{"id":1049,"date":"2011-07-12T20:45:47","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T01:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2011-07-12T20:53:27","modified_gmt":"2011-07-13T01:53:27","slug":"tentec-century-21-digital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/?p=1049","title":{"rendered":"TenTec Century 21 (digital)"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Today’s run: rest day]<\/p>\n

This morning I pulled my TenTec Century 21 off of the shelf and made some contacts with it.<\/p>\n

The Century 21 is a 1980 vintage, CW only, solid state 5-band transceiver.\u00a0 It puts out something like 30 watts, depending on the band.\u00a0 It plugs into 120 VAC power.\u00a0 It has an internal speaker.\u00a0 If you use headphones you may need a higher impedance set than your usual walkman stuff, or an impedance conversion of some sort.<\/p>\n

This is the second Century 21 that I have owned.\u00a0 The first was an earlier (I think) model with an analog dial.\u00a0 This one has the digital dial.<\/p>\n

The Century 21 is a direct conversion receiver.\u00a0\u00a0 I really enjoy using it.<\/p>\n

To\u00a0 precisely tune in a station, press the Zero Beat button on the left side of the control panel while tuning the large knob.\u00a0 Get the received signal so that it goes down in frequency and disappears (zero beat).\u00a0 Then adjust the Offset knob to get the signal tone that you enjoy.<\/p>\n

To transmit, turn down the\u00a0 Drive, press the\u00a0 Set Drive button while slowly turning up the Drive.\u00a0 Watch the meter and go up to around 60, or lower if you like.\u00a0 If you go too high the power supply current limiter will turn off the radio.\u00a0 Just turn it off and on again.\u00a0 That’s it for tune up; plug your key in the back and start sending.<\/p>\n

You have Frequency Band, RF-Gain (push\/pull on-off), Audio Gain, and 3-setting audio filter along the bottom of the control panel.<\/p>\n

One really nice feature of this radio is the QSK.\u00a0 The sidetone in my unit is kind of buzzy.\u00a0 It sounds like background noise (and other signals) with my buzzer going buzz, buuuuzz, buzz right over the top of them.\u00a0 You can hear the other signals between your dits and dahs.<\/p>\n

The receiver hears both sidebands of every signal.\u00a0 The upside of that is you can tune to either side to avoid interference.\u00a0 The downside of that, when the band is crowded it is almost unusable.\u00a0 One year at Field Day I operated a Century 21.\u00a0 I could do it, but visitors couldn’t tell which signal I was trying to converse with.<\/p>\n

I don’t have a lot of experience with modern radios, most of my stuff is 1970’s and 1980’s vintage.\u00a0 For CW work, this is the most fun multi-band transceiver I have used.\u00a0 The receiver is no great shakes.\u00a0 The audio filtering works but is not impressive.\u00a0 No noise blanker, no second receiver.\u00a0 Just a straightfoward CW machine.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Today’s run: rest day] This morning I pulled my TenTec Century 21 off of the shelf and made some contacts with it. The Century 21 is a 1980 vintage, CW only, solid state 5-band transceiver.\u00a0 It puts out something like 30 watts, depending on the band.\u00a0 It plugs into 120 VAC power.\u00a0 It has an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ham-radio","category-operating"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1060,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/1060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}