See my comments in-line below
-Tim -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark Lunday Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 10:37 PM To: 'Neal Campbell'; '[email protected]'; [email protected] Subject: Re: [Flexradio] Congrats to Flex on Stellar Review of Flex-3000 Thanks, Neal and Tim! Nice. Peter's review was very well written, and he did a lot of prep work. His style of writing is superb. Excellent history of how Gerald started the company. A great example of what a vision and hard work can produce, in the same spirit of Apollo 11 (since we're celebrating 40th anniversary of the moon landing). I am honored to be a Flex customer, and thank you Gerald and all the Flex Radio staff! A couple of questions on the review: 1. I thought WBIR was on the F5K only? [Tim] Nope. It can be used with all FlexRadio SDRs including the SDR-1000 if you manually perform a RX image calibration on each band. The FLEX-5000 and FLEX-3000 have built-in signal generators - part of the BITE (built-in test equipment). More discussion on this can take place on the FlexEdge reflector since this feature is still in development. 2. I have tried to receive in the MF range and found myself unable to do so because of the lack of selectivity (OK, so with my Kenwood 570 I think I tuned in an AM broadcast station three times in 5 years. Not a big deal, just an interesting point) [Tim] All FlexRadio's SDRs are optimized for the ham bands. Additional filtering will help with the images, but the radio wasn't designed for selectivity down that low in frequency. 3. Something Peter mentions at the end which really hit me upside my thick skull - he admitted preferring knobs to keyboard. Well, thanks to Lee W9OY who has been hammering (politely) away at my thick skull with Flex radios, I am seeing that it is a paradigm shift...the user either "gets it" in an AHA, OH NOW I SEE moment, or the user does not get it. Trying to compare the radio with other traditional rigs is truly comparing apples to oranges, or more like a yo-yo to an intertial gyro-scope. It's not even in the same category. I daresay that labeling the F3K as a "radio" is not only a dis-service and understatement, it is...well...inaccurate to a high degree. It's more like a software-defined communications device and signal processing and analysis unit (although SDR is an easier acronym than SDCD-SPAU!) The point is that Peter did not convey any AHA, OH NOW I SEE type of recognition, but instead did a "here's how it stacks up against other rigs" commentary. That misses the concept, IMHO. Maybe he conveyed it in the earlier review of the 5000, but it does not strike me as such in this article. [Tim] Grasshopper has achieved Nirvana :-) Yes, it is like trying to find a car's teeth to check its age. I suspect when transportation changed from horses to automobiles, the same problems making comparisons existed. I presume Peter did not want to seem overly biased in his article abs be "overly" objective. Still, it is a good technical review. I also wouldn't want to have to design a marketing strategy around "SDCD-SPAU", but I get the point. Mark Lunday WD4ELG [email protected] http://wd4elg.net -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Neal Campbell Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 6:09 PM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: [Flexradio] Congrats to Flex on Stellar Review of Flex-3000 My current issue of RadCom arrived today (my favorite ham mag) from the RSGB and it has a 'Peter Hart' review of the 3000. I have traditionally enjoyed Peter Hart's reviews more than any US magazine, he seems to get to the point without a lot of tales of contest adventures, etc. Also, he has reviewed the K3 and found it to be a great radio, not a radio of the Gods. If I might quote without getting sued: "As might be expected, the overall operating experience was similar to the FLEX-5000A. I found the on-air performance of the radio very impressive. The receiver sounded very clean and low noise. The audio quality is excellent and the filter arrangements are really effective. There is no click when the headphones are connected: this problem with the FLEX-5000a has been fixed. The panadapter display adds another dimension to tuning and keeps you aware of signals on adjacent channels. DSP noise reduction, noise blanking and other receiver features all worked very well indeed. I did not experience any problems due to intermodulation or overload but images could be heard from strong broadcasters and strong amateur stations. The ability to receive on two channels simultaneously in stereo within the IF band was excellent, just what is needed for DX split frequency working. The autio quality on transmit using a Heil Handi Mic HM-5 was excellent and CW effective but the fans seemed very noisy. Its a matter of personal preference how you view the computer keyboard as your sole interface to your radio. Some feel it is the way forward, highly flexible and features such as point and click tuning enable rapid frequency navigation. Others. including myself, prefer the traditional approach with round knobs, switches and a good tuning dial. The Flex-3000 with PowerSDR software is a most impressinve radio. Although some aspects of performance are not as good as the FLEX-5000a, it is nevertheless an excellent performer and a significant price saving over its larger brother. There has been a substantial price increase over the last year on many US products. The FLEX-3000 is priced at 1395 pounds inc. VAT, almost half the current price of the FLEX-5000a with ATU." Neal Campbell Abroham Neal Software Programming Services for Windows, OS X and Linux www.abrohamnealsoftware.com (540) 242 0911 _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List [email protected] 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/ Message delivered to [email protected] _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List [email protected] 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/ Message delivered to [email protected] _______________________________________________ FlexRadio Systems Mailing List [email protected] 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/ Message delivered to [email protected]
