I think it's great news.  I expect the top 5 to change a few times over the next 18 months, lots of goodies on the horizon charted for that time period.

We have the new Yaesu, new Kenwood, new Flex, and a few others.  I suspect we may hear about a K4 somewhere near the latter part of that 18month period as well.

It's all good!

I don't think I ever said anything about that quote.  I'll leave it at this.. I have played with low ends and high ends.  Those ends are not defined by me, you can go by Sherwood or by User ratings or personal criteria which appears to be the case for the remark.

What I have not dabbled in really is the ground in between, that I will agree with and that 4 radios and 1 year is not much experience.  But I have veer claimed otherwise.

If having an opinion as a new ham is a crime, then I am guilty!

73 De NI0Z

He had his own MOS, Mean Opinion Strategy! . It paid off for later Flex owners.

So far the main thing I miss while using the KX3 over the Flex 5K is power output.  Still learning the KX3 and evolving my user strategy.  At least one person here might be interested to know that I only use the RX IQ output now for Panadaptor functions.  On a few occasions the notch filters in Studio 1 will help making a DX due to the ability to easily selectively place them.  This requires using the sound card SDR audio though.  The KX3 is an interesting little rig, lots of features burried in its menus!  Lol, I know what your thinking.. Go ahead and smile about this last remark.. It's ok!

One thing I don't feel like it get discussed much is the features traditional knobbeb menued rigs have verses computer based SDRs.  I think I have simply settled in my mind that they really are different radios and different operating experiences.  It seems pretty fruitless to me to compare them any more.  It all comes down in the end to what an operator values most in a radio.  Bottom line for me.  I can like both paradigms, I don't have to choose.  With a KX3 I can play in both a bit.  Flex 5000 and KX3 are different animals though at the end of the day.

73 de NI0Z

We are talking about what I call the Y generation here aren't we?  BTW, I have 4 of them here and there is not much shaping of this next gen coming whose single most asked question is (Y) why?

Why do I need to get a job?
Why do I need to follow rules?
Why do I need to work hard?
Why do I need a big PC?

TS-990 does look cool though!  Wonder how it will fair in the infamous Sherwood tests?

https://www.gigaparts.com/store.php?action=profile&sku=ZKW-TS-990S-R

Couple of videos showing off the displays at the link above.

I am guessing you won't be disappointed!

Precongratulations on the awesome new rig!

Tablets rock!

Having said that, I don't have much desire to run my KX3 from my tablet with the current crop of software, I'd rather just operate blind!

As to the future of the desktop PC... Well, change is inevitable!  Lol, if not for my radios and a few websites that won't work with tablet browsers yet, I hardly use the desktops or laptops anymore.

Today's kids will shape tomorrow's consumers and today's kids think desktops are archaic and inconvenient!  They are being raised on phones and tablets and game consoles.  Corporations are moving more and more to mobile computing and bring your own device strategies as well.

Heck, I can even type over 30 worlds a minute on an iPad without external keyboard.  I print from it, and do most other daily functional things from it.  I am even doing photo editing and more complicated functions with it.

Everything changes with time!

Looking at things a little closer today, I would say that Virtual Recievers from the QS1R in Studio 1 will be limited to the 2MHZ window unless the EXITIO lib is updated to support more.  I plan on asking some questions in the group to try and better understand what is needed on my part to go along with the QS1R.  Its hard to tell at this point if I need an external clock reference or not.

Lots to learn, this is a different paradign to live it!

As a side note, if your QS1R is recent and you want to trade for my ICOM 7000, let me know.  Maybe thats a win win for both of us. In fact, I see we live fairly close so a radio exchange in person could work pretty easily.

Thanks Doc.

Doc, Gene,

This sounds kinda of complex.  Since you two own and run one, can you tell me what a person really needs to run one of these right in addition to these base items QS has listed on their site?


QS1R Receiver, with enclosure and USB cable
QS1E Exciter, add-on board for the QS1R receiver
SMA to BNC Adapter, gold plated
USA Power Supply, 5 VDC, 1000 mA, 100-130 VAC Input

So if a guy like me wants to know the real full laundry list of what needed to run the bands from 0-60Mhz, what other things are needed and do you have good commercial reccomendations for them.   

