It's just recreational banter. I don't have a 1500.

Yes, we can. The difference is that you are on the verge of name calling.

"If you don't have a great antenna and a clean low noise shack, you'll see little performance difference between radios because the noise floor place a limit on performance"

Case closed. In real life, real operation in a non-ideal environment, the difference is insignificant. Thanks for coming around to my point.

Point taken. I was hoping you might do a KX3 vs F5k as I mentioned, and might YouTube the experiment, or just provide an audio L/R, same antenna, same relative settings, etc. so we might actually hear the difference. I did one with a lowly cobbled together IF tapped receiver vs the F3k and was surprised at the almost imperceptible difference on a very weak station.

Considering all the A vs. B comparisons I've seen on YouTube, for example, I'm surprised to as yet not find a KX3 vs any supposedly comparably priced current production rig, properly executed, properly staged, in real life operation. There was one that came close, with KX3 and FT817ND which was almost convincing in a CW reception test.

Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, or maybe the difference isn't as exciting as it is purported to be.

I'm open to the latest greatest, as long as it truly represents a substantial improvement. Admittedly, I am not an "early adopter".

The proof will be when another SDR transceiver manufacturer actually retires a popular model after something close to a normal run, say, at least 4 or 5 years.

Meanwhile, Anan looks pretty awesome, but so did the Russian Sun-SDR, and the Wonder Radio before it.

You didn't meet the challenge. You provided examples of radios that should be expected to outperform based on price point, not actual price/features.  Apples and oranges.

Since you have both the 5k and the KX3, how about doing a true side by side,same antenna, same relative settings, real comparison on weak and noisy signals, and on strong adjacent signals. That would be cool.

More accurately, I look at SDRs through Ham colored glasses,which you can't do, what with no call sign and all..

Starting at the bottom, There's a $17000 German SDR that comes to mind. Definitely not mainstream, nor are there any other German offerings in the world of SDR transceivers that can be considered "mainstream".

Quick Silver QS1R is not a transceiver.

The Anans are possibly the only contender for the coveted position of "mainstream", even though they've only been in production for months. That's not quite what I would consider "many" transceiver SDR options currently available.

As for the KX3, it's priced closer to a Flex 3000, and has 1/10 the output. To give it the full output, one would have to bump the price up at least $400 for a reasonably good amp. That's up to almost $2000 with TTL. I just saw a used Flex 5k with 2nd rRX and ATU go for $2375 right here on eHam. Have you ever compared the rearend of a Flex 5k with 2nd RX and ATU to the few available connections on a KX3? Hardly in the same class of radio.


So far, I haven't seen "many" other mainstream SDR transceivers comparable to the Flex radios in price point/feature set. There are a couple of dissimilar sets that offer some of the same functionality and features.

It's just a matter of time, of course, before some mainstream manufacturer unveils a true competitor. I suspect Flex has something in store to replace the 3000.

Oh, about that Flex 1500 comparison... Oh wait. There is no other mainstream manufacturer ready to go out of the box $700 5 watt 160-6m USB SDR with dual antenna ports and IF out. Is there? I may have missed one...

Please entertain us with a comprehensive list, or even two examples of mainstream SDR's on the market comparable in overall TX/RX performance to the Flex 5000, or even the 3000. In fact, if you know of one with the performance, and fit/finish of the Flex 1500, please document here.

It seems as if the whole move to FPGA based rigs is for Bazillioflops of processing to give the ability to look at huge swaths of bandwidth, zooming in and out of ten ham bands at once on a multi-color panadaptor with integrated youtube recording and posting capability, to create 72 or 1300 simultaneous receivers.

All of that is good and interesting and useful, but given the choice, I'd rather put all that processing towards a receiver that can pick a gnat fart out of a hurricane of QRM, reducing the extraneous noise to 0. Give me a radio that can be perfect on one frequency at a time.

Stanley and I agree on that point.

IMO, there was a mistake made in the very beginning with Flex marketing not making absolutely clear that the Flex Radio represents a paradigm shift in not only radio operation, but in shack configuration, that is, "more than one PC".

It should have been made clear that the PSDR PC is to be used almost exclusively for PSDR, and perhaps a digi mode program or any application that needs a VAC connection to PSDR. In other words, the PSDR PC is a sort of "virtual equipment rack". and should be treated as such, not as s supplemental desktop for logging and checking email.

Consider the case of the Flex 5000C. Would you attempt use the integrated PC to do logging as well rather than using your existing shack PC? Would you have purchased a 5000C with hopes of using it as your shack computer? If the answer is YES, then you are not fully understanding what the PSDR PC represents in the context of a Flex SDR.

Granted, on the Flex site it is stated that, "It is more and more common for amateur radio operators using software defined radios to utilize various software programs at the same time they are running FlexRadio PowerSDR.  In order for all of the programs to be visible at one time, a very large single display or multiple monitors are employed.  The FLEX-5000C uses Intel's Embedded Graphics Drivers to provide support for high resolution monitors and dual-display configurations. "   It should have been made clear that the use of programs requiring keyboard mapping for normal use should not be used simultaneously with PSDR on the Flex 5000C PC platform.

Finally, this brings us to the conclusion that the logical method of configuring your Flex shack would be to have an exclusive PSDR PC, and a separate shack PC if other ancillary computing is desired. By the way, with free programs like com0com and com2tcp, it is easy to port radio/PSDR PC com to a secondary PC and logging software over the home network. What I'm getting at is that all of this is possible by implementing some other disciplines like data networking and serial communications over and above the "plug n' play" level of hobby computing. I would like to believe that most "serious contesters" are familiar with rather complicated radio configurations, and shouldn't be daunted by a few computing complications that are well documented and easily implemented. Hams are generally pretty smart fellers.

This brings up around to the question, what about all these SDR over Network interfaces? Seems to me we will ALWAYS have the "focus problem" with ANY logging application running in conjunction with ANY SDR applications mutually using key mappings.

Whose fault is it then? What to do?

I'm bored already...

We've been crossing our fingers on that since 2006 or so. Still waiting...

Flex went to a lot of trouble to appease "serious contesters" suffering from the "focus problem". It's called the "Flexcontrol USB Controlled Tuning Knob" which allows "you to have your logging program, or any other program for that matter active while interactively operating the radio".

(italics from the Flex site)

Hold on... Lemme check...

Yep... She keeps repeating, "Стэнли раздражает" over and over...