I just received my FLEX-1500. I think they have shipped 1,000 of these in the last few weeks, erasing their backlog dating about 12 months. It has a transmit problem and is going back to the factory for repair, but examining the unit got me to thinking once more about PC based SDR, Elecraft and our unique place in Amateur radio.
Please bear with me. The Flex is a dual Eurocard box, so it measures about 4 x 6 x 2. It has a 5W Tx with band coverage limits, and a 1 mW transverter side with no band limits. It covers 160m - 6m continuously ,using a DDS. It accepts a 10 MHz reference and a lot of the focus of the radio is toward microwave and VHF/UHF folks. But they are also trying hard to break ground into the QRP community, as witnessed by their blitz at Dayton last year at the QRP hotel. An almost universal complaint with the Flex products, including the -1500, is less-than-stellar CW performance. The internal keyer is rough, it doe snot do QSK, it uses T/R relays, etc. PowerSDR is a screen hog. The -1500 does not support VOX. It doesn't even have a speaker amplifier. Etc. Here is my thought: Elecraft makes a box about the size of the -1500. It has a basic 10W transceiver, space for internal battery (option), space for an internal ATU (option). Rather than leverage PowerSDR we enter an agreement with Alex, VE3NEA. He was written Rocky which has an elegant, eminnently uncluttered UI. Rocky is freeware, but he could tailor it to our new product. It is not open source. He'd get a royalty or some upfront engineering payment. Alex is the author of CW SKimmer, so this opens more markets for that software for him. ROcky woudlnt' need much to be a great user program for us. And -bing! - it uses little screen real estate, so our portable unit is Netbook compatible. PowerSDR is a hog on a netbook, and you have to use an expanded screen so you can;t even see the minimum PowerSDR screen all at once, never mind trying to run some logging program, or skimmer, or digimode stuff. Oh, and it already supports the Si570 :-) Netbooks are cheap, $300 typical, and have long-enough lasting batteries for a day in the field. If you've never played with Rocky, you should. Get a $19 softrock from KB9YIG and fire it up with Rocky. You'll be impressed with what Alex has done. Our SDR woudl have a K1EL WinKeyer (or similar) to get around the iambic keyer propblem and windows lantency that Flex has been fighting for years now. With our 10W PA and PIN diode T/R switching, we beat FLex hands down for our groupies, the QRP CW operators of the world. With the battery option and internal ATU option, we've got a portable radio station that is inexpensive, powerful and highly portable. With Alex doing the Rocky code, our support issues are reduced. We're not trying to appeal to an open-source religious community, We'd fall a bit short with no external reference input. We could do a frequency locked system with the Si570, but not a phase-locked one. Then again, how many people are really doing moonbounce and need that additional stability and accuracy? Using the TI PCM2900 series CODEC (I suspect FLex uses this as well, I haven't opened my -1500 and it is now in the hands of UPS to get repaired.replaced). But this CODEC is recognized by all sorts of computer OSes. We could open up the radio's API so anyone who wanted to could port another SDR app to run our radio (like PowerSDR, or WinRad, or LinRad, or... :-) This would gives us a very competitive radio, open a new audience to Elecraft, provide another "I gotta have it" product for our existing customers, catapult us to the front of the line for QRP SDR, leverage our existing designs and expertise, have low risk, we need to write ZERO DSP code and ZERO UI code. We just need to manage T/R switching and enforce band limits, implement a keyer with a standard protocol (hence the Winkey). The case is simple: ON|OFF and a couple of LEDs on one side. A USB connector, expansion/accessory connector (similar to Flexwire), mic jack, keyer jack, phones jack. Low risk way to evaluate a lot of the technology for the KX2 and possibly the K4 IF section (QSD/QSE, no tune BPF and LPF, Si570 Synth, switching regulator). We can use the foundation and add a front panel (top panel?) section and etc. and create the KX2, or at least the functional equivalent. The limited DR of the TI CODEC would require intelligent use of a preamp and multi-stage attenuator, but Alex is clever and would manage that quite well, I think. Leverage, leverage, leverage. Could have it by Dayton 2011 in spite of the setbacks this summer from component issues. Basic 10W radio: $699 (Flex 1500 is 5W and $649) Internal ATU: $149 (superset of T1?) Battery pack: $129 (Li-Ion with charge controller) If we never market it, it is a good development vehicle for the KX2 (all but the DSP and FP). IF we do market it, it is a great product and helps keep Flex away from an important segment of our customer base (QRP and especially CW QRP). ? L ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html