Hi guys, This is the first time I am writing to Flex reflector. I own Flex-5000 with all bells and whistles as my primary home radio and also Flex-3000 as my Filed day radio. I own Flexes for less than one year, but I am completely in love with them, I don't think I will be going back to "old" radios any more.
I closely follow the discussion around new Flex-6000 series. This stuff is very interesting, and I fully understand those who gets very exited about new Flex radios. However, I still have a number questions, which were not addressed in the discussion flow. However, if I missed something, please accept my apologies. 1. The specs on the new radios look great. The most exiting parts are about further improvement of dynamic range and adding some network capabilities. This is great. However, these specs look like some sort of incomplete design. Given the "military" heritage of the new radios, it is clear where it comes from. But Ham Radio specs suffer a bit. When I was reading the introductory sheet on the new radio, I had a feeling that some parts, like RX filters for Ham bands, TX PA and some others were simply added to make this radio look a bit more like Ham stuff. And it is strange, that 2m and 75 cm bands (aka VHF and UHF bands) are missing, though the core functionality is already there! 2. What kind of radio is it going to be? Is it going to be an exceptional quality rag chewing / DXer's dream radio? Or is it going to be a serious contester's radio as well? I think that it already has just about everything you can think of inside the box. Technical specs are outstanding. But what about interface? As I have mentioned before, I have Flex 5K and 3K radios. I work many contests, and last year, all my contests were on Flex radios. The latest example of the kind was this year CQWPX Phone contest. I worked as part of the Russian Contest team from Madeira Island, we were CQ3L. We worked Multi-two, and it just happened that Flex-3000 which I brought with me as a back-up radio, turned out to be one of the Run radios for all 48 hours of contest. The average QSO rate was appx 120 to 180 all 48 hours. Flex 3000 worked well without a single glitch. No PSDR or equipment restarts - simply perfect. But the interface and radio controls were an issue, especially during S&P periods. Thanks God there were not too many of these... :) So my point can be articulated as follows - is there a chance that SmartSDR will be custom built and trimmed to support purely Ham Radio operation, Contesting included? And I have no second thought about the radio itself - it is already on the top of the list of the best radios built for Hams. At least on the RX side... 3. What is going to happen with further development and support of PSDR for older Flex radios? We are currently on PSDR 2.3.5, which is very stable. But there is a huge list of requests and/or bug reports which were never addressed... Are we going to see PSDR 2.3.6 and higher? 4. Interfacing with 3rd Party Software and hardware is already a challenge with existing Flex radios. As far as I know, there is only one guy who has created an interface program which can be used together with Flex and some of the most common Ham radio boxes and programs. I am talking about DDUtil and Steve, who has done a tremendous job. It is pretty clear, that it has it's limitations, and one size can not fit all. Existing concept has it's natural limitations, which can't be resolved in a simple way. Well, introducing Networking concept, Flex made a complete change. But this is only 1/2 step. But what is next? Will there be a way to interface new radios with other stuff, without relying heavily on DDUtil or similar programs, which my become a point of failure? In fact, it already does sometimes.... 5. And some thoughts about architecture, Current Flex radios architecture consists of 2 parts, FLex Radio itself and PSDR, which runs on your PC. I.e the quality and processing power of your PC is almost as important as radio itself. After buying my first Flex and turning it on, on the next day I went to my local computer store and spent a little more to buy me a decent PC. I ended up with new powerful desktop in my shack and brand new laptop for my field stuff. Well, this is part of the game and you can't expect high performance of the system if any part of it is not adequate for the job. In Flex 6K series most of the processing is going to be inside the radio. Are we talking about the approach similar to Flex-5000C? Or is it something completely different? I did not place my order for the new radio yet, though I am seriously thinking about it. And, of course, first I would like to better understand which kind of radio we are talking about. 73! de Paul RN3A _______________________________________________ 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.
