Disposition of Radios (1) – TenTec Paragon II Setup

Paragon II in route to a new home

This TenTec Paragon II is an interesting story. It was given to me as a “parts or repair” radio by George W9EVT ten years ago, with a request “that if it was repairable, could I get into a the hands of a ham who would use it, but didn’t have a HF radio?”

The radio went off to TenTec’s service and in all honesty more parts and labor were put into repairing and aligning the transceiver than perhaps it was worth.

I’m not going to name the two hams that have used this radio over the last decade, as one had it briefly until they saved enough to buy the rig they wanted, and another had it for quite a few years. These were hams whose personal economics didn’t have room for anything expensive, and both took great care of the radio.

The second ham recently returned the radio asking that I get it to another ham, as he had scrounged up a smaller transceiver, which given his small government housing would free up space.

I went down my shortlist of possible new operators, eliminating some based on the observation that being radio-poor was a choice when their economics allowed for new cars and vacations. Another group when I started checking working my shortlist had gotten HF radios, which further whittled down the list.

Of the remaining list one ham who is living on a very small military pension quickly became first choice and this weekend the TenTec Paragon II setup was handed off to another worthy ham.

In another post down the road I will lay out my ideas behind having loaner/starter radios to help people out. I also learned a pretty good trick how to make sure a radio basically loaned out never comes back, if that is a goal. I’ll touch on that later as well.

Net effect for me is an expense absorbed long ago continues to provide a series of hams operating opportunities, bringing ham-joy into their lives. What could be better than that?

73

Steve
K9ZW

TenTec Service Hiatus

Received from the email list today (05FEB22):

F Y I —

In a phone conversation this date with the owner of Tentec, he stated all radios presently in the Sevierville facility for repair WILL BE returned to their owners. This is being done at Tentec expense.

Be advised most if not all radios are being returned as NOT REPAIRED. There are no parts orders, no technical assistance, no phone calls, and no e-mails available from the facility. Tentec ham radio service is therefore terminated. The Sevierville operation is suspended until further notice.

73

Bob, K4TAX [Moderator TenTec List]

Google lists TenTec as “Temporary Closed” at the Sevierville Facility also.

Service has been disrupted since 2020 with Chinese Virus rules in Tennessee and the knock on effects of being forced to close for the virus.

That customer radios in for service are being returned rather than moved to te parent company’s Ohio headquarters, suggest this is not a minor issue.

Without official service capabilities the TenTec models where schematics and service information is publicly available may be easier to keep running, and the undocumented new models may be now a challenge to keep on the air long term.

More information is likely to come out before Dayton, and hopefully the Chinese Virus hasn’t resulted in another long standing USA based Ham Radio manufacturer biting the dust.

The same company also owns Alpha Amplifiers who’s Alpha-4040 Tuner, a project that appears to have become a Chinese Virus disruption casualty as well.

73

Steve
K9ZW

Another Portable HF Option – Elecraft KX3 for Portable Activations

Elecraft KX3

 

Looking into 2022 I hope to participate in a few activations.

With Tom K0TTC scheming to do a newer park on Detroit Island (which is a Wisconsin island in Lake Michigan – you have to love the reuse of names across the Midwest). Hoping we can catch a few other nearby Islands as well.

Having missed having a nice simple portable HF setup on my recent trip around Lake Superior, I’d like to be ready for some HF on an envisioned Lake Michigan circle trip in 2022.

I’ve had three radio options I could use. The Flex-6600M could be pulled from service at my work QTH station, I’ve used a TenTec Jupiter (and Pegasus) for this in the past, and I have a SGC SC-2020 that could be used.

Alpha 4040 Tuner someday soon? Alpha 9500 Amp now.

With Ten-Tec and Alpha/RF Concepts merged some good things are happening.

Some of the Amps and Radios have really aggressive sale pricing. Example the Alpha-9500 Amp which had been raised this year to $8,750 is available for $6,995 – a combination of a $755 drop in list price and another $1,000 off in sale pricing. In my case they threw in the plug (usually another $50) and shipping was an affordable $125 for a net $7,120 vs. what would have been $8,925+ before the merger and the summer mega sale.

Amp pricing is also being affected by the pricing jostling between the different manufacturers, and Alpha as a similar hot deal on their manual tune model.

The Ten-Tec radios are also aggressively priced for the sale. Tempting to pick one up as a backup radio…

I’ve read where some hams are worrying that the Alpha Amps might become orphans – a valid consideration if the new merged company gave signs of anything other than success. Right now many of their products went from in-stock/overstocked to short backorder which means they don’t have to move the inventory, their sales are up, and enough of us are ordering to make forward sales positive.

The best news is that the Alpha 4040 Tuner project seems to have been given new life, with announcements that the design is stable, testing (including abusive high power switching testing) has gone well, the form factor has been reduced and stabilized and the processor upgraded. No delivery date yet or confirmation of meeting the price target either, though this latest communication sure is more transparent and encouraging than the silence or limited communications during the long wait.

Good stuff happening.

