Charles, Let me quote from a post by Scott Robbins W4PA, Amateur Radio Product Manager, Ten-Tec, Inc. (and the guy who convinced Ten-Tec that the market could support a radio like the Orions) regarding the Dragonball processor (the "key part") shortly after the Orion II announcement was made and the obligatory "how dare they" posts started on the Ten-Tec reflector: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- <clip> The DragonBall was EOLed some time ago. When we began design work on the Orion in 2001, that was the "part du jour". It now is discontinued and has a replacement - the DragonBall Super VZ. We have repair parts available for the original processor.
Skip to the next part: What, then, are the options available? Resdesigning the logic board in the Orion to accomodate the Super VZ chip, and then raising the price of the transceiver to cover the costs, and then watching as the Orion matured was one option. The other option was if the control processor is going to have to be changed, then this is the correct time for us to make additions or changes to the transceiver at the same time. Which is what has been done <clip> The gist of it is this: The color screen aside, this is an incremental upgrade in rigs from the Orion to the Orion II. Nothing earth-shattering....no paradigm shift. The basic performance - specs - of the transceiver are essentially unchanged. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I think the fact that they have more orders for Orions right now than they can fill says something, too. There's been a lot of handwrining, whining, and general jump-to-conclusions kvetching on the Ten-Tec reflectors since the O2 announcement was made. It is a sad commentary that so many of those kvetching automatically assumed the worst. 73, ron wn3vaw ----- Original Message ----- From: "Charles Harpole" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2005 1:14 PM Subject: [DX-CHAT] ORION II > Ok, now I understand that the ORION II is coming due to a parts supplier > discontinuing a key part in the earlier (DEFINITELY NOT THE "I") ORION. I > hope TenTec, a company I do admire, will explain that fact to its potential > buyers to avoid the conclusion I jumped to... that they just had changed for > marketing reasons. > > I certainly agree with the ham who noted the shortcomings in the > 756/756Pro/756ProII, which uninformed me still thinks was a product > introduced before its full development. > > BTW, the QST review vaults the FT-9000 over the IC-7800 if I read correctly. > 73, > > Charles Harpole > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > Subscribe/unsubscribe, feedback, FAQ, problems > http://njdxa.org/dx-chat > > To post a message, DX related items only, [email protected] > > This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA > http://njdxa.org > Subscribe/unsubscribe, feedback, FAQ, problems http://njdxa.org/dx-chat To post a message, DX related items only, [email protected] This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org
