Gerald et al, Thanks for a great product. The Flex-3000 rekindled my interest in HF after 30+ years in self-confinement in 2M emergency activities. My new Flex-3000 is fantastic - even with the quick-and-dirty longwire at 15 feet that I'm using as a temporary antenna. I've worked more countries and longer distances in 2 weeks than I did in years way back when. And it wasn't even hard to do.
I spent that 30 years in the computer industry, including time at one of the biggest software companies (not the one in Washington). It was common industry practice to use groups of volunteer customers as alpha and beta testers, where each had agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement which prohibited any discussion of test results outside of the beta group. This was precisely to prevent irrelevant, incorrect, or misleading information to get out in public where it could do irreparable harm. I can't recall ever having to enforce the NDA. It's presence was enough to remind people that we were serious, that discussions were harmful, and that they shouldn't do it despite their eagerness. Since all the testers were "on our side", they didn't have problems agreeing. Plus they got to give a knowing smirk to people at tradeshows or conferences and the excuse to say "sorry I can't talk about it, wish I could". As a new user/customer, I'm pleased that I haven't had to reload my database, toggle settings to get something to work, or perform the other inscrutable gyrations that I've seen discussed. It just worked. Maybe I'm just lucky, but I don't think so. What I would like to see is more discussion of how to most effectively *use* the current, released, Flex/PowerSDR system as part of a station setup. For example, PSK31 is new to me and I've gotten it running with Winwarbler. But how do I best use the Flex filtering abilities? Or take advantage of the fact that the signal is always in software, never going through a soundcard? Should I set up some macros to "home in" on a signal when I start a QSO? Is it worth having a PSKMeter to keep the signal clean? Etc. A place for such "best practices" discussions would be a great resource. Just some thoughts for the "new rules"... /Jack K3FIV Point Arena, CA On Thu, 2009-06-18 at 08:43 -0500, Gerald Youngblood wrote: > Dear FlexRadio customers: > > A separate "SVN Experimental/Development" reflector is exactly what we plan > to implement. We will work out the details and make an announcement here in > the next 1-2 weeks. FlexRadio Systems is the only amateur radio company on > the planet that gives its customers (and competitors) instantaneous access > to the daily software development source and binary code base. This access > is a privilege we offer our customers, not a right. > > We know that our competitors point potential customers to this reflector to > see discussions about experimental code that they use against us to claim > that our software is buggy. This is a patently false representation because > Official Releases are highly stable and fully documented. On the other > hand, by definition experimental code (pre alpha) is always buggy. > > So the bottom line is that if our customers want to play in the developer's > SVN sandbox, some new rules will apply. In the meantime, posts here should > only relate to Official Released versions of PowerSDR (currently 1.18.0). > Thanks for your cooperation. > > Regards, > Gerald > > Gerald Youngblood, K5SDR > President > FlexRadio Systems > 13091 Pond Springs Rd. #250 > Austin, TX 78729 > Phone: 512-535-4713 > www.flex-radio.com > > "Tune in excitement!" (TM) _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List FlexRadio@flex-radio.biz http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/ Knowledge Base: http://kc.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