Doc, my guess is for Studio 1 to be able to run multiple virtual slices accross bands that obviously the spectrum you want to create the slices from has to be available to it all at once.  If that is the case then you would simply spawn Virtual Receivers and tune them to that part of the spectrum you want to recieve on.  So if we wanted 40M, 20M and 15M then we would need 7000-21450 available to Studio 1. 

On  the KX3 for example, I can only create slices on part of one band because I only have 40K of spectrum available to Studio 1 through the 16Bit driver right now. 

Thinking about this, Virtual slices with a full transceiver will be interesting.  You would probably in this model want to create one slice that you use as both Send and receive and then monitor in the others because clicking on a slice with some sort of rig control in place would likely change the VFO.

Anyways, this is all pure speculation on my part and I am not sure how much spectrum the QS1R would make available through the EXITIO.

Thanks for any help you can offer on whats really needed to run a QS1R.

 

Doc,

 If the 7000 was your main rig then I can understand the anxiety.  Knob withdrawal is difficult for many.  Do you have your QS1R yet?  Have you tried out SDRMax?  If so, let us know what you like and don't like, many here would enjoy hearing about your experience.

Studio 1 is pretty new to the market, since just this July I believe.  I believe they are a real small shop so the fact that their software is as nice as it is seems amazing to me.  Unfortunately small and new equal a bit of bleeding edge and so what it really means is that unless someone has Studio 1 and the QS1R, we are not likely to know.  

I am planning on a QS1R as soon as my IC 7000 sells.  I have Studio 1 on the KX3 and short of not having the cat control, I am impressed so far.  Their user interface paradigm is a bit different, but it does grow on you and makes sense once you get the hang of it.

WoodBoxRadio is asking quite a bit for their software. $200.   I suspect it's because it's so polished and supports a variety of different radios.  Keep in mind, for some SDRs Studio 1 now represents the best choice of Software, Or it will if they finish it all up and add more radios to their supported collection.

Here is some food for thought and the small gamble I amtaking if you look for justification.  Understand though, it's a gamble and what I am saying next may be wrong.

When I get the QS1R I'll always have SDRMax for it, so if Studio 1 doesn't pan out I won't have regret with regards to Studio 1.  Studio 1 was purchased for my KX3 and the gamble there was that they will deliver the Cat control.  I believe they will since I think their code source is from HDSDR. ( this is where I could be recalling things incorrectly).  HDSDR already has Omnirig support for cat control.  On occasion I like to listen to shortwave as well, I have a nice Wellbrook loop 0-30mhz that needs a radio to go with it.  Studio 1 will do very nicely for that when I get there.

From what little I have seen, SDRMax is quite a nice SDR interface, so no great issues if QS1R support is not perfect in Studio 1.

The IC 7000 was only in my shack until the 2M module for the Kx3 arrives.  So, basically I loose 2M until Elecraft delivers which is probably next year Q1 if I had to guess.

I am lucky also that I will procure a 100 watt amp as soon as I decide which makes most sense for me.  This will then position me to run these lower watt rigs in the future.  There is a genesis kit I am eyeballing for mid 2013 as well.  There are several other low watt SDRs that are starting to emerge.

It's my belief that Flex in no way will have cornered the market with their new arrival.  I say that based on both the Ethernet connectivity and the slice receivers.  There are going to be far cheaper options which might not even be lesser offerings either.  Some offerings might have Internet support before Flex does and all of these radios I am referring to are sub $2K US.  Some in theory already exist, I have no experience with any of them, so it's hard to say what's real and what's not.  Keep in mind as well, you can already share your radio on the Internet today with SDRRadio by Simon.

If I had to speculate, and that's all we outside the inner Flex circle can do, the actual specs on the Reciever might top the charts when the dust settles.  That may be the true real upshot of their new radio.  They also have an opportunity to make their new software super nice, however, we shall see what is delivered.

