N1SMM, N3AO, N3KN, and N4HY, operated the 10m contest with the 5000 and N1MM. Carter and I did the CW but that was only about 30 minutes. The rest was SSB. N1SMM was doing her first contest and doing mostly searching and pouncing with N1MM and assisted by DX spotting with our FRC and PVRC spottting services.
First, she learned the 5000 and N1MM in a half hour of watching. They are completely intuitive except for those times you have odd situations (such as needing to correct a mistake in the log, etc.). For normal operation, they are seamless for the average contester. A newbie, who has never sat in front of the radio before in her life, worked all continents except Asia, half way to DXCC, and half way to WAS with ALL of the hard ones in the bag (AK, HI, all W0's, all W7's, ME,NH, VT, RI). Coming into this with NO preconceptions on how a radio should work and no idea that a nob was needed or that there was a workflow thing to worry about had no trouble. After an hour of instruction, the rest of us were shooed away for the weekend. I was watching closely to see what was what and to make suggestions. My view now is that contesters who have done it for years on legacy radios and are not open to much change from what has put them in the top tier for years are not the only people we serve. This radio makes it VERY easy to serve the vast majority of people who jump into contests and that is search and pounce operators who are trying to get their "whatever" totals up for certificates or to just have a good time. For S&P, with the panadapter, continuously variable filters, notch filtering that works, etc. there is no better radio. This is perfect equipment for the vast majority and I do mean the preponderance of people doing contesting. These are my opinions, YMMV Bob On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 1:35 PM, <[email protected]> wrote: > All, > > I thought I would share my experience this weekend in the ARRL 10m contest > using a Flex-5000. This is my first semi-serious contest effort using the > Flex-5K. I operated in the Single-Op CW HP category using the Flex-5000, > PowerSDR v2.2.3 and the N1MM logger. Keying the 5K was done through the CAT > port via N1MM and directly with a paddle connected to the back of the radio > (no external keyer). The Flex-5K was driving a Henry 4K-Ultra (8877) at 50w > to make 1.5KW. This was a part time effort in between putting up Christmas > lights and decorations, all-in-all 17 hours of operating time. > > So, the question is - Is the Flex5K + PowerSDR ready for prime time CW > contesting? Here are some interesting stats from my effort: > > Total Q's = 1129 > Mults = 143 > Est. Score = 645,788 > > Best sustained rate over a period greater than 60 minutes 145Qs/hour or > 2.4 Qs per minute . > Best burst rate over 10 minute period 240 Qs/hour or 4 Qs per minute. > > You can't do these rates if there are serious issues with the delays in > the system! I had the audio sampling rate set to 48K with a buffer of 512. > The DSP buffers were set to 256 on TX and 2048 on RX. There were a few > times when the TX/RX change over caused my to miss the first part of the > first character, but this was rare. > > The brick-wall filter skirts definitely earned their keep. Also, being > able to grab the mouse and fine tune the filter bandpass, both edges and > centering, helped a great deal. > > One thing you notice with a Flex-5K is just how many really crappy signals > are on the band. I won't list calls (I did keep notes), but there were a > few standouts in the worst signal on the band category where their clicks > were only 10db down from the peak and filling 50+ Kcs. Others were barely > recognizable as a CW signal on the spectrum display. > > One recurring issue I still have to figure out is that there was some key > stroke my clumsy fingers made that turned on the multi-RX features. This > caused me to think that someone QSY'd on top of my run frequency when they > hadn't. I finally was clued in by looking at the spectrum display and saw > it wasn't correlated with what I was hearing. Then I saw the multi-rx > button highlighted. This was the only somewhat annoying thing experienced > with the Flex all weekend, and it is attributable to op error. > > I consider myself a fair CW operator and I can certainly say from my point > of view the Flex5K+PowerSDR are certainly ready for prime time CW > contesting. > > I love this radio!! > > All the best for the holidays. > Cheers, > Chuck de NJ6D (aka N7KU in the contest) > _______________________________________________ > Flexedge mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz > This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is > used for posting topics related to SDR software development and > experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software. > -- Bob McGwier Facebook: N4HYBob ARS: N4HY _______________________________________________ Flexedge mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is used for posting topics related to SDR software development and experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software.
