On Tue, Aug 3, 2010 at 9:48 PM, Peter Scheller <nh...@msn.com> wrote:
> Well here, it is not my intention ti incite WW III. > > So just for basics, Flex Radio is admit tingly a superior radio. No doubt. > Price, depends on options. With all bells, accessories and whistles a price > tag > of $7000.00+ is foreseeable. > > Icom only proprietary system, not likely. My pre amps are SSB, the best > available. > So why run separate power cables, if there is no need for them? > As Tim suggested, bias-'T's are available. > > My complaint about the shortcomings of a Flex radio are strictly the > requirements for > external power cables to antenna mounted pre amps for satellite operation. > Nothing else. > Easily fixed with an external power injector in the coax. Given the different power requirements for mast-mounted devices I don't think I would want my radio to try to provide that. But again, that is a matter of personal preference. > As an added item, and that has nothing to do with satellite operation, I am > also > an AF MARS member, running a WL2K PACTOR III station. A PACTOR III modem > is external hardware, and cannot be duplicated by soundcard as tried > (Winmore). > Well, it COULD be duplicated by PC software running through a soundcard. The processing power in the SCS PTC-whatever is nowhere near the processing power available in a PC. But PACTOR-III is a proprietary protocol owned by SCS and no one else is allowed to implement it so it makes the point moot. I do think that Winmor is an interesting attempt to build a software-only modem to provide an alternative to the SCS hardware. It appears to perform pretty well too. Perhaps there will be a Winmor-II that approaches the performance of PACTOR-III. Certainly Winmor outperforms PACTOR-I and comes reasonably close to PACTOR-II. > > My question here is, if there is a way of incorporating an external SCS > modem > into a Flex radio system to have "Radio e-mail". If that would be possible, > that would > be wonderful and worth the purchase of a Flex 300 by itself. Food for > thought. > You should look through the Knowledge Base. There is an application-note in there about interfacing the SCS PTC-x devices to the Flex 5000. It is actually quite easy. From a purist point of view, I don't like the idea that I have to turn the digital signal in the radio back into analog in order to drive my SCS PTC-IIpro. I would prefer that the signal remain in the digital domain as it does for all the "soundcard" modes. But the bottom line is how it works. > In summary, it is not, and was not my intend to "knock" Flex radios, but > point out > the shortcomings for my intended use. > Well, one man's shortcomings are another man's flexibility. FWIW, I really like my Flex radios. As I said, I haven't found a better receiver out there. Like any other choice, you have to weigh each feature in terms of its importance and then decide what best fits your needs. For me everything revolves around the quality of the receiver and the ability to keep the signal in the digital domain once it has been been converted in the radio hardware. That pretty much puts Flex at the top of the list of amateur radio transceivers as far as I am concerned. -- Brian Lloyd, WB6RQN/J79BPL 3191 Western Dr. Cameron Park, CA 95682 br...@lloyd.com +1.767.617.1365 (Dominica) +1.931.492.6776 (USA) (+1.931.4.WB6RQN) _______________________________________________ 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.flex-radio.com/ Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/
