[Elecraft] K2 and Ten-Tec Orion

[k6se@juno.com]

Bill, W4ZV wrote:

"In all fairness to TenTec, I believe everyone should know that on July 3
TenTec documented (below) information on using Orion for various modes
(weak-signal and contests) which was not available during Earl's tests. 
His results could have been different if he had known this, especially
about setting the Programmable AGC.  Other issues, like using a wide
roofing filter for weak signals (to minimize insertion loss) are not
intuitive to most of us.  Poor documentation is definitely a TenTec
problem, but they are actively responding with hardware, firmware and
documentation updates based on user feedback.  (See TenTec's update here
http://www.tentec.com/565optimize.htm )"
----------
The document that Bill refers to was published just after I returned my
Orion to Ten-Tec.  I take it as a direct rebuttal to my findings in that
they implied that I was not operating the receiver correctly.  In my A/B
tests, different settings of the programmable AGC were tried, and this
was before they published the document.  Insertion loss of the narrow
roofing filters was also not the problem because it performed just as
poorly with wider roofing filters selected.  The Orion was much poorer in
comparison to any other radio ever tested by me for receiving extremely
weak CW signals on both 160m and 10m no matter what was tried.

73, de Earl, K6SE