Brett,
I know that a lot of people who are considering the purchase of a Flex SDR
read the reflector for a time first. And while it is unfortunate that you
are having the trouble you describe I would hate to have someone deprive
himself of the pleasure those radios provide because of your experience.
As one of those people who seems to repeatedly accidentally shock his
equipment I can testify that my 3000 and 5000A have tolerated some really
serious abuse I heaped on them without damage.. For example, I have dumped
the full output of a D700 into the antenna BNC of the V/U upgrade and the
radio "kept on ticking!" And in an equally idiotic stunt put 23 volts of
DC into the power connector without negative results.
I will admit that some care has to be taken where stray RF is concerned and
I have had "problems" but they all disappeared with some additional care in
grounding, cable routing and a few more common mode ferrite chokes.
And I'm going to say that my Asian radios have gone back to the manufacturer
several times for repair but not the Flex's and I am one of the earliest
non-beta test owners of the radios! My own experience has been that they
are "tough, well made and trouble-free stuff." I don't think I have to
comment on their performance on the air!
73
Lee K9WRU
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brett Gazdzinski" <brett.gazdzin...@verizon.net>
To: "Neal Campbell" <abrohamn...@gmail.com>
Cc: "flex-Radio E-Mail Reflector" <flexradio@flex-radio.biz>
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 9:24 PM
Subject: Re: [Flexradio] new 3000 with problems?
I have a bucket load of clamp on ferrites from work, and have them all over
all the cables on the flex and the computer.
The computer seems to be doing fine, but no matter what I do I can not get
more then 1/2 power out of the 3000.
I had forgotten to ground the computer, but put one on after the glitch.
I reset the database, and changed the option to show the flex icon in the
system tray, and that pops up when the radio is turned on.
Into a dummy load, on ssb, am, fm, max power out is 50 watts.
Current draw is 10 amps max, so it looks like I lost one of the output
transistors.
This is the same amp I drove with the flex 5000, the icom 756 pro3, etc.
At first I thought the computer reset because the power kind of sags when
the amp kicks on, but I am not sure.
Everything still works (even into the amp) but the 3000 output is half
what it should be.
It looks like I will be contacting flex to send the 3000 back.
I so wanted this to work, as I love the flex receivers, and now I may be
stuck with something yucky like a pro3
(for the band scope).
Or, I could order output transistors and fix it, but it might just happen
again.
The amp only takes about 8 watts to drive it, and if the devices blow out
at that power, its too fragile to use...
What I do not know is exactly what happened, did the computer have issues
that did something to the output devices, did the brown out cause it, rf?,
or what...
Brett
N2DTS
----- Original Message -----
From: Neal Campbell
To: Brett Gazdzinski
Cc: flex-Radio E-Mail Reflector
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 9:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Flexradio] new 3000 with problems?
Brett
If the OS is Win7, make sure you are using the legacy 1394 driver instead
of the TI one.
If you are reliably seeing 50% utilization, you are really on the edge of
"too little processing power". Make sure you are not running anything else
when you are playing radio!
73
Neal
On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 9:11 PM, Brett Gazdzinski
<brett.gazdzin...@verizon.net> wrote:
Well, I got my new 3000 today.
Installation took about 10 minutes, another 1/2 hour to experiment and
set up all the settings to where I liked.
Then it was hooking up the microphone and setting the EQ and levels up.
I tested the atu, and the power output, and everything was fine.
Cpu is running around 50%, dpc was 250 us.
Then, in the process of transmitting into an amplifier, the computer
did a temporary hiccup, but sort of restarted psdr.
After that happened, my maximum power output dropped to 50 watts.
In AM, setting the drive control to about 10 gives 40 watts out,
modulation makes the power go down, and the alc is sitting at 0 all the
time, with no audio.
Shutting everything off and restarting it makes no difference.
How do I do a database reset?
That was what they always said to do, no?
The radio was working well up to when it was not, some delay through it
as the computer is on the slow side.
Another thing I noticed is the computer did not see the radio when I
powered it up a few times after I had turned everything off.
The speaker icon in the system tray would do something when the radio
was powered up, then I went into device manager and checked the fire wire
card, and its there and ok, then the computer sees the radio when its
powered on.
The card is a Roswell with the TI chipset.
Crazy stuff...
Brett
N2DTS
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--
Neal Campbell
Owner
Abroham Neal LLC
Work: +1 540 645 5394
Mobile: +1 540 645 8171
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