Michael, what I'm suggesting is this.  If you enjoy your 1500, by all means do so.  The transceiver is type accepted.  But without a spectrum analyzer, you have no way of knowing what your signal looks like with the exciter at any output level.  My suggestion is to have fun with your 1500, but do so barefoot until you can verify your spectral purity running with reduced exciter power.

As I mentioned earlier, I'd have cash in fist at the Dayton Flex booth this May if the 1500 wasn't so dirty on xmit.

Graphs aside for a moment, here's an example that even a novice should follow:
Suppose you're sitting on 14200kHz USB and you put a two tone test signal of 700Hz and 1900Hz into the transmitter.  You will get RF carriers at 14200700Hz and at 14201900Hz which is what you want.  Unfortunately due to any non-linearity in the 1500's transmitter you will get rich IM products.  The first set, called second order products, will occur at the sum and difference of the two carrier frequencies, 28402600Hz and 1200Hz.  Both of these are sufficiently removed in frequency from the desired signal that they can be attenuated by a simple bandpass filter tuned for the 20m band.  The second set of IM products, called third order products, will occur at 2f1-f2 and 2f2-f1 or 2*14200700 – 14201900 which equals 14,199,500Hz and 2*14201900 – 14200700 = 14,203,100Hz.  As you can see both of these signals fall within the 20m band so they cannot be filtered out.  It turns out that all even order IM products fall out of band if the band is less than one octave wide and all odd order products up to a limit fall in band.

This example uses simple tones but the transmitter must pass complex signals such as voice or PSK31 where we don’t know the precise frequencies in use at any one time so we can’t get clever and use narrow band notch filters to get rid of the inband products.

Users who state, "I've got (X number) of watts of clean power" must either A) Be bending the rules of physics, or B) Have no idea what they're dealing with.  Using the 1500 behind a 500W amplifer like the respected Elecraft amp will generate several watts of IM products in the band you're operating within; it's irrefutable.  I can can work the antipodes with several watts of power, so your spurs are capable of being heard world-wide.  In short it does not appear that the Flex 1500 will ever be a good exciter for a high power amplifier.  I wish it were...

The ARRL lab measured 3rd order IM products on TX of -22dB on 40m @ full output (5W).  If you take the output of the 1500 and boost it 20 dB by running it into an amplifier, any amplifier, you will end up with spurs of several watts inside the operating band.  That example is assuming the amplifier doesn't introduce any IMD of its own, and if you can show me one of those, I'll buy it.  The laws of physics are irrefutable: Even order IMD products typically fall outside the band and can/could be filtered out by a following PA.  Odd order IMD products typically fall inside the operating band and thus cannot be filtered out by any PA.  So for me, the Flex 1500 remains an interesting QRP setup.  I've operated my firend's and I love it.  I'd buy one in a second.  But I already have two QRP transceivers, and no responsible amateur who knows and understands the facts would place any amplifier downstream of the 1500's output.

Another item of great importance:  If the control head is separated from the radio, you must install the small metric screw to secure the connetor to the control head body.

Another thing that helped for me was to attach a short ground braid from the ground screw on the 7000 to the nearest ground point on the vehicle's body.

What year Tahoe, Dave?  I don't want to hijack the thread. Mind if I conact you offline?

I work in a corporation filled with EE, ME and Physics Phd's and "Fellows", of which I am neither.  I am constantly dumbfounded by their lack of Basic Common Sense.  Perhaps this should be a mandatory course offering at the colleges that hatch these poindexters.

Tom, I found Port Forwarding to be confusing to set up on the WRT54G router.  I went out and replaced it with a Netgear WNDR3400 and found that it was extremely simple to set up Port Forwarding on it.  I did this not for Echolink, but for a number IP cameras installed around my home for weather observation and general surveillance.

