Hi Paul, See my answers in your text below.
73, Gerald Gerald Youngblood, K5SDR President and CEO FlexRadio Systems(TM) Email: [email protected] Web: www.flexradio.com <http://www.flex-radio.com/> Tune In Excitement (TM) PowerSDR(TM) is a trademark of FlexRadio Systems On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 3:49 PM, Paul Kapitskiy <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi guys, > > This is the first time I am writing to Flex reflector. I own Flex-5000 > with all bells and whistles as my primary home radio and also Flex-3000 as > my Filed day radio. I own Flexes for less than one year, but I am > completely in love with them, I don't think I will be going back to "old" > radios any more. > > I closely follow the discussion around new Flex-6000 series. This stuff is > very interesting, and I fully understand those who gets very exited about > new Flex radios. However, I still have a number questions, which were not > addressed in the discussion flow. However, if I missed something, please > accept my apologies. > > 1. The specs on the new radios look great. The most exiting parts are > about further improvement of dynamic range and adding some network > capabilities. This is great. However, these specs look like some sort of > incomplete design. Given the "military" heritage of the new radios, it is > clear where it comes from. But Ham Radio specs suffer a bit. When I was > reading the introductory sheet on the new radio, I had a feeling that some > parts, like RX filters for Ham bands, TX PA and some others were simply > added to make this radio look a bit more like Ham stuff. And it is strange, > that 2m and 75 cm bands (aka VHF and UHF bands) are missing, though the > core functionality is already there! > This radio is designed to be the highest performing HF/6m radio on the market today. Based on component specifications, we expect the FLEX-6000 series to be 10 dB better on IMD DR3 and phase noise than the current top radios on Rob Sherwood's list. I met with Rob and the ARRL lab people in Dayton to discuss what new test equipment will be required to accurately measure this radio. We all agreed that none of us can currently measure at that level. The lab's signal generators need to have phase noise of -157 dBc/Hz or better at a 10 KHz offset to accurately measure IMD and phase noise of these radios. We cover 2m on the FLEX-6700 with a 0 dBm output on the XVTR port. Adding 100W on 2m and 70cm would double the height of the radio and would add significant cost. That is a different market from the one we are targeting with this radio. > 2. What kind of radio is it going to be? Is it going to be an exceptional > quality rag chewing / DXer's dream radio? Or is it going to be a serious > contester's radio as well? I think that it already has just about > everything you can think of inside the box. Technical specs are > outstanding. But what about interface? As I have mentioned before, I have > Flex 5K and 3K radios. I work many contests, and last year, all my contests > were on Flex radios. The latest example of the kind was this year CQWPX > Phone contest. I worked as part of the Russian Contest team from Madeira > Island, we were CQ3L. We worked Multi-two, and it just happened that > Flex-3000 which I brought with me as a back-up radio, turned out to be one > of the Run radios for all 48 hours of contest. The average QSO rate was > appx 120 to 180 all 48 hours. Flex 3000 worked well without a single > glitch. No PSDR or equipment restarts - simply perfect. But the interface > and radio controls were an issue, especially during S&P periods. Thanks God > there were not too many of these... :) So my point can be articulated as > follows - is there a chance that SmartSDR will be custom built and trimmed > to support purely Ham Radio operation, Contesting included? And I have no > second thought about the radio itself - it is already on the top of the > list of the best radios built for Hams. At least on the RX side... > SmartSDR uses a "thin client" architecture. That means that we can create application specific clients. There will be a general purpose client that comes with the radio but we may choose over time to create separate software products for specific niche applications. > > 3. What is going to happen with further development and support of PSDR > for older Flex radios? We are currently on PSDR 2.3.5, which is very > stable. But there is a huge list of requests and/or bug reports which were > never addressed... Are we going to see PSDR 2.3.6 and higher? > Paul, we have been improving and giving free upgrades for over 9 years now on PowerSDR (originally SDR Console). We continue to make enhancements on a periodic basis. The most recent release came out just 3 months ago and we are alpha testing 2.4 now. We continue make improvements over time that affect the largest population of our users. Given the fact that PowerSDR is free and our competitors get the benefit of its open source license, it is difficult to justify a large engineering investment. > > 4. Interfacing with 3rd Party Software and hardware is already a challenge > with existing Flex radios. As far as I know, there is only one guy who has > created an interface program which can be used together with Flex and some > of the most common Ham radio boxes and programs. I am talking about DDUtil > and Steve, who has done a tremendous job. It is pretty clear, that it has > it's limitations, and one size can not fit all. Existing concept has it's > natural limitations, which can't be resolved in a simple way. Well, > introducing Networking concept, Flex made a complete change. But this is > only 1/2 step. But what is next? Will there be a way to interface new > radios with other stuff, without relying heavily on DDUtil or similar > programs, which my become a point of failure? In fact, it already does > sometimes.... > We are designing this from the ground up now. > > 5. And some thoughts about architecture, Current Flex radios architecture > consists of 2 parts, FLex Radio itself and PSDR, which runs on your PC. I.e > the quality and processing power of your PC is almost as important as radio > itself. After buying my first Flex and turning it on, on the next day I > went to my local computer store and spent a little more to buy me a decent > PC. I ended up with new powerful desktop in my shack and brand new laptop > for my field stuff. Well, this is part of the game and you can't expect > high performance of the system if any part of it is not adequate for the > job. In Flex 6K series most of the processing is going to be inside the > radio. Are we talking about the approach similar to Flex-5000C? Or is it > something completely different? > Completely different. This is covered in the brochure, which you can download off the site. This radio more signal processing power inside the radio than all other ham radios on the combined. Someone came in our booth in Dayton and said that we had put a Cray supercomputer in the radio. I laughed until one of our guys looked up the history of Cray. The FLEX-6000 series radios have more computational power than the first several models released by Cray. I found out he was not joking. > > I did not place my order for the new radio yet, though I am seriously > thinking about it. And, of course, first I would like to better understand > which kind of radio we are talking about. > > 73! de Paul RN3A > > > > _______________________________________________ > Flexedge mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz > This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is > used for posting topics related to SDR software development and > experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software. > _______________________________________________ Flexedge mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexedge_flex-radio.biz This is the FlexRadio Systems e-mail Reflector called FlexEdge. It is used for posting topics related to SDR software development and experimentalist who are using beta versions of the software.
