It is Shipping!

Yeah Baby, that is right. The first "off the production line", no more beta units, a "real McCoy" FLEX-1500 shipped on April 30,2010 to an undisclosed recipient who is part of the extended beta testers group. This is a BIG milestone as the production hardware boards are finalized and production ramp up can begin as soon as all of the materials have been received to start the production runs. That will happen in a couple more weeks. For the hundreds of you with FLEX-1500s on order, please be patient for just a bit longer. They are coming soon. FlexRadio will notify you when they start shipping.

To prove one really did ship, there is photographic evidence of the unit being picked up by UPS


A big thanks goes to Graham (KE9H), pictured in the center who was the primary engineer on this project who took it to the finish line. That is Julie the Shipping and Receiving Manager on the right.

Now PowerSDR v2.0.0 isn't complete yet, but it is getting there. More coding was done on the BITE routines and that work is getting close to being done. Additionally, a slew of bug fixes and enhancements were added to the pre PowerSDR v2.0.0 alpha code this week, fixing a few long over due issues like a wider and user definable deviation for FM, the last changes for the software to be fully Vista/Win7 compatible so that it will operate in user mode and not need any of UACs "tricks" to make it work, new NR and ANF default settings, ANF was fixed so that it works in AM & SAM modes and a new crash recovery option that will allow you to reset the database if it is so hosed up that PowerSDR will not start are just a few of the things being added. There is a big push to get PowerSDR v2.0.0 done "real soon" so expect a lot of development activity in the coming days. The beta testers are going to be really busy.

I know, it has been awhile.

I know it has been awhile since my last blog entry. There really hasn't been much to blog about. Most of the BITE functionality has been put into the FLEX-1500, but there are still a few test that need tweaking. The input mixer functionality was added and that was about the biggest change recently.

One thing I have been doing is interfacing a Rubidium (Rb) disciplined10 MHz clock source to the FLEX-1500. I am using a LPRO-101 that I got from WB6RQN and I have been putting that together in a nice enclosure with a 1x4 10 MHz distribution amplifier so I can drive the FLEX-5000 and FLEX-1500 from the same clock source. There were a few software changes needed to be able to transmit and receive using the external clock source with the FLEX-1500, but it is working fine now.

The main work being done at this time is optimizing the audio subsystem for response and quality. There have been a few things uncovered using the Window's HID driver so the developers are digging into it. More on this when there is something to report.

Oh yeah. One thing I did forget to say. I established a new FLEX-1500 distance record a few days ago. On April 21, I had a nice "rag chew" PSK31 QSO on 14.070481 MHz with Harald, DL2OCE in JO41XW on the FLEX-1500. This was a distance of 4300 miles. Antenna was a 20m dipole @ 45' and the power out was about 3.5 watts as reported by the wavenode. I received a nice 579 signal report and an IMD report of -28 dB.

Propagation was good that morning and what was most important was the IMD numbers, indicating that the transmitter was operating very cleanly. This is going to be a cool little radio.

Still Testing...

Development of the BITE (built in test equipment) is still progressing. There isn't a whole lot to report at this point. There were some updates to the preamp configuration late last week. Rather than having a three state preamp (on/off/attenuate), it has been changed to provide +30, +20, +10, 0 and -10 dB of pre-amplification and attenuation. This will help with sensitivity on the upper bands and the two level attenuator will help with blocking dynamic range on the low bands.

Other than that, I have been listening to a local beacon on 6m since I got my 6m Moxon back in the air this weekend. It had a little accident a few weeeks ago when I was taking it down for it annual pre-eSkip maintenance. Regardless what the farmers say, planting an aluminum in the ground will not make it sprout small antennas; no matter how much you water them. Par Electronics was very prompt in sending me element replacements and for that I am very grateful. I fixed the antenna mast mount by engineering a simple tilt-over mechanism and put some shear pins in the mast sections to prevent the sudden and unexpected rotation that caused the damage. So hopefully there will not be any more accidental antenna "plantings" in my future.

Studying for exams and new feature alert!

One of the most intriguing features of FlexRadio Systems' SDR is their ability to calibrate themselves using BITE (built-in test equipment). There are a series of calibrations tests that the radio can run on itself to optimize various operating parameters or check the operation of the hardware. Some examples of these tests include checking the integrity the RX/TX filter banks, calibrating the S-meter so that -73 dBm is S9 on all bands and suppressing the opposite side band for single sideband modes.

Adding the BITE functionality into PowerSDR for a new radio is not a trivial task, but it is a foundational aspect of hardware integration that must be done right first off. These are the activities that have been going on for the past several days and why the blog entries have not been as numerous. The FLEX-1500 is studying hard to pass his tests. It is also a fairly slow time for the beta testers. The developers work all day to add a new hardware calibration test and the testers wring it out in 15 minutes. It isn't very exciting for the testers, but it is a critical path process that will lead to getting other features working like CW and optimizing phone modes.

There is a new feature to talk about that has never been publicly stated. You will be able to connect a receive only antenna to the FLEX-1500. That is right. You can select the transverter XVRX port or the transverter XVTX/C as a receive only port with the PA (5 watt output) port in addition to being able to the the PA port as a transceiver port. This is controlled by an antenna form similar to the one for the FLEX-5000. Like the FLEX-5000, there is an expert antenna mode where you can define the RX and TX antenna on a per band basis. It is a really nifty feature, especially for a low-end QRP rig.