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Author Topic: Dont buy a flex radio...  (Read 45693 times)
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N2DTS
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« on: October 23, 2009, 10:07:40 PM »

Why you ask?

Because it shows you things you dont want to see.

I have been listening around the bands a lot since getting it (new toy thing) and never noticed (before) how poor
many signals and operating practices are.

People 4 or 5 Kc off frequency, people MORE than 20 Khz wide, and some poor operating considerations.

While tuning around, I heard someone on ssb calling CQ on sideband, on 80 meters at nite, something I never heard in prime time before. I responded and worked a guy who was just out of the hospital after 6 months, a WW2 vet, who got captured in the battle of the bulge and was a POW.
He did not know 3885 was in the AM window, and while I was trying to find an open spot, some wonderful AM  operator was testing and generaly trying to run off the SSB scum. Nice.

I found an open spot down the band and we had a nice qso.

I have also noticed a number of signals that sound very poor, not the old stock rig sound (cheap phone), but lots of distortion and sounding like they had their hand over their mouth muffled.
Do these guys know it sounds so bad?


Is it so hard to zero beat, or buy an old freq counter, or limit the bandwidth a bit, or check out how wide the signal is?

Brett

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« Reply #1 on: October 23, 2009, 10:35:33 PM »

Any 60's SSB rig or even a stock 75A4 will tell you the same thing.

And you wonder why I rarely go on 75, it is not much better than CB on either mode and hasnt been for decades.
Then you have the AM jerks telling each other how great their signals are.

Carl
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k4kyv
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« Reply #2 on: October 23, 2009, 10:41:41 PM »

I have the same problem using the sync detector, with stations operating off frequency.  The PLL will follow frequency drift and frequency shift to a certain degree, and will seek out stations off frequency, but it sometimes takes a second or so to lock in if the carrier comes up a kc or more off frequency. The pissweakers who transmit for a half second, off frequency, trying to break in get lost in the shuffle. But some stations operate crystal control and the carrier frequency may be several hundred cycles off the nominal frequency, so off-frequency operation is not necessarily due to poor operating.

OTOH, I frequently run into stations using VFO control, and the operator has no clue how to zero beat a signal or even what the term means.  This not only includes those using transceivers; it sometimes happens with "vintage" stations using separate transmitter and receiver.

When there is no carrier for the sync detector to lock onto in AM mode, the BFO kind of wanders aimlessly about the frequency and SSB is usually unreadable.
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« Reply #3 on: October 24, 2009, 12:48:55 AM »

Don, did you mod your Sherwood for AM roundtable for faster lock?  I agree, it's pretty irritating when using the stink detector to have everyone off freq.  But that's my problem, I guess, not theirs.

I'll give guys a poke if they're way off frequency.  But let's face it, many are using classic rigs that drift a bit.  You zero in to a QSO when you first turn on the rig and before you know it the VFO has wandered up the band a few KC.    So for those that are running older rigs it behooves you to check zero beat with the QSO every once in a while.

Of course sometimes zero-beating the QSO is pretty hard - sometimes you have a group of guys ranging from -2 to +2 KC.  No wonder we get some guff from the slopbuckets for being "wide".

I have *never* seen anyone 20 KC wide at any unreasonable level, Brett, and I regularly look at the band with a spec an.  Or I used to when I lived in the States.   Anyway you're going to see a rolloff and spectrogram displays like the flex will allow you to see very low level components of a fairly strong signal.  Just because you can see it on the flex doesn't mean there's a problem, or that it's causing interference.  If someone has a 40 over 9 carrier and you see audio components on the Flex out to S-3 +/-10 KC, that's more than reasonable. 
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kg8lb
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« Reply #4 on: October 24, 2009, 07:25:44 AM »

 

    A good spectrum display would be a real eye opener for much of the amateur community.  The SSB operators could get a better picture of just how much bandwidth they actually occupy . There are quite a few SDR offerings at lower cost . The spectrum display is very useful indeed and they are a great aid at helping one another to improve performance and operating practices. Most operators welcome a friendly heads up and are eager to remedy a problem.
  On the other hand they may tend to reveal some folk's elitist attitudes.
Folks "too good" to operate on a given band or folks who consider AM windows a "Ghetto" in the derrogatory sense.  You csn hear hams calling hams "jerks" on any band.Resorting to name calling acheives little good .
  Met some very fine folks on 75 AM very happy to know them. Tolerant, helpful hams who work together at keeping their stations up or just being there as a good friend.  

Good points regarding the synch detector, John.  Certain issues "come with the territory" .
  



  

  

    
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N2DTS
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« Reply #5 on: October 24, 2009, 08:40:25 AM »

I think the flex spectrum display is valid, plus I can hear the guys signal over 10Kc up and down the band.
Many signals are strong, clean and quite narrow, and sound great, there are plenty of those.

I do see a lot of wide ssb signals, with lots of output on the other sideband, and others that are very clean.

When running vintage gear, I check the frequency often, besides zero beating, I have a cheap freq counter that picks up my RF using a wire in the shack.
I dont have a problem with 1kc or less, that is reasonable, but 5 Kc!?

