Dear Flexers, At the end of July, the FLEX-5000 will have been in production for a full year. We would like to thank you, our customers, who have made the FLEX-5000 launch such a great success. At the end of June, our sales for 2008 exceeded all of 2007. Further, we sold out and completed shipments of the first batch of RX2 upgrades, which provide full dual receive capability. Orders for RX2 exceeded our production forecast by over 50%. We are receiving great feedback from many of our customers who are using the new capabilities.
We are pleased to announce that RX2 has passed CE compliance testing. We are finalizing the production modifications and documentation so that we can begin shipment of CE compliant boards in mid to late September, when our next production run will be available. The September schedule is due to the unanticipated quick sellout of the initial RX2 production run and long lead time component availability. In April, we began shipping an enhanced version of the HRFIO (a.k.a. RFIO) board that provides all of the antenna connections and RF switching on the back panel of the FLEX-5000. The new version adds the capability for RX2 to connect to ANT1 and new full duplex switching for a future internal VHF/UHF transverter option to be announced late this year. More detail on the HRFIO features can be found at http://kb.flex-radio.com/article.aspx?id=10495. To determine which board is installed in your radio, you can read the following article: http://kb.flex-radio.com/article.aspx?id=10492. We are offering a HRFIO upgrade option for those customers who would like to have the added features. The price for the new HRFIO board is $169.00 and we offer a $40.00 trade-in discount if you return the original board. Shipment is from stock to 10 weeks from time of order, depending on availability. The FLEX-5000 Family Service Manual is now available for free download to original owners. If you purchased a used FLEX-5000, you will need to purchase the warranty transfer on our website, which will include the right to download the service manual. Within the next week, each customer will receive a personal email with downloading instructions. We have begun design of a new full-duplex, VHF/UHF internal transverter add on for the FLEX-5000 family. We expect to release more details on the expected features and specifications in the next couple of months. We are taking into account the inputs received from many of you directly and on the FlexRadio reflector. We think that you will be pleased with the results once we are ready to provide more detail. The design will be based on a modular construction that offers different power levels and bandwidth options so that it can be configured for different applications. An important feature is that the transverter local oscillators will be derived from the FLEX-5000's 500 MHz clock for low phase noise and synchronization to an external 10 MHz reference. Please be patient while we work out the remaining details. We prefer to take the time necessary to address the broad set of applications found in the amateur service for these bands. We are pleased that FLEX-5000A and FLEX-5000C models are now available for the first time from stock. Manufacturing capacity has increased dramatically over the last few months so that we can now offer faster shipment. However, varying demand and component lead times can change this situation at any time resulting in longer lead times. On the PowerSDR software front, we will be limiting updates to bug fixes and essential enhancements in order to devote our resources to the new software architecture. We plan to strictly limit feature additions to PowerSDR so that we can turn our attention to the new development, which will enhance our ability to rapidly bring new capabilities to our customers. It is imperative that we make this break with the past so that all our customers can receive the benefit of the new architecture. We will keep you up to date as things develop on this front. Finally, we would like to thank you, our "field sales team." Our customers are our best salesmen. Also, sincere thanks to all the volunteers that help on open source software, on the FlexRadio reflector, at hamfests, etc. For those of you in the USA, we wish you a happy Independence Day. Warmest regards, Gerald Gerald Youngblood, K5SDR President FlexRadio Systems 13091 Pond Springs Rd. #250 Austin, TX 78729 Phone: 512-535-4713 _______________________________________________ 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://kb.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
