I have 2 SDR's and until I sold it last month I had an Orion. My station includes 3 separate antenna systems and 3 different amps. I could run 1500W on 160 to a vertical, 1500 W on 80 to a vertical and 1500W to a zepp on 40 and I couldn't tell when receiving on any of those radios that I was transmitting on any other radio. My antennas are all within 100ft to 150ft of each other, and I have taken pains to keep common mode off the feedlines and to make sure everything has common grounds so there are no ground loops, but I don't use extra ordinary band pass filtering or anything like that, just the native filtering of the radio. It is my habit to often be involved in 2 qso's at once, CW DXing on one band (which requires being able to decipher weak signals) while involved in a rag chew on another band. My rigs are set up for instant automatic switching between bands and antennas and I use an alpha 78 on the DX radio so all I have to do is click the cluster program, click band switch on the amp and go. The SDR radios do this with such ease that I was never using the Orion anymore so that is why I sold it. The Orion is an incredible radio but it was not as good as the SDR setup at least in my opinion. I had the the FT-1000D before I bought the Orion and the Orion beat the pants off that radio so I sold the Yaesu. I see no reason to think the SDR wouldn't beat the pants off the Yaesu as well. The SDR is every bit as good if not a little better as a DX radio than the Orion. The way its tuning is implemented is much better and the ability to see the band as opposed to just listen to the band is a substantial improvement to the information available to the operator. I think the new radio will be even a greater improvement and will afford advantages that have yet to even be considered, just because the system allows for so many more degrees of freedom in how you can think about designing the station. I think when the Flex 5K hits the market it will be like getting that extra big erector set on Christmas morning.... imagine the possibilities.
You don't need a $2000 computer to run PowerSDR. I built a core 2 duo system for about $800 that included everything but the monitor. You can build a barebone P4 system for a little more than half of that that will run PowerSDR fine. 73 W9OY ____________________________________________________________________________________ Sucker-punch spam with award-winning protection. Try the free Yahoo! Mail Beta. http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/mailbeta/features_spam.html _______________________________________________ FlexRadio mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ FlexRadio Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/ FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
