EB5AGV's Workbench: Ten-Tec Orion-I repair

A high-end transceiver

Ten-Tec Orion-I

This page is devoted to my Ten-Tec Orion-I transceiver repair.

I got this unit on eBay, in known non-working condition. It came from an old man who just didn't want to get it repaired. so it was a good candidate for my Winter Projects list :-)


Unit as received

These are some pictures of the unit. It was exceptionally clean, both outside and inside:

Ten-Tec Orion-I

Ten-Tec Orion-I

The fault was described as a low contrast display and no reception nor transmission. This is how the display looked:

Ten-Tec Orion-I


First repair attempt

I had read that there were problems with the A9 Power Distribution board capacitors, so I located it and replaced them.

This is the suspect board:

Ten-Tec Orion-I

I got it out of the unit:

Ten-Tec Orion-I

and looked at the bottom side... soldering job was not as expected on a high-end rig!

Ten-Tec Orion-I

Perhaps someone had been there before?

Another thing which didn't convince me is that regulators had no thermal paste. So I put it:

Ten-Tec Orion-I

Ten-Tec Orion-I

Once I put the unit back on the rig, it started!!!

Ten-Tec Orion-I

Ten-Tec Orion-I

It couldn't be that easy right???... right!!! :-(

As soon as I put the rig into its definitive place on my shack, it failed again.

Some months passed until I had the time to work again on the rig.


Second repair attempt

OK, so I knew the problem was not on the A9 board... I checked all voltage regulators (there are quite a lot on this unit, almost on all PCBs), and everything seemed OK.

As the firmware version was old, I thought that perhaps it had something to do with the software.

(TO BE COMPLETED)


More to come soon... keep tuned!


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