-=> Quoting John Mudd to John Farrington <=-
JM> sorry, i can't answer your question directly, but please keep us
JM> posted on the progress of your kit building. i have been very
JM> interested in tentec kits and look forward to your  evaluation
JM> (however, your letter starts off with some real concern!) thanks!
JM> 73 de kc5gmm
JM> john
The Ten-Tec 1220 2-meter mobile kit (with 1222 RF amp) went together
mostly OK, but parts are so small and crowded that you really need
to assemble it under one of those big magnifying glasses, and there
are 3 surface-mount parts that need an extra-small soldering iron in
addition to the magnifier. They had one main ground connection that
was poorly thought out - it required soldering a short ground lug to
the pcb foil after the lug was bolted to the metal chassis; the
chassis sucked away too much heat to make the joint, the parts are
too close together to get an iron really on it, and even the tiniest
positioning change or expansion/contraction of the assembly makes
the lug crack the foil off the pcb. However, it wasn't difficult
to modify.
After assembly everything worked, but on the air people complained
that my xmtr audio sounded only about half as loud as other radios,
like I was standing back from the mic. I did some tests comparing
the Ten-Tec electret mic. with an old Shure magnetic desk model I
have, and found that the Shure puts out about twice as much peak-
to-peak audio voltage as the Ten-Tec. The xmtr audio sounds fine
with the desk mic. Next I duplicated the xmtr audio section on a
protoboard with new parts and found that the gain is the same, so
the problem is in the Ten-Tec microphone.
The manual has a serious shortcoming in that it only gives a few
DC voltages to check - it does not give any audio or RF signal
levels, so you don't know what you should get from stage to stage.
The radio has a shortcoming in that there is no internal control
for adjusting FM deviation, so you can't compensate for different
microphones or speaking characteristics (there is a mic. gain pot,
but it is preset at maximum as recommended by the manual). Also,
there is no diagram for the supplied mic., making it difficult to
modify its internal R/C components.
Another problem developed after the kit had been running for a
while: it has a microprocessor-controlled phase-locked-loop freq.
synthesizer which has a "sleep mode" when turned off to conserve
the memory battery; this would be fine if it would only wake up
quickly when turned on again - it did that at first, but now it
takes several minutes unless you rapidly toggle the power on/off
several times. There are only 2 IC's that could be the problem,
but I don't know which.
It's easy to get replacement parts from Ten-Tec, but getting tech
support is proving to be difficult: I sent a letter several months
ago detailing errors in the manual and the microphone problem, but
didn't get a reply. A second letter got a response from the sales
dept. saying that the tech support guy  (only one?)  was on
vacation, but he would put my letter on his desk so he could reply
as soon as he got back. That was over a month ago and still no
reply - sounds to me like they have cut personnel to the bone,
probably a sign of the times.
So, would I recommend the radio? Depends if you prefer kits to
running an appliance, or want to support a U.S. company. The kit
costs less, but has only 15 memories, no fast-tuning switch
(tunes in 5 kc steps only, or 2.5 with a modification), and it
does not scan. I'm glad to see that someone is making the effort
to put out kits after the sad demise of Heathkit, but they need
to put more trouble-shooting information in the manual and have
someone answer the mail (they have an e-mail address for sales,
but not for tech support). However, given the distraction of the
Internet, the invasion of foreign-made ready-to-run appliances
and the unfortunate tendency of U.S. companies to export jobs in
search of maximum profit, I don't know if any U.S. ham-oriented
business can survive.
John Farrington    KE5ZB
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