  A gap in the total solar irradiance (TSI) measurements between ACRIM-1 and
ACRIM-2 led to the ongoing debate on the presence or not of a secular trend
between the minima preceding cycles 22 (in 1986) and 23 (1996). It was recently
proposed to use the SATIRE model of solar irradiance variations to bridge this
gap. When doing this, it is important to use the appropriate SATIRE-based
reconstruction, which we do here, employing a reconstruction based on
magnetograms. The accuracy of this model on months to years timescales is
significantly higher than that of a model developed for long-term
reconstructions used by the ACRIM team for such an analysis. The constructed
`mixed' ACRIM - SATIRE composite shows no increase in the TSI from 1986 to
1996, in contrast to the ACRIM TSI composite.
