Interesting comparison of radios!
I have an IC-781 and two Omni 6 Plus/with 600 hz roofing filter, all
three of which drive my Titan 3 quite well in CW, full QSK. All three
work excellent for my operating style of CW only, rag chewing,
DX'ing, and QRQ operation, the IC-781 having much sharper IF
selectivity filters than the Omni ( which also has Inrad IF
selectivity filters). The Omni's DSP noise reduction gives the Omni
an advantage in weak signal copy, over the IC-781. Weak signal
performance difference between the three radios (on the air) are
almost identical with the exception that the Omni's AGC certainly
handles QRN significantly better than the IC-781. All three are
excellent performers in CW contesting environments with very strong
signal conditions. The IC-781 handles strong adjacent signals quite
well, in spite of it's rather poor performance rating by Sherwood.
The Omni 6 Plus, with the roofing filters, is just infallible. A 40dB
over signal sitting 0.5 kc away from a weak signal, can not even be
noticed, unless the strong signal has key clicks or phase noise.
The IC-781 is only matched by a Corsair 2 or a Triton for QRQ CW (>60
wpm) using full QSK. However the Omni 6 Plus (with Logic chip 1.02)
is no slouch as it will run full QSK as high as 73 wpm.
However my day-to-day preference for normal QSOing and DXing, is the
Omni 6 Plus. It is an 'operators' radio with a front panel layout
that is the most convenient and intuitive of any radio I've used in
my short 54 years of hamming. In the 20 months I owned an Orion, I
personally could never get completely comfortable with the 'busy'
front panel, especially during contesting. And of course back then,
the Orion would not work reliably with the Titan 3 amp using the
Keying Loop and in full QSK, with random RF output power loss and
random rcvr audio loss. With the exception of v1.73 firmware, the
Orion was worthless at trying to run QRQ over about 50 wpm. (Not a
'big deal' to most operators).
Inrad published IMD3 test information on the Omni 6 Plus with Inrad's
600 hz roofing filter, showing it to be one db better than the Orion,
however one must be aware of 'marketing hype' with such test results.
The ARRL test results would have to be considered about as
good/accurate as one could get, simply because of the test
environment in which the have their lab set up, plus the knowledge of
their technical staff. (You sometimes have to just ignore the
verbiage of some of the written reviews in QST, and just analyze the
numbers!) This being said, it is my opinion that radios rated in the
'top 15' for receiver specification performance is one thing, it is
the actual operator, using the radio in his/her environment, that
determines which is the 'best' radio for the way that individual opreates.
Tom - W4BQF
At Saturday 10:57 PM 6/3/2006, you wrote:
Here is an interesting post on the IC-7800 Yahoo Group by Rob Sherwood,
NC0B. He gives his initial comments on his review of the IC-7800 as well as
a comment that Ten Tec is working on new AGC firmware for the Orion.
You don't have to be a group member to view the archive.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ic7800/message/3295
73,
Alan N5NA
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