Stan's assessment with regards to more power equals more problems makes perfect sense to me.  I only run about 400-500 watts max and the most I have run is about 700.

I have three sets of Ferrites on my Flex.  The ones that came with the FireWire Cable.  The ones running to the Bose Speakers and the ones on the Microphone cables.

All equipment is strapped to RF ground, including the computer.

I did have to space and locate my equiment just so and with a certain distance between each piece of gear in the system.  Perhaps this best  explaines how I have few issues most as it definitely made and continues to make the biggest difference.

I have explained all this in articles on my site.

Why am I bringing it up again?  I would fully expect new problems if I upgraded to a legal limit Amp.  In fact, it might even cause things to become completely unrealistic and unmanageable.  Why?  Well, you can only put equipment so far appart without having a shack that spans your entire basement!  lol I can visualize this in my head.

Yes, the problems are real!  Very real!

Perhaps I was hasty in telling one person earlier they didnt need all theose ferrites on their computer.  Maybe they are running legal limit or have not tried managing the issue with equipment spacing and location.

I sure hope Flex has shielded their 6K series radios.  I think that good protective measures to shield and limit issues would be helpful.

Happy Hamming to all!

Do you me RF interference?  Or the little chirping birdies that sometimes fly across the scream, or other?

Incidentally, it truly appears that a simple ground strap to the computer from my RF ground solved all my issues.  Lol, one powerful little piece of wire!

HamZilla is quite an awesome computer to drive a SDR with!  Not even a blip with everything running.  ComMCat issues, HRD issues, all of it gone with the hemi under the hood.

Next up I am playing with the KX3 on a buddistick outdoors.  Hope to get out today, however, going to be real windy here so not sure it's going to work out!

I have found that USB keyboards are sensitive to RF.  using the old PS2 type seems to solve that particular problem.  Especially if you see your keyboard and or mouse freezing up.

Keyboards usually have a small oscillator in them that can get tripped up.

Hope this helps!

See, I only have them on the audio related cables as well and the original FireWire.  I guess there is a scientific argument for them in several places, however, I find that the audio cables were the only real place and then just strapping all the equipment to a real ground.  Mine goes out to a series of rods in the ground 16 feet apart.  I lowered my base noise floor from S7 to S2 doing things this way.  Second best investment I made after the Hex Beam!

Hi K5TED,

I think that the ferrites are overly excessive in the PC.  I just think that it needs a little shielding and RF grounding.  One shouldn't have to add 10's and 20's of ferrites to run their SDR.  I only use 3-4 on the main cables.  Your missing some of the story on all this and you can read about it in my articles as to what's changes.

I'll only repeat again that one doesn't need tons of ferrites to run their Flex radio, it's not the issue.  In my case I run a fairly cheap amp and I am sure it's part the cause for the loose RF in the shack.  Again, RF grounding the computer seems to have completely resolved the issue.  I simply forgot to hook the extra ground strap to the new PC.

I got around all over the world yesterday in great fashion on 15 without incident.  Some Flex owners get rather passionate about their rigs at times and can get defensive and start insulting owners that have issues... I don't think that's really the right way to approach hamming.  Hams have to let other hams talk about their issues, find solutions, and move forward, either with or without their Flex radios.

Check out my background a bit before playing the problem with technology card on this post.  Lol you might be surprised.  Yes, I made a mistake forgetting that one little wire. 

It's likely you have my post a little bit out of context, so I will just leave it at that.

Well, this all appears to be an issue with installing the new computer and RF.  My radio time yesterday started off with more PowerSDR crashes.  I saw this issue on other bands.  Basically I turned the drive down to the amp to about 25 watts in and all was well again. 

While I have had to go to quite some lengths to arrange and position equipment to avoid issues, it seems that HamZilla might not be as well shielded as Big Bertha.  It makes since in a way comparing the two cases and even the weight of the two machines. 

In addition to reducing my power a bit, grounding HamZilla seemed to have stopped it for now.  I will probably rethink things though.  I might be up to the task of one more rack build this summer.  I need to think up a way to get the computers all the way away from the radio gear.  That will require some serious thought on my part and maybe even changing out my deck and building my own. 

As for SDRs, hmmmm, I am starting to think about that as well.  The radios I consider replacing the flex with are just out of my price range.  In my case it might be as simple as buying the KX3 Amp when ever it comes to be and selling the flex 5000. 

I'll think this all out on paper before I do anything, that's for sure!

Had a nice day on the air yesterday despite the poor weather here.  Met some great hams and chewed a bit.  There are some great people out there!

Thought I would share an observation that PSDR can crash when certain RF frequencies get loose and into your shack computer.  I managed to find this with my amp tuned just a certain way on 15 meters.  My guess is that the particular tunning was spilling out extra RF and it was causing PowerSDR to lock on transmit and crash. A slight amp tuning adjustment was all it took to get rid of the issue.  I did not change anything but the AMP tuning.  Tuning the amp back to where it created the issue did in fact recreate the issue.  No other programs were impacted, only PSDR on xmit.  

