[ICOM] FW: [ic756pro3] Pro III Vs OrionII

[W7RY]

This is from the archives.

-----Original Message-----
From: ic756pro3 at yahoogroups.com [mailto:ic756pro3 at yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Marc Ressler
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 9:56 PM
To: ic756pro3 at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [ic756pro3] Re: Re: PRO III Roofing Filter



I got to play with an Orion II during the ARRL DX CW contest. This unit
had 
a full complement of the roofing filters and in AUTO, the roofing filter

(for the ham-band only main receiver) that is just larger than the
selected 
bandwidth is chosen. This made things basically invisible to the user, 
although the standard N1MM setup for CW with the Orion gives you a
choice 
of wide (400 Hz) or narrow (250 Hz) which result in either the (both 
optional) 600 Hz or 300 Hz roofing filters to be selected. I didn't have

time to see how much of an effect changing just the roofing filter had,
but 
I did notice that a nearby station was clobbering the S-2 YO I was
trying 
to copy. At first I thought "this radio isn't that great", but then as I

tuned further I noticed that the offending station was less than 400 Hz 
away (I had gone to the 250 Hz filter) and was 50 dB over S9! His key 
clicks could still be noticed (but weakly) almost 20 kHz away and last
week 
I discovered he was operating a station with an unmodified 1000MP, which

are known for their key clicks.

The filter are still adjustable from wherever they are set, but the 
switching back and forth between bandwidth and passband tuning (you have
to 
push the knob in to alternate between functionality) is not as
functional 
as the dual pot approach of the 756 (I own a Pro II). The filters are
nice 
sounding, but now that I also know about Adam's trick of starting with a

756 filter wider than 600 Hz and narrowing it down, I have a number of 
variations in making CW filters (hard or soft or VERY soft corners) on
my 
rig. While there is a spectrum display of the Orion II, once you have
used 
the 756 display, with the peak hold in a different color, you get
spoiled.

There is indeed a large amount of adjustment for the AGC and we just
used 
the recommended contest setting (rather than one of the defaults) as the

owner has only had the rig a few weeks. The claim is that weak signal DX

can be improved with a different set of parameters - the owner may find 
time to play with it. The new software does not seem to lock up
(although 
it did seem to switch some settings without asking to), but I am not 
convinced the binaural receive processing doesn't lock-up or distort the

right channel after it has been on a while (is this like the NR of the 
early Pros getting "stuck" after a while?) . Binaural has limited value
at 
narrow bandwidths, but does help spread the pileup out to the left and 
right even at 400 Hz, although your own sidetone position in your head 
seems to jump around.

Most of the Orion controls have the same look and feel (although they
look 
like dual pots with the knob design, they are single encoders). The feel
is 
- well, no feel. They are very light (although the main and sub receiver
do 
have set-able friction) and most also have built-in microswitch
pushbuttons 
to change functionality (usually indicated by LEDs). The main and sub 
tuning knobs are the same size, which at times caused some confusion,
and 
just don't have the feel of the 756 tuning knob. While one can mute the 
main or sub receiver audio by pushing in on either control, all you have
to 
do is turn one of the knobs to re-enable the audio. These controls are
just 
above (and IMHO, too) close to the tuning knobs, so I found myself 
un-muting audio while tuning.

I still have a problem with the front-panel control for my DualWatch,
which 
currently seems to have at least settled with the two channels at about
the 
same amplitude. The Orion II has the nice feature of being able to put
any 
receiver in the left or right ear - which allows you to not just
separate 
the two channels but to have the main receiver in the left ear and the
sub 
receiver & main receiver in the right. This makes the desired signal
appear 
in the center (and easier to concentrate on) with an adjustable amount
of 
sub receiver audio in the right. I haven't tried SO2R, but you could
easily 
do it with one radio with the Orion (if only my brain were that young
again).

I'll have a chance to play with the Orion again this weekend. I'd like
to 
check out the NR and NB, but contest conditions are not a good place for

either in general, and everyone here has said the P III NR is much
improved 
over the P II, so I'm not sure what to compare to. Oh - I HATE the Orion

antenna tuner! It is slow (we thought it was broken at first) and noisy 
(which is another reason we thought it was broken), is a $300 option 
(inexcusable IMHO), only works on ANT port 1 (although I understand the 
engineering decisions that drove that), and has NO memory or auto
sensing. 
In other words, if the SWR gets up over 3:1, it's up to you to notice
that 
and push the TUNE button (not to mention pushing the tune button any
time 
you change bands, since it has NO memory). I don't know how many
memories 
the 756 tuner has, but my impression has been there is one for every 100

kHz band segment, and they can retune automatically (and quietly) with 
increasing SWR (most notable on 80/160 meters). I believe the matching 
range of the Orion tuner exceeds that of the 756, but it seems to be the

same as the LDG line of tuners, which typically have 200 memories for
about 
1/2 the price.

Another pet peeve was the KEY jacks - there is a 1/4" jack on the front 
panel and an 1/8" on the rear. You'd think the front panel was for
paddles 
and the rear for just keying, like every other modern rig, right? Wrong
- 
both jacks are stereo, and are in parallel. There is a menu that allows
you 
turn on the keyer or to use the jack as a mono straight key input.
Default 
on power-up is no keyer, so the owner had hooked up his (previously 
existing) 1/8" plug to the rear connector - worked just fine until we
tried 
plugging a set of paddles in the front and turned on the keyer. Between
my 
746 and my 756 PII, I haven't used my memory keyer in YEARS! But now
there 
seems to be a use for it again(if I could only remember how to do all
the 
programming on it). Also, with the Icoms I have a pot (granted it is
tiny) 
to change speed on the fly if I need to when someone wants a fill. With
the 
Orion, there is a multipurpose control that does this - which means you 
need to have pushed a button that put it in that mode. What they want
you 
to do is to hook the computer key output to the PTT line of the Orion,
and 
then program it to run CW (that's one of the options for PTT)! With the 
break-in keying capability of the Orion, this may not be a bad option,
but 
the control wiring for this station was set up to run the PTT output
from 
the computer to both the rig and the amp to ensure everything was up
before 
sending characters. This can also make the CW and SSB setups different! 
Note that although there are three CW memories easily accessible on the 
front panel, they only work if the rig is in KEYER mode! There is also
no 
"paddle reverse" functionality like there is in the 756 (I ended up 
rewiring my Bencher, as standards seem to have changed over the years,
and 
now it needs to be readjusted or cleaned 'cause it just isn't working 
right) which was also great for switching between right- and left-handed

operators.

MarC, K3NCO
marc.ressler at verizon.net




 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ic756pro3/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
    ic756pro3-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
    http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/