Virtual receivers will be cool, but not all that people believe they will be.  Internet support will take a while for Flex so that idea of sharing slices is going to take a while as we'll.  Plus, the real benefit of sharing ones receivers for the average ham is limited in my mind.  Clubs might be able to leverage it far better in terms of real value than a single ham. 

Thing is though, you can already use someone else's receiver today with SDRRadio by Simon.  It's not like you can have more than one person using the transmit capabilities of the slice effectively with the new Flex.  If you have ever used multiple slices before you quickly see there are two utilities with them in my humble opinion.  Watching signals on another band or bands and using one on the same band to tune to two frequencies.  

I have used 3 receivers before with the Kx3 and one was really useless, it was more of an experiment at best to see if I could make use of it.  Again, if I wanted for example to watch 20, 17, and 15 so one could see if propogation was picking up on the other bands They like then I could see it being useful.  Keep in mind though you can also use a band spotter for this as well.

This hopefully paints a realistic picture of how Slice receivers might be of value to the average ham.  Again, I think you can already do this with the QS1R and hopefully in a month or so I will know for sure.  Honestly, my draw on this for the QS1R is its wide spectrum support.

My biggest belief in all this though as far as sinking big bucks into receivers is that it's wasted if you don't have a great antenna to go with it.  A ham on a cheap radio that has a great antenna is likely to fair far better than a ham with a super  rig on a cheap antenna.

By far the best purchase I made so far is the hex beam and roof tower. It's worth as much as 3 S Units of gain over the vertical dipole I was using before it.

Best of luck and fun with your quest for knowledge on this!

I have been playing with some new software and while the cat control is not
implemented yet for Omnirig, this package has been real fun to play with. Cat
control should come in the next few months. you can read and see more here.

http://roaringstar.com/index.php/articles/68-kx3-with-studio-1?hitcount=0

Incidentally, I like this package so much I am likely going to put the IC 7000 up for sale and get a QS1R in the shack to run with this as well.

Are you saying you could only do that with a Flex radio?  

You can add Panadaptors to many radios today.  Heck, I even have one on my little KX3 and can do dual Recieve in the same band.  A $40 Softrock can do Panadaptor 101.

They are all just radios to me, I don't get brand loyalty, I really don't.  You give up money and someone gives you some sort of box in return with a limited warranty.  And if it breaks outside the warranty, then you pay.  That's why in my humble opinion brand loyalty is a one way notion in today's world.  It's a business after all, the purpose of which is to make money.

So bottom line seems to be it looks cool and that's ok for now if people want to plunk money down on that.  Just keep in mind that the new software might take a while to steady out and develop.

When someone comes up with how these new radios will help me over what I have now, let me know.  I am interested in how people will make use of them.

No, I get it.. So now we get to my other question in my other thread.  How are you going to make use of this radio verses your QS1R that's going to make it worth the extra dollars?

Now, if you just say its because I want one and that's really all there is to it, I am good with that.  I am seriously looking for reasons other than coolness and newness that people might think having this radio in their shack is going to make a huge impact over what's currently available. 

No need to even reply if you don't want.  It's the answer to that question I am seriously interested in.  I don't care about flex or not to flex, I still own a 5K and it does a fine job for me for the most part.

Gene, I agree about the slices, even Studio 1 can be overkill.  I have been playing with it on the KX3 and I had three all running and it was overkill already.  Two had some real utility in being able to look at a wider swath of spectrum in the extra slice.

Again, I have no problems with people buying stuff because it looks fun and cool.  I am certainly guilty of that on occasion.

No, that's not the analogy at all.  How about surfing on 7 iPads while having a Skype conversation on the eighth.  That's more like what I am talking about.  Your eyes and brain are going to process more like the analogy you provided, one tab at a time. Let's tie it all together now.  If you only use one tab at a time, why do you really need 7 additional virtual slices all open and running at the same time?

Like I said before, you can do this today with a $900 QSR1 and Studio 1 if you want to be able to glance band to band, or tab to tab.  Why pay $7500 for that capability?

Here is a link where you can see this capability already.  You don't have to pay big dollars!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOjHTS5AhCc&feature=channel&list=UL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhf6Zb-Xn40&feature=youtube_gdata_player