73

Steve

K9ZW

All Good Things Come To An End, Someday – Radio Transceiver Models Discontinued

Eventually all good products run their course and for various reasons go out of production.

This spring saw the outstanding FlexRadio Systems Flex-5000A radio discontinued as the combination of being overshadowed by FlexRadio System’s Flex-6000 series and market place economics due once standard parts having become legacy items available only at premium custom run prices collided.

According to news shared by fellow blogger Jeff KE9V TenTec found itself in a parts availability/cost pickle leading to the end of production of the Orion II.

Jeff KE9V reported:

Got a note from TenTec today that included this — “On a rather sad note, about the time you read this message, we will have sold out of the last 566 Orion II transceiver. Unfortunately, due to the availability of some very critical parts plus skyrocketing prices for difficult components, the staff at TEN-TEC decided to discontinue this product. This does not mean we will not trade or sell used and demo Orion’s and Orion II models. We will continue service and support this product as we have done in the past with all TEN-TEC products. Is a new Orion III on the horizon? There are plans for several new TEN-TEC products lined up for the future but at this time no concise decision has been made for another Orion transceiver.”

If you recollect the Orion II was the result of the original DragonBall processor being discontinued, as well as an opportunity to upgrade the product during the redesign.  The DragonBall Super VZ 66 MHz processor of the Orion II seems to have disappeared as well.

Less substantiated is the the rumblings about Icom’s IC-7800, which some Icom representatives have mentioned to present IC-7800 owners that production is unlikely to continued when present inventory is depleted.  There is no word what might replace this nearly 10 year old product.  I wouldn’t stake my reputation on exactly when the IC-7800 new sales cease, as even the list price is matter of confusion with retailers quoting list pricing of $10,000 to $13,500 and “street prices” of $9,800-10,500

Even weirder rumblings surround the button heavy Kenwood TS-990S, mostly that the radio is Kenwood’s “Swan Song” last offering before it leave the Amateur Radio Market.  Despite the performance reports suggesting the TS-990S is basically a TS-570D in wolf’s clothing, it is just odd that a product would come to market with a “last hurrah” storyline.  It is pretty clear that the TS-990S is a brand-satisifaction product and not a performance leadership product.

Interesting higher end of the market.

Maybe there are some neat new products ready in the wings?

Interesting….

73

Steve
K9ZW

Dayton 2013 – Friday Report

Been an interesting Hamvention so far.

There are some new products – the IC-7100 successor to the IC-7000 and the TS-990 was being shown.

Interestingly the Kenwood was somehow locked up and the floor team didn’t have a way to reboot it.

My first focus was a visit with Julius at W2IHY where I was having a very serious look at the new line of switch gear.  I’ve always admired the quality of his gear and this new range of products doesn’t disappoint.  http://w2ihy.com will fill you in on the new gear.  I already have a lot of his audio gear and will be adding some of the new line.

A visit at Hilberling found that they fully up and running for the USA market.  Never intended to be “everyman’s transceiver” they have delivered over $1million of these new “uber-radios” so far.

Long chat at FlexRadio Systems and one has to admire their willingness to trickle out radios even while the eagerness and requests to ship are so huge.  It was hard to get up close with the crowd, but i did get some time on their Flex-6700 simulators.  Tim W4TME was kind enough to give me a guided tour of the inside of the visual Flex-6700 – and I obliged by pretending I knew what all that stuff was (actually it is pretty neat and straight forward.)  FlexRadio Systems has put the Flex-5000A on end-of-life status with a when stock is sold, they are all sold noted on their website.  Flex-5000A critical components have become unavailable and it was fairly easy to see their was a product line overlap (a fully loaded Flex-5000A was within five hundred dollars of the new Flex-6500).

Very nicely the FlexRadio Systems team explained to me that when my radio is ready to ship, it will be ready.  Tomorrow is the FlexRadio Systems Dayton Hamvention Dinner where I hope to hear much more.

Over at Alpha the long awaited Alpha-4040 Tuner was being shown in working form.  The tuner looks well worth the wait.  The touchscreen display is awesome!

I was really taken with the dual port VNA (Vector Network Analyzer) at Array Solutions.  This “black box” connects to your PC to create a full test lab doing much more than I can recollect.  Jay (Array Solution’s owner) showed me how to do a TDR (Time Division Reflectometry) examination of a feedline and antenna system (including the VNA even measuring a human hand touching an antenna element), how to do a full in depth coil measurement, and a bunch of stuff I am going to have to brush up on.  This look like my next test gear addition.

The Japanese LUSO tower people took the time to explain their very cool crank-up towers.  Really amazingly serious amateur radio gear.

I was surprised at a couple vendors living the past.  Some of the big name rotor/rotor-controller folk have amazing new technology (Green Heron Engineering is a personal favorite, and they sold me one of their new station control modules) and other are promising to catch up to market norms by adding computer control to their rotor-controllers in perhaps a year….

TenTec was showing off their latest and a new Model 506 “Rebel” QRP transceiver I hadn’t seen before.  Apparently this new radio has the guts of an Arduino running the show – very cool!

More tomorrow!

73

Steve
K9ZW