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I was testing out the FLEX-1500 preamp and noticed something very wrong. When the preamp was enabled, the noise floor and the signal strength rose by 30 dBm. For anyone who has used a FlexRadio Systems SDR knows that this is the exact opposite behavior that is expected. The function of the preamp is to lower the noise floor so that weak signal are not washed out by the noise while the signals' strength does not increase (the S-meter should show no change in the signal strength).
An e-mail relating this observation sent to the hardware gurus on Saturday afternoon was soon answered. "Oh yeah, you don't have the latest firmware and that is needed for the RX level calibration to work". In short order I received the firmware update from Austin, after a round of e-mail clients eating zip files with executables inside them. I un-zipped the new firmware and installer and ran the update. The firmware installation was breeze. It took less than 2 minutes for the whole unpacking, burning and resetting the hardware. BTW, you have to manually power cycle the FLEX-1500 after a firmware update - no big deal.
I ran the RX level calibration and all was well again. The preamp now behaves as it should.
So the "firmware dance" was easy to learn and in the end was a "happy dance" at that.
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Hi Tim,
ReplyDeleteLooks like I'm the first to comment. I was on 14329 (FLEX Net) today with the 1500. I used external audio gear and my Acom AMP. I was running about 200 watts with about 7 watts of Drive. Sweet.
The performance of the 1500 is better than the 1000 in most respects. FRS has a winner.
73