This has happened to me as a result of a less-than-glowing review right here on eHam of a product that shall go unnamed.  I was called by the owner of the company on a Saturday morning, to my cell phone while my wife and I were out for breakfast.  How he got my cell number remains a mystery.  We launched into a cordial chat.  The owner wanted to get to the bottom of why I gave his product a scathing review.  After about 30 minutes of discussion, the owner of the company asked me to box the entire product up, of which there were a number of parts placed around my yard and shack, and agreed to replace the entire product with a new updated unit with one caveat.  I in turn would agree to return the defective product, and update my review here on eHam.  After sinking $700 into a now unusable piece of equipment, I unfortunately jumped at the opportunity.  Upon receiving the replacement, I put it into use and added a second post regarding the product.  Mysteriously, my original post disappeared, so my references to it weren't of any help.  In my updated review, I stated the facts, the phone call, etc.  I never heard from the manufacturer so I assumed he was satisfied with my end of the agreement.

In retrospect, I'm not proud of the events that led to a free replacement.  I should have stuck to my original review and left it stand.  It was junk, and I wasn't alone with that opinion.  I just got lucky.  I feel that I compromised my integrity just to save $700.  I still believe the product is far inferior to its competition (which I now use), and I don't hesitate to state that in any of the forums when a discussion of the product may arise.

Interesting.... I just checked the re-write of my review and found that the update has been deleted as well.  While I don't know how long it's been down, I do know it had been up for several years. That I will take a sworn oath to.

Excellent photos, Tisha!

Google:
"Linux Rotator Control Software" and you'll get a bunch of returns.....

My AH-4 control line is approximately 136' from the transceiver. It works fine.  Be careful though.  I lost my first one from what I believe was a very close lightning strike and subsequent current being induced onto the unshielded control cable.  The unit is lacking any input protection, and the control section was a total loss.  Interestingly, the antenna side of the tuner appeared fine.

Love my Alfa Spid rotator.  Hated the controller though, so I replaced it with a Green Heron RT-21.  Awesome combination.  Ramp up start and ramp down stop feature is great.

The Citizen Weather Observer Program, or CWOP is similar to Mesonet. Over 6000 backyard stations around the country upload data which gets digested by MADIS ( Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System) run by NOAA.  The data is used to build high resolution surface weather maps.  Once a volunteer signs to the CWOP, they can check their station data from anywhere over the internet.  Here are the current indices at my station:
http://www.findu.com/cgi-bin/wxpage.cgi?call=k3gm Each weather station is compared to those around it, so there is an ongoing quality control check to assure accurate data. There are a number of different brands of recommended stations if you wish to sign up for the program.  Please visit www.wxqa.com for station requirements.

Here's at least what I found.  Si/Pb solder rapidly degrades when exposed to the acidic rain that we experience here in the east.  The once gleaming fillet of solder quickly develops a white crust, and the entire joint continues to "rot" away.  I use a DX Engineering stainless steel radial plate with my vertical's large radial field, and what I've chosen to do is to make a loop in the copper wire and connect it directly under the bolt head foregoing a lug at all.  I suppose a more noble solder alloy may work better than the 60/40 that I had on hand.

Curious as to the integrity of the joint, I have on occasion measured the resistance in any given radial wire by clipping one lead of my VOM to the plate, then successively piercing a number of wires with the other lead connected to a hat pin.  The joints appear to have not degraded in the least, but there could be a minute amount of resistence that my meter cannot measure.  I also have a number of high tensile aluminum radials that I installed as a longevity experiment, and these too are connected to the plate in a similar manner.

Davis Wireless Vantage Pro 2.  Mine has been in operation for 6 years.  Immune to high RF fields, it is mounted to my SteppIR BigIR elevated guy post.  I recently swapped out the sensor suite board after the "supercap" on it failed.  Customer service was exceptional, and a new board was sent out while the old one was still running on battery and solar power.  I never actually lost any significant amount of data.  Swap out was easy, and I was back up and running in minutes.  A really nice station.