Hopefully the info will help someone else who runs into this, just try retuning and see if your issue goes away.

Also, for whatever reason, PowerSDR uses more resources on an exact same computer under Windows 8.  This was enough to push me off Big Bertha and to build a new machine I call HamZilla.  I posted some articles on the whole HamZilla build out and issues if your interested in building your own Ham Machine.  I suppose that with the advent of newer SDRs coming out we wont need super,computers anymore to run Certain SDRs. Hopefully i have provided some interesting info in the articles on selecting components somyou can get the most bang for the buck.  Lol

Hope all the usual suspects here are doing well, thought I would drop in for a post.

We all talk about how time and experince changes our views about our equipment.  While I have had a blast getting it all to work, given the instability overall of the Windows operating systems and the fact that a lot of Ham software is either aging or getting bloated and messy that I dont really reccomemd building a complicated system around computers.  If you want to focus being on the air then a traditional rig is a far better experience.  Add a panadapter and you pretty much have the best of both worlds.

These are quite nice, a little over your price tag, however you can expand by adding and AMP for transmit, then go later with a TenTec amp to get to 100 Watts.. Ect.

http://www.greenmountainradio.com/G11/order.html


Check them out!

If you are feeding IQ signals into the sound card you may need and isolator for it to work.  Radio Shack makes one I am using with an External Sounblaster card and the Isolator is the difference be working and not working.  I have a setup article for the KX3 that describes things in a moderate level of detail on how I am making it work.

What I don't get is why anyone would defend a company when someone reports a bad experience with that company.  Unless you work for that company or are compensated by them some how, why would anyone bother to defend a business entity?

What's the benefit?

What has such said company done for you that you didn't already pay for by purchasing one of their products?

Hi Frank,

My remark was not directed towards insinuating that you are a Flex Radio Sytems fan, my appologies as I can see how it came off that way!

Flex has placed themselves in an award position now by having collected money and now missing their target.  Since the fan base is so rabid they would do well to come clean and be more forthwith around the cause of the delays and challenges they are working through.  I doubt many people would retract their orders if they confessed they seriously underestimated the software development cycle, elaborate on what they have learned and why it's important that they get it right.  Honesty still commands respect these days as does meeting your commitments.  They should also publicly apologized for not following through as a part of the overall realignment of expectations.  They can offer another token as a sign of gratitude towards their loyal fan base.

My expectation around this ever happening.... Zero

The ill will it will ultimately create when the software releases with what will likely result in several serious issues, more than people will imagine!  The more you charge for something, the more people expect.  It might get ugly fast for them if they fail to manage the situation.

Remember the Netflix CEO blunder..  Failing to respect your consumers is costly! It's orders of magnitude higher when you are holding their money on promises you are failing to keep.  Those are expectations they created, not their consumers.

I also will go on record that what I expect from my American based radio manufactures is integrity, quality, and an overall level of service that exceeds that which imcan get from a large overseas manufacturer.

Of the ones we have, who meets those expectations?  So far Elecraft is my only positive experience with their Kx3 that to me equated to money well spent.  They have been open about their issues and have made real progress with regular updates to address those issues.  Does this make me an Elecraft fan boy, nope.. Just a satisfied customer at present.  If my Kx3 starts having issues then my experience and this my perception will change.  When I have called so far, I am always greeted kindly, listened to and solutions have been offered.  That is what we should expect from made in America.  A consumers though, I believe our tendency is rapidly become one to favor cheap over quality.  Cheap is ok when you can't afford better and just a mistake when you can afford better.

73!

A great reason to never tie yourself to a vendor.  Ultimately they will fail to meet expectations, communicate incorrectly, ect. 

I enjoy being vendor neutral these days.  No vendor is safe from my scrutiny or candid feedback.  This is a freedom we can enjoy if we don't ever align ourselves.

I suspect it's going to take a bit for Flex to deliver on the software portion of the radio.  I am not sure when they started coding, however, something of the size and magnitude of what they would have to create is probably at minimum an 18 month endevour to deliver something that represents quality.

I own and operate a flex today, it does ok, it's a CPU hog though.

The problem has always been and will continue to be the software.  I believe that the hardware exists.  I believe the software will take longer than anyone wanted it to.  Software development can take many twists and turns and has been the failure of many companies. And of course, radios like these are nothing without working software.

Eventually they will get it together.  How long that takes is the real issue.  Radio Winks are even more insignificant the FCC certifications.

So the facts are, unless someone can say different.. We have seen a box, we have seen mocked up software. We have a sales brochure and sales materials.

What else do we have to go by?  I will conceal that my list of what is physical about this radio may be incomplete.  Please let us know if there is more to go by.


The old adage of a radio in the shack is worth 100 awaiting software would seem to apply here.

Wink!

Sorry about that, something in my eye....