Dave,
Interesting post. Very good.
For the first 3/4 of your post, I thought "this guy is majoring in minors",
until you hit the nail on the head.
Spot on!
The OM7's AGC performance, specifically its response to very short pulse
noise, is pathetic! There are no other words to describe it.
The good news is, I have never felt my Eagle is that way, and a recent
firmware upgrade is said to have fixed that problem on the O2. One can only
hope that a similar OM7 update will follow.
Indeed "THAT" was (and still is) the single biggest problem of the OM7.
The only thing you got wrong in your post was Sherwood's first name. It's
"Rob", not Bob. (hi)
TO ALL OF YOU GUYS OUT THERE CRITICIZING THE OMNI VII and Ten-Tec, I CAN
ONLY SAY, be grateful for what you have.
I would love to have an OM VII, but can't afford to buy one.
My wife keeps playing the lottery.
If she ever hits it, I'm buying an OM VII.
I would not trade my Eagle for an OM VII, because I backpack my Eagle up a
mountain side to my antenna test site quite often. Sometimes 5 times per
week. But I sure would love to have an OM VII as my main rig. I would
prefer it over an Orion.
73
Rick, DJ0IP
-----Original Message-----
From: TenTec [mailto:tentec-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of David and
Dianne on Comcast
Sent: Friday, October 11, 2013 10:51 PM
To: Ten Tec Reflector
Subject: Re: [TenTec] What is Ten Tec Doing Today?
Bob,
With all due respect to you and no offense intended, this is my "op-ed" to
your posting of October 10^th . Let me first say that I am a big and
long-time TT fan (20+ years) and have owned and still own much of their
equipment...Omni V.9,
(2) Corsair II's and an Omni VII. I also enjoy reading your comments on the
reflector which are very helpful. But I have a disagreement with your
comments on certain aspects of TT's recent perfromance.
In May 2012 I bought my Omni VII understanding beforehand that it was both
getting long-in-the-tooth and lacking in some long-promised performance
enhancements that I was concerned about. Nevertheless, after discussions
with John H. at Dayton, I was assured that the Omni VII was to be both
long-lived in their product line and soon to be improved via firmware
enhancements to address my pre-purchase concerns.I bought one.
In the first 18 months of ownership, my Omni VII has been a good rig and in
some surprising ways preferable to my early K3. But it needs to address one
major RX shortcoming and several other feature enhancements. As for
patience, I am near the end of mine. Months turn to years. Nothing is done.
IMO TT has dropped the ball regarding the Omni VII enhancements discussed
long before I ever bought mine in 2012.
As for real time sweep, while it would be a nice and I would probably
purchase one, it was never a game changer for me as I knew what it was going
in. As for improving Ethernet performance, as I do not use the rig remotely,
it is also not of a concern to me. But I certainly understand how it would
be a major issue if you bought your Omni VII for this express purpose.
So then what concerns me the most with my Omni VII? One issue is small and
one is big.
The Omni VII brochure states in it, to this day
that: "/TX Speech Monitor: //Modulated IF after filtering, processing/". The
Omni VII manual states in it, to this day that: "/A monitor function has
been provided for the operator to listen to the sound of actual transmitted
SSB audio/".It originally performed this way but it does not now and has not
for many *_years_*. It was quietly changed to a "pre-filtering and
pre-processing" SSB monitor long ago. Inquiries to TT over several years by
many have brought verbal promises to have it revisited, but to date they
have not done so.
Is this a really big deal...no, but it's disappointing to me and it's
misleading to discriminating potential buyers.
But my biggest issue with the Omni VII is its poor RX AGC performance. The
Omni VII RX AGC is highly susceptible to QRN transient and impulse noise
spike swamping. Over the past two summers during the height of the QRN
season, it was often nearly unusable here at my QTH.
If anyone has */never/* used a pre-DSP analog receiver, they probably
believe that this kind of RX AGC performance is the norm and/or that the HF
bands are always this noisy. When compared to an analog radio side by side,
one will find out that neither is the case. Thus why I keep the CII and Omni
V in the stable. I urge anyone to review the Bob Sherwood presentation at
the Drake Forum at Dayton in 2007 as he tells the story there:
http://www.sherweng.com/index.html.
Circa late 2008, Elecraft enhanced their then new
K3 with firmware to address their impulse transient RX AGC issue and
remedied their problem in a matter of */days/*. I have an early K3 and it
does not so suffer. Why can't Omni VII owners get something similar without
waiting months and months and now years? The Omni VII RX AGC is terrible in
this regard.**
Ten Tec has turned the Omni VII enhancement process into their version of
"Waiting for Godot"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_Godot).
With no more Jupiter and Orion II, the recent shrinking of its HF
transceiver product line raises other concerns with me as well.
As many zealous TT followers have stated here emphatically, it's TT's
business and they can do what they want. True. But it's my money and I can
spend it where I want.
IMO it's time to instill a sense of concern and urgency with TT management.
Despite what some readers may think I have implied in these comments above,
I really do want them to continue and to be successful....and to be better.
What's Ten Tec doing today? I'm not at all sure.73 de N1LQ-Dave
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