About SC4 files and Orion band mods

[ElroyJetson]

This might be worth a tack.

Go here and read up if you're interested in using SC4 files or modifying Orions to extend their band ranges.


http://www.hamrepeater.com/n0ndp/GE-Ericsson-MACOM/Orion manuals/OrionO_O_B.pdf



Elroy

 

[Muxlow]

Iv seen this someplace before.. cant remember what place thou

Soo how could i make my 403-440 get to the 450mhz range?450-460 ish.. That possible?

 

[ElroyJetson]

The low pass filter is your biggest concern. The bandsplit selector resistor is easy enough to change out on the logic board, and the VCO needs to be re-ranged by a capacitor change. But it's the low pass
filter that's the toughest part of the changeover. Someone who can analyze and redesign that filter
would be most helpful.


Elroy

 

[Muxlow]

OoO
To much work lol

 

[Mattsenft]

I had located these intructions somewhere else on the internet and wanted to use it to program 33 mhz stuff in a 35-50 orion. I never understood how to associate the SC files with the orion software. If someone could explain it a liitle better I would certainly appreciate it.

 

[ElroyJetson]

Bring up ProGrammer. In the top toolbar, you have a Tools option. Click on it.

You now have several visible selections. One of them is "Options and directory settings". Select that one.

A window pops up titled, no surprise here, "Options and directory settings".

In this window, there's a box titled "Enable SC4 Files:" Click in that box to select it.


You have to create or obtain the suitable SC4 file, know its name, and park it in a directory where
you can find it. When programming the radio, you should now have the option to navigate to that
directory and select that file.

I haven't done all this myself yet, but I'm about to.


Elroy

 

[mitaux8030]

Normally in radios of the Orion vintage, they quite often use discrete L & C TX bandpass filters. But it looks like the Orion uses a nice stripline with discrete C filter arrangement, which isn't quite as easy to modify... at least with discrete L you can stretch or compress coils very easy. With the Orion, looks like you have to replace the SMD capacitors around the stripline. They're pretty low values too, so you could try using caps with 0.5pF less each value as a starting point. I don't think I've got any stripline filter modelling software to check it out, but that would be the way to go if you were serious.
But if its only a matter of wanting to go up a few MHz for the 30-50 MHz band, maybe 5 or so MHz for VHF, and perhaps 10 MHz for UHF versions - its probably not that critical. Rolloff is typically 3dB per 2% the highest design freq above cutoff for UHF.

 

[10-95]

Having used the SC4 files on both orions and MRK high split VHF's, I can tell you that you enter in the frequency like normal, say you want 146.880 recieve, you enter 156.880 in the frequency window. When you write the code to the radio the SC4 file will do a shift conversion while buffering the data and upon writing it it will dump in 146.880. It's altering the code in the buffer and when you read the radio next time it will show 146.880, however if you click on that frequency window, you are stuck, you can't just enter in 146.XXX, you always have to enter in 156.XXX and use the SC4 file. I have the a sample of the Raw code around somewhere, not sure what the legality of posting that code on a public forum would be.

 

[Mattsenft]

I don't have Programmer. I have the older TQ-3367 software which according to the article uses just the SC files rather than SC4 files. It seems a liitle more complex to do than with the Programmer software.

 

[EDACS_247]

I experimented with something today. Using R20, I wanted to see if I could force feed out of band (VHF 140's) frequencies into an Orion without using an sc4 file. I accomplished it by tricking programmer into thinking it was going into a 136 -174 M7100. It worked well, and when I read the Orion everything is in there correctly. Here's the problem: I'm getting a repeatedly flashing error code of 0401. I tried tuning the RX VCO but that didn't do it. So far I get the same error code on 3 separate Orions. Any suggestions?

P.S. The process was done by attempting to write an actual M7100, then after the error checking (before hitting ok at the flash code screen) connect it to the Orion instead & hit ok. After I read the Orion it still comes up as an Orion in Programmer. I didn't tell it was an M7100, I tried that later it was no help.