT is a well engineered
product that is built around a certain design
philosophy. If you subscribe to that philosophy the
TT will trip your trigger. It lives up to the design
I think very well. If I took out a blank piece of
paper and designed a radio it would have been the Omni
5, so that's where my design philosophy starts. I
never would have designed the TS-940. The Orion is
sort of an ulmitate extension of the Omni 5 design
philosophy using a computer controller instead of
discrete controls.
The SDR is also consistent with my design philosophy
being basically a very high performance single
conversion RX with the rest being left to digital
processing. I am a big fan of single conversion
design. As such I find them both very appealing. I
owned a FT-1000D and while an excellent radio, I never
really warmed up to the way it worked with the up
conversion and all that, so my experience is colored
by how I think about the design.
The SDR is not yet a mature product. It is a very
high performance product, but it still needs some
ergonomic tuning. It will get there.
There was a time when we owned a receiver and a
transmitter and we used AM and CW. There were rigs
like the Collins rigs that represented the pinnacle of
that style of operating. Then we had SSB and seperate
RX TX. The S line and the C line represented the
pinnacle of that type of rig. What followed was the
era of the tranceiver, and I think the Orion might
represent the pinnacle of that era of ham tranceiver.
I do not see the high buck jap rigs as competition to
the Orion. I see the SDR-1000 as the beginning of a
new concept in ham radio. I think the experience is
like the difference between how a 75A4 collins rig
works and how the Orion works. Both represent
pinnicles of their repsective era. I think the SDR is
still becomming a mature product
73 W9OY
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com
_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec
|