Over the last year and a half, I’ve been restoring a Ten Tec “Closet Kilowatt” from the late 80’s for a solar powered station. It consists of a model 253 Automatic Antenna Coupler, model 420 Hercules II amp and model 564 Omni VI Plus.
That left how to spot weld. There are many YouTube videos showing how to do it with a commercial tool, but one vid showed a homemade welder that was little more than a motorcycle battery, push button, horn relay and some leads. I could do that.
With the Ten Tec Argonaut 509 restored and working well, it was time to try it out. The Anderson Power Pole made it easy to connect an 8 amp hour gel cell. I hooked it up to my end-fed half-wave antenna and listened around 20 meters. There were plenty of CW signals and I quickly realized a CW filter was going to be needed.
By now, I’ve written about quite a few classic Ten Tec radios. There are those who would argue that the Argonaut, first introduced in 1972, started it all though. It was the first recognizably Ten Tec product and would set the style for decades to come. It was also the first popular QRP transceiver that included both CW and SSB modes.
After getting the serial port sorted out on the Omni VI Plus (Omni VI), it was time to get FT8 running. In this post, I describe two methods. One uses a Tigertronics SignaLink USB sound card with a FTDI-based USB to serial adapter. The other is based on a MicroHam MicroKeyer and a Sabrent USB audio adapter.
Using several 20-foot 2 by 4’s that were left behind by the construction crew, and adding four 8-foot 4 by 4’s for mounting posts, there was enough lumber to build two 36-foot tilt-up masts. Spaced 150-feet apart, they supported a multi-band Zepp antenna center-fed with open-wire line.
The Ten Tec Omni VI+ and CAT Control In an earlier post, I described acquiring and repairing a Ten Tec Omni VI+ (model 564) transceiver.…
In late 2020, I bought a Ten Tec Omn VI+ transceiver (model 564). It was a big step for me since most Ten Tec equipment I had purchased before was older and pretty inexpensive. The Omni VI+ represented a step up both in performance and cost. Released in 1997 with an MRSP of $2850, It was Ten Tec’s flagship at the time.
Lately, I’ve been restoring a Dynaco ST 150 stereo amplifier. As my collection of classic vinyl recordings grows, I’ve assembled the ultimate 1970’s playback system. Coming of age in the mid-70’s, I coveted the then-new high-power solid state amplifiers.
Lest you think I’m completely old-school or only work on old Ten Tec gear, I decided it was finally time to get on top of a digital mode like WSJT-X. I’ve dabbled a few times over the last few years, and even had a pretty complete Ham Radio Deluxe (HRD) installation working.