LB Orion out of band - it works sort of

apco25 · Post by **apco25** » Tue Jul 01, 2003 6:44 pm

Well, interesting point here. First of all you can still program an Orion with DOS afters using PROgrammer, you just can't read it.

Orion does take the out of band channesl except this particular model gives me an error code and displays NO LOCK on 51-55 Mhz freqs.

Error0401

Oddly enough to does TX and RX just finem except the error pops up randomly.

ARG!

Anyone else having this problem?

mike m · Post by **mike m** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 4:19 pm

I'd bet the VCO is on the upper end of it's tuning range and just needs a little adjustment.

I've seen this unlocked popping up before especially when operating at the band extremes. This happens when the PLLs lock detect line changes state even though the VCO may still appear to be locked on frequency, it toggles in between states even though it's locked however the actual LO signal is drifting around a couple of hundred hertz or even KHz.

If you looked at the VCO output on a spectrum analyzer in a narrow res bandwidth you would probably see some drift and noise on the signal.

Mike

apco25 · Post by **apco25** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 9:04 pm

So the question is full alignment or do I just need to tweak the upper end of the VCO tuning range?

I think someone may have tried to move the tuning window down a bit instead of up on this particular radios.

Its a MA/COM branded Orion from 97.

mike m · Post by **mike m** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 12:01 pm

just try moving the tuning range up closer to 54 Mhz for the TX and RX VCOs. Does the output power or receiver sensitivity change drastically when going from say 50 Mhz to 53 Mhz ? If no to either then I'd say the TX and RX sections are wide band enough and only the VCOs need adjustment.

Mike

apco25 · Post by **apco25** » Wed Jul 16, 2003 3:25 pm

I've seen other orions that work fine in this segment so I'm pretty sure its a tuning issue with this specific radio.

I don't have a scope/monitor here (I can get one) to look at it just yet.

When the radio does lock it appears to be fine with 100w power ouput and what appears to be decent rx sensitivity.

apco25 · Post by **apco25** » Thu Jul 24, 2003 7:34 pm

Ok I've done a bit more digging into the behavior of this radio.

The radios VCO locks on all 6m freqs I have in it on RX - all the other freqs work just fine on tx for the most part. I've noticed the high split repeater inputs on 53Mhz do cause a no lock condition.

Rather interesting the RX side of the VCO works better than the TX side. In my experience at least with motorola stuff it was the exact oposite problem. You could TX farther than you could RX.

Odd - Tuning values most not be right.

Anyone out there has a scope to slide the VCO tuning window up a bit?