Hello all,
I went roving this weekend during the September ARRL VHF contest
using the flex-1500 and PSDR v2.1.5.
First off, the flex1500 is so valuable for spotting adjacent QSOs and
locating other off frequency stations. I used the flex1500 on both 6m
and 222 using a M2 222 transverter. The ability to pick stations out
of the background noise is amazing, and the external pre-amps I have
add almost nothing to the 1500s already great RX. (This may just mean
the external pre-amps are just crap.) In any case, I'm working
towards using the flex1500 as an IF for all the transverters I have
but I need an intermediate transverter for 2M (On order from DEMI.)
All of the good things aside, I have a pretty critical issue with
using the flex1500 while roving. If the power hiccups/fails during a
rove, I pretty much have to reboot my laptop to regain control of
PSDR. As you may know, stable power during a rove isn't a given and I
really need to not be rebooting the laptop and loosing my ability to
log contacts on other radios, using Roverlog, during a contest. Time
is of the essence during the contest and the DX station may QSY by
the time I'm done rebooting.
Can somebody please look into replicating and resolving this issue?
I'm sure it's not a common occurrence in the shack or in the lab
bench, but rovers are always switching batteries, starting/stopping
the alternator and/or having some fuse blow. If I use the "STOP"
function in PSDR first, then shut it down, then power off the
flex1500, then make power changes, and restart software things tend
to work better. I don't often have the time to do this while roving
with 10 bands in 6+ grids. To replicate, run PSDR, "start" and verify
you are seeing RF on the panadapter. Then, yank the power from the
flex1500 and watch PSDR hang with a frozen panadapter. No amount of
task manager, "End program" or "End process tree" helps here. It's a
full shutdown sometimes requiring a hard reset. I'm using an HP
desktop replacement laptop(read, no shortage of CPU/RAM/disk) with
Windows XP fully patched. I've seen the same, and/or worse behavior
under Windows7 64 bit as well. I may have to dedicate a smaller
battery to the flex1500 itself, but the software/drivers/OS really
should handle a power loss event better than this. If you need more
info on how to replicate, please let me know.
In order to throw out my other IF rig and use the SDR on all 10 bands
I really need this issue resolved. (I really want to use the 1500 for
all 10 VHF+ bands!)
Thanks,
kr0ver
_______________________________________________
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.flexradio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flexradio.com/
