Argonaut V & Ten-Tec Radio Naming

From the Ten-Tec Reflector May 8, 2002

The Argonaut V is the 'fifth' Argonaut. The first three were the 505, 509, and 515. The 535 was the fourth, and the 516 is the 5th.

Which leads immediately to two more questions: Why was the 4th Argonaut called Argonaut II, and what about the Argo 556?

There were two reasons we called the 535 Argonaut II - one was that the 505, 509 and 515 could be a 'series' of Argonauts, and the 535 was the 'second' series of Argonaut. Also, the Argonaut II was merely the QRP version of the Delta II - it was easy to retain the "II" designation for both transceivers.

We never referred to the Argo 556 as an Argonaut, admittedly this could be hair-splitting. When it was decided to name the 516, we counted only the rigs that had been called "Argonaut" (505, 509, 515, and 535) to come up with the "V" designator.

We considered a whole bunch of other ideas for names beforehand but nothing really stuck - and that's generally how we name our transceivers. We kick around ideas until something that sounds like 'it' to a number of us presents itself. Often the name for the rig comes from Al Kahn, K4FW - who named both the Pegasus and Jupiter rigs as well as a number of the previous models.

Straying a bit here….but we came up with the name for Orion in much the same manner. After deciding not to call it the Omni VII or some other Omni designator we tried various ideas out, until the suggestion of Orion was put forth by Stan Brock from our sales department - and everyone immediately liked that one.

The blame has been assigned!

Scott Robbins, W4PA


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