In the beginning...

It has been a really busy day at the FlexRadio Hardware Beta Test Lab: South-East. I thought that I might share some updates and interesting observations related to my first impressions of the FLEX-1500, as I don't get to see the hardware as it is developed and tested in the lab at HQ (Austin) before I get it to play with it and break it.

First off the FLEX-1500 arrived Friday AM bright and early via UPS.


It is a small little thing. Definitely a "Baby Flex". Very light too. My Astron RS-4A power supply weighs a lot more than it does.

After ripping open the package like a crazed child on Christmas morning to see what was inside, I was happy to find a FLEX-1500 (s/n 10-10-0009), an unterminated power cable and a USB A-B cable.

The first order of business is amps and volts. I terminated the power cable with a pair of 15 amp Anderson PowerPole connectors. All of my Vdc distribution blocks are Anderson PowerPoles. It makes it easy to connect and disconnect different devices that way. That took about 5 minutes to install the connectors of which 4 of those minutes were spent looking for the crimper.

Now we have "juice".

The first order of business was to perform the "How many USB controllers can you plug this thing into and it show up in the Windows Device Manager" test. The FLEX-1500 appears to Windows and a USB HID audio device and uses the standard USB audio drivers that comes as a default driver with Windows, so there is nothing to install as far as a hardware driver is concerned. This is NICE. So I tested a XP laptop and Desktop, two different Win7 x64 machines and one ATOM 330 running XP. For the most part, we had no problems with this test. One controller on a AMD machine running Win7 x64 is having some issues and we are investigating that. It could be the low-level USB hub driver that is the issue.

Now on to the good stuff. Firing up PowerSDR and making this Baby Flex sing.

Before I get into this in detail, I need to note that the hardware integration into PowerSDR v1.19.3 (aka PB-PAL) is not 100% complete, so there are things that don't work yet and parameters you have to set manually. It can be a bit cumbersome and you really have to pay attention to what is going on. This requires taking lots of notes and lots of feedback to the hardware and software development teams.

I fired up the FLEX-1500 using an existing PowerSDR database I was using for a FLEX-5000. Obviously it could not find the F5K hardware, so I had to go into demo mode, reset the DB for a FLEX-1500 and restart. All this fumbling around took about 10 minutes to figure this out and to get the radio operational in receive mode. YIPPEE! I am hearing and seeing signal on the Panadapter. NICE.

First thing I check was to see if the RX was on frequency with WWV. It was not. I was a few KHz off. So a quick phone call to the gurus in Austin revealed that Eric had taken the day off to move into a new home! I will not go into the gory details only to say that my FLEX-1500 arrived 20 minutes before the "How to use your beta FLEX-1500" e-mail was sent and by that time I was in SDR nirvana and never saw it arrive. My problem resolution was in the e-mail DOH!

Now I am back on frequency, only 13 Hz low. Should I run a frequency calibration? No. That feature isn't in the code yet. 13 Hz is close enough.

Time for a QSO. I decided on a digital mode QSO due to the low power, so I configured VAC and Fldigi and was decoding PSK in a matter of minutes. So far so good.

I checked out TX using a dummy load and got that working. The PA gain settings are not yet stored in the EEPROM, so you have to manually set the drive gain for each band. I listened and visually observed my transmitted PSK signals on a FLEX-3000 and all looked good. It is time for a CQ.

I called Austin and we set up a PSK31 SKED. At 1931 UTC on 26-3-2010, the first FLEX-1500 to FLEX-1500 QSO was logged with K5FRS in Austin TX. A distance of about 1100 miles. The signal reports were 539 each way. Having a HOT receiver allows you to hear in the noise.

After the "fun" was over, it was time to start doing a more critical analysis of what was working, what wasn't working and what was acting strange. I'm not going to go into the details of all that, because it really doesn't matter since those things will be addressed in short order and it is a closed beta test. No need to air dirty laundry when wash day is close at hand. I will say the issues are very minimal and software related (as they should be).

I had to take some time out to go see one of my neighbor's daughter in her school play and then watch my beloved Vols whip the Ohio State University in B-ball. Between the Vols winning and playing with the FLEX-1500, it was a very good day.

By the end of the night, I was making several PSK-31 QSOs. The last one was a nice little rag chew with AD5QE who was operating a Ten-Tec.

The plan for tomorrow is to get the FLEX-1500 working on 5 different computers that all have different processor types and operating systems. More digital mode QSOs and hopefully a new distance record for the FLEX-1500. It will be a busy day.