John....
Having used the Omni 6, and now two Omni 6 Plus rigs since 1992, I'm
sitting here trying to recall if there is ANYTHING to gripe about
with these radios!!
I am very critical about the radios I use and basically if they don't
work the way I would like for them to work, meaning good solid
receiver and trouble-free performance, they wiill not stay on my desk
for very long as I just will not put up with 'nit-picky' problems.
I'm about 97% CW operator, a little digital, and very little SSB. The
Omni 6 line of radios have excellent receivers and by far are the
most reliable radios I have ever owned. My original Omni 6 has
literally thousands of operational hours, DX'ing, rag chewing, many
contest, and a lot of QRQ operation and in the 11 years I used that
radio, it never had a single failure. You just can't ask for better
performance and reliability from a purchased product.
I owned an Orion for about 20 months, but it just did not work out
for me at all. The Orion was a heck of a lot LESS intuitive to
operate, especially in contest, than the Omni 6 where you want
primary user switches/buttons/knobs easily located. I had significant
problems with the Orions full QSK capability. I personally prefer,
especially in a contest, to quickly punch a button to change filter
selectivity than to have to twist a knob to adjust DSP filter BW.
(I've yet to be impressed with DSP filtering for CW)
After selling the Orion, I bought two used Omni 6 Plus rigs, fully
filtered them for CW operations and then added the Inrad 600hz BW,
500 hz offset, roofing filter. To me personally, your going to be
hard pressed to find a better performer. I have found the roofing
filter enhances the already good receiver significantly.
The ONLY thing I could suggest to enhance what you already have, is
to maybe save up your nickles and buy a Titan 3 amplifier. Although
my first Titan 3 had significant problems, it was replaced with a
different Titan 3 by Ten Tec. This amplifier is more typical of Ten
Tec's equipment as it just sits on the desk and performs like a real
work horse. I often run QRQ (about 30 % of my operating time) at
about 70 wpm and honestly keep expecting the T/R relay to give up,
but that just hasn't happened. I run flawless full QSK with this
setup, around 500 watts for rag chewing and the full 1.5 KW for
DX'ing and contesting and the amp just sits there and does it's job.
A really good amplifier.
I'm not a 'blind' Omni 6 user. During the time I have owned these
rigs, I have purchased both Icom and Yaesu equipment (IC-781 and
FT-1000 MP) and did A/B antenna switching on MY desk with MY
antennas, with the intent of keeping which ever rig performed the
best for me. The Yaesu lasted 3 months. I still have an IC-781 but it
seldom gets used.
In my opinion, if your primarily a CW operator, your going to be
hard-pressed to find anything that performs better or is more
reliable than the Omni 6 series of radios.
Tom - W4BQF
At Thursday 03:28 PM 8/3/2006, you wrote:
I'm finally getting my Omni VI Opt3/ Paragon/Corsair II / Centurion
amp station assembled and
running. What a nice layout! I can't afford an Orion or OII, but
lordy, and I ever happy with
the performance of my filtered-up OmniVI. I've had 35+ yrs of
radios, but without question,
these are the finest rigs I've had the pleasure of using.
Any list old-timers around to comment on whether there were as many
gripes about the OmniVI
series as there seems to be about the Orion/II?
Many thanks to TT for these fine rigs,
John
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