TEN-TEC OMNI VII TEST

by DJ0IP, DJ6ZM, & DL7AV

 

The long awaited successor to the TEN-TEC OMNI VI+ is a curious radio.  Unlike all OMNI transceivers before it which used downward conversion, the OMNI VII uses upward conversion.  It has what TEN-TEC calls "Distributed Roofing Filters" which are not really roofing filters at its truest definition.

 

I admit I was very scheptical coming into the test.  That soon passed.

 

The test was conducted at the BCC contest station, DL1A, which is located on the west side of Munich, within the city limits.  You can view the antennas at that site, here:  http://qrz.com/db/DJ6ZM .  

 

At the time we ran these tests, the European broadcast stations had not yet moved out of the 40m ham band, which at that time, was still limited to 100 kHz (i.e., 7.0 to 7.1 MHz).  

 

40m operations at night  in Europe when using a good antenna were difficult, even for a good radio.  Most radios have a blanket of noise, at least S9 in strength, covering the entire band.  With the help of attenuation, sometimes lots of attenuation, "IPO" (if the radio has that), and especially a pre-selector, the 40m band becomes quite usable.

 

With a 3 element 40m monoband Yagi at 100 ft. height, this was to be a very interesting test.

 

The rest is described in the Download below.

I made videos of each transceiver, though I'm not much of a photographer.  If I can find them, I will post them as downloads.

 

NOTE: Three years ago I suggested to TEN-TEC that they include an optional back-panel connection for an external Pre-Selector.  They did so in the OMNI VII, and the pre-production unit I tested had this option fitted at the factory, making testing with an external Pre-Selector easy.

 

DOWNLOAD BELOW:

 

Transceiver SHOOTOUT including the TEN-TEC OMNI VII
This test was conducted in February 2007 prior to the OMNI VII's announcement. It is a direct comparison of 40m receiver performance between the OMNI VII and several other popular transceivers.
SHOOTOUT.pdf
PDF-Dokument [73.7 KB]