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Still very seriously considering a Flex-3000

Moleculo

Moleculo

Ham Radio Nerd
Apr 14, 2002
9,200
1,686
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I've been comparing the specs of various newer HF transceivers and am still very interested in the Flex 3000. I saw this rig at Dayton and haven't taken my eyes off of it yet.

Here's a shot I took at Dayton of the main board:

moleculo-albums-2009-dayton-hamvention-pics-picture752-flexradio-3000-inside.jpg


and a shot of one of the main software screens:

moleculo-albums-2009-dayton-hamvention-pics-picture754-flexradio-software.jpg


Here is a an interesting page that has fairly detailed receiver comparison test data from a lot of different rigs. The guys at Flex-Radio sent this to me:

Receiver Test Data

I'm really interested in putting this radio side by side with my Icom 746 Pro and doing a meaningful comparison...they're about the same price. I think it would make for an interesting write-up to really describe how their software works and what it can do.

Whaddya think?

FlexRadio Systems - Software Defined Radios ::: Products->Radio & Accessories->FLEX-3000->Features
 

When you get your 'Flex', can I have whatever you're using now??
- 'Doc

...or if whatever you're using now is better than the 'Flex' can I still have whatever your using now?
(hey, it's worth a shot. ain't it?)
 
i would wait for the next gen design for either the 3000 or 5000.

Recently it was disclosed that they put out a spurious image a bit down the band from the main signal. At 100W it's not much of an issue, but if you are running a kW+ it causes a horrendous amount of interference.

This was brought to their attention and they have ignored it. Evidently it's a fundamental (bad pun) flaw that requires a re-design. There is a software kludge/patch that is out there to null the image on a specific band, but it's not automated so each band change requires you to do the calibration again. This patch isn't in the main software release however....

This issue may go back to the SDR-1000 design too, but I'm not sure there.
 
Recently it was disclosed that they put out a spurious image a bit down the band from the main signal. At 100W it's not much of an issue, but if you are running a kW+ it causes a horrendous amount of interference.
Click to expand...

Interesting. Do you have any more details on where the image appears in relation to the main signal? Do you have a source on this issue that has more info? It shouldn't be difficult to verify - put it on a Spec analyzer, or even just use another rig nearby.
 
I don't have a link, it was in an email on their own list and on some contesting lists.

A big gun contester was told he was 'wide' a few times and thought it was guys not used to 3k audio complaining 10k or so below where he was. The offset isn't all that far from the intended signal. It might be 20kHz or so, I'm not 100% sure. After a handful of complaints he benched the gear and found the issue on a spectrum analyzer's screen.

He got on the air with some friends to verify it and lo and behold, it was there.

I forget the db figures, but for sure, at 100W it was there, but just sounded like some mild QRM from adjacent stations. At 1kW of course, the drop was maybe 10db so it was quite a powerful signal at QRO levels compared to 100W.

It's a hardware issue of some sort they are scrambling to fix by nulling in software. If I find a link I'll put it in but I haven't found it on google as an archive yet.
 
Every flex I have seen the skin on the monitor looks VERY generic and not like the one you posted. Is that there new skin or is it an upgrade?
 
QRN said:
Where's the diode for the 11m mod? :laugh::LOL:
Click to expand...

Very funny.

Every flex I have seen the skin on the monitor looks VERY generic and not like the one you posted. Is that there new skin or is it an upgrade?
Click to expand...

Beats me...that's what they were showing at Dayton. It looks like a cool skin to me!
 
dxhound said:
Yeah, I like the one you posted. That one looks awesome. Can these be MARS moded?
Click to expand...

I asked that question of them (then later found the FAQ on their site). You send them proof of your MARS license and they do a firmware update for you to open it up.
 
I saw the Flex-1500 also

It's supposed to become available in early 2010, do you think it would be something worth buying for someone who is just starting out, or is there something better out there for the same ammount of money?
 
The 1500 is a QRP radio, 5W or less output, may even be 1W, not sure off the top of my head. It's made primarily to use as an IF section for transverter use or for SWL .

I would recommend you buy the 3000 or some other 100W rig to get started. Gives you a much more effective signal and better options to drive a standard amp.

The skin/theme shown is the "Pretty Betty" release that is in their SVN code trunk. It's a beta release. I think they may incorporate that skin into the production release coming up but it does use a bunch more CPU resources than the plain Jane version due to how the guy wrote the display update code.
 

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