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
