Since I fixed my Ten Tec Omni, I’ve used it a little and I’ve had one major complaint: it doesn’t talk to the computer.  In fact, in the CQWW contest, I mistakenly logged my first contact on both the incorrect band and the incorrect mode (I was operating SSB on 10m, and it was logged as CW on 160m… never mind that I have never operated 160m CW!).

This is the radio.

When I first got it, I started looking at the different inputs and outputs on the back.  One is very curious: the VFO in-out, which is shorted together.

The VFO In and Out RCA jacks.

So I decided to look into what these jacks do.  Enter the oscilloscope to check the voltage coming out of there (so I don’t blow my antenna analyzer).

Yes, the Omni is on it’s side.

After checking to insure that there isn’t more than 2 volts peak-peak coming from this (there’s actually about 0.5 volts peak-peak.  Once I was sure that it was safe for the antenna analyzer, I took the oscilloscope probe and plugged it into the analyzer to see what frequency that jack used.

I was surprised a little to see that the VFO output for setting the radio at 10 MHz was 5.01 MHz.  Then, I started tuning around and seeing a little pattern, which can be seen in the image below:

My paper of VFO frequencies for all the bands.

So each of these tells me basically the offset (within 0.01 MHz)

In order to get the actual frequency to a computer, I need to do two things: build a frequency counter that I can plug into something that sends a serial string to a computer, and get the band that the radio is switched to, which would probably come from this jack:

The accessory jack.

Sometime in the future (whenever I get back into working on this), I’ll see if I have the connector for that accessory jack and set up something to read it.

-73-