19 June 2009

Ten-Tec Paragon


I own a number of radio rigs from lots of different manufacturers (Yaesu, Kenwood, Icom, JRC, Drake, Collins, ...) but, until yesterday, I had no Ten-Tec in my collection. So my new Paragon is for me, besides a new toy, my very first Ten-Tec. I have fixed several Ten-Tecs over the years but I had none of my own.

This unit arrived in pretty good shape, with only some light dirt on it. I bought it as unworking in AM mode and generating extrange sounds at low frequencies. Obviously, I suspected of PLL problems as they are well documented all over the WEB... Well, I have not found yet any obvious problem with the rig in both aspects!. So I guess there could be an intermittent fault waiting to develop again.

Unit arrived with original User Manual (nice one, more like a Service Manual) and a non-original hand mike (which seems to be wired wrongly). It has an optional FM module, but no RS-232 module and no extra filters. Here you have some internal pics:




Only sign of previous repair I have located so far (I have not yet opened lower inner cover) is around the backup battery charging (I guess) circuit. BTW, battery holds a charge but memory and RTC are reset when power is out. So something is wrong here:



Despite the inclusion of the original Giehl EPROM manual in the back of the User Manual, this unit has an standard Ten-Tec EPROM on it, version 3.9:


I wonder if someone would sell me a Giehl EPROM...

I need to check the unit in detail but, so far, it seems to work pretty nicely.


UPDATE #1

I have just opened the inner bottom cover to check. There are good news!. Unit seems completely untouched. GREAT!!!

Here you have some pictures:




And now some more detailed pictures: this is from the PLL area. I have found that wiggling these connectors warbles the signal but this could be due to stray induced capacitances:

And this is the antenna discharge protection:




I will add more info as my work progresses.

73 JOSE EB5AGV

6 comments:

Unknown said...

José,
puedes conseguir chips directamente de Jack:
http://home.fuse.net/jg/Chips/ParagonChip.html
Buena suerte con tu nuevo Ten Tec.
jon, ea2sn

Jose EB5AGV said...

Hola Jon,

Gracias por tu comentario. Sí, lo había localizado... veré si vale la pena el poner ese chip o no. Es cuestión del uso que le de al Paragon. Por ahora, como estoy en proceso de ampliación del shack, lo tengo guardado.

73 JOSE EB5AGV

Unknown said...

I have a Paragon that started out fine but developed an issue. The s meter stopped working on incoming signals, but works fine when checking swr and output. Also, the af output seems too loud and a bit distorted. Any ideas what could be wrong?
Thanks K1PN

Anonymous said...

Hi Jose,

Congratulations with your equipment !
I wonder if you can help with information about a Paragon. It's working fine but showing nonsense on its display.....
We have to replace a HD63705VOP VERSION 2.1 but have been unsuccessful. We got another chip, but what we need is the content. Can you help with "reading" your PROM or in any other way ?

73,

Frans PA0FVE

Anonymous said...

I read where another ham had to re-solder some leads on PLL chips, and that fixed everything.
VE3GYY

Unknown said...

I own a Paragon and Paragon II. Is there any alignment procedures that you can find or have available?

Dave AA5HL