The flex sync detector locks up quite fast, and will go quite far off freq quickly without problems, that is not really an issue for me, but its just poor practice to have people on 3873, 3880, and 3882 all in a qso...
The sync detector is also interesting when someones VFO is jumping around, which is not unusual on the vintage gear, some just jump 500 hz one way, then back, then jump 200 hz down, etc...very crazy to listen to....


I also think people have attitude problems with other modes, with modern ssb stuff, you can get quite close to (a clean) AM qso without problems, but the AM guys, maybe with old poor receivers, hear the ssb guys quite well and assume they are doing it on purpose and get all worked up.
The ssb guys gripe about the real wide AM signals, which is valid when people are all over the band in a qso and over 20 KHz wide.

In the daytime when bands are empty, there is no problem or issue, but at nite, when the band gets packed, its surely going to turn people off to see such poor inconsiderate operation, which in the old days would get you put down as a lid.
With the new stuff on the market, many people can now see just how screwed up someones signal or operation is...

Brett


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kg8lb
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« Reply #6 on: October 24, 2009, 08:55:04 AM »

 An AM roundtable with a few ops all thinking plus or minus 1 or 2 KC is OK can indeed take up a lot of bandwidth needlessly. It gives the adjacent operators a just impression that the operation is wide. The collective effect is the same as if one individual is too wide.Happens on any band , anywhere in that band. We use freq counters and check the other operators by zero beating when using vintage gear alone. The calibration on the GPR-90s here is close enough to spot an operator in our QSO that is off freq and we always give them a nudge to bring them back to the desired freq.  I have used an SDR and intend to incorporate one as a monitor receiver. It will be remotely operated from my sister's QTH about 1 mile from my own QTH.
 
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flintstone mop
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« Reply #7 on: October 24, 2009, 09:12:18 AM »

I really enjoy my "poor man's version" of an SDR with the SoftRock Lite and Flex software. It really cleans up a normally noisy signal from MaNature. The variable BW and noise fiters are very handy. It makes a station fighting through the Aether (?) seem like he is in the same room with me. And it's a good test instrument for aligning a receiver's I.F. stages.
My dream would be to own a cared for used FLEX 5000(?) or I would splurge and get the latest, one day as the ultimate radio. My Titan 425 maul linear and I would be set for any mode. A.M. on flex is awesome.
That would be nice for our possible move and retirement to the Philippines. I think I would still want to keep my TS440's. And definitely my R390A as something that can be touched that was made in the USA.

Fred
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k4kyv
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« Reply #8 on: October 24, 2009, 10:00:20 AM »

The later version of the Sherwood sync detector has a fast lock "AR" mode specifically designed for amateur AM reception.  Previous editions were primarily aimed at the SWL community, with a very slow lock that is entirely satisfactory for SWBC stations.  I'm not sure if Sherwood offers an upgrade kit, but they will at least provide exact instructions on how to add the "AR" feature to an older model unit.

When several stations in a roundtable are substantially off frequency, using the AR mode the PLL quickly pulls the BFO into lock, but there is a 1/2 to 1 second "ping" as you hear the heterodyne while the BFO is sliding to frequency.  That usually makes it impossible to read "breakers" who did not bother to zero-beat the last station transmitting.

Some of the older transceivers had frequency offsets when switching between LSB, USB, CW and AM modes, so that if you zero-beat the AM station in one of the BFO modes then switch back to AM, the carrier may be up to a couple of kHz off frequency.  The RIT can be used to compensate for this, or if the rig has a digital readout, once the offset is figured out, it can be mentally added or subtracted to the desired frequency on the display when tuning in an AM station.  I forget the exact details of how he did it, but a local ham modified his FT-301 to add a "spot" feature in AM mode.

When a group of AM stations run fast break-in, chances are some stations will be off frequency.  I don't even try to listen in sync mode.  The Sherwood envelope detector is still 1000% better than the stock 75A4 diode detector - and the stock product detector too, for that  matter.

I have been known to intentionally slide off frequency (the old "exit stage left" tactic) when slopbuckets knowingly and deliberately try to piggy-back ride the carriers of a QSO I am in.

Lately, the bands have not been "packed" even on weekend nights when the QRN is low. One would  think it would be just the opposite during this prolonged  sunspot minimum with 20 through 10 dead after dark.
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w3jn
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« Reply #9 on: October 24, 2009, 10:25:57 AM »

I posted a mod for my Sherwood and soon thereafter they came out with the model with the "AR" switch.  Not sure if there's any connection between the two, but in any event it's a very worthwhile mod.  The article is here:  http://amfone.net/Amforum/index.php?topic=15782.0

I just hit the sync switch if people are way off, Don, and it locks immediately.  Kind of a pain in a fast breakin though.

Brett, I'm not saying what the Flex shows you isn't there.  But just because you see it on the spectrogram doesn't mean someone's running too wide.  Then again we all know that guys have problems with their xmitters at times, or run too wide.  But you can't expect a brick wall response with any xmitter.

ALso, SDRs will exhibit strange responses when overloaded.  Usually you can identify an overload if there's a whole bin that's full of signal.  My first foray with an Agilent 89441A VSA, for instance - I thought I was seeing some kind of strange frequency hopper that was exactly 4 MHz wide.  Turns out that was the A/D bandwidth, and I had the sensitivity set too high, thereby overloading the A/D converter.
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« Reply #10 on: October 24, 2009, 11:07:56 AM »

Don't waste your money on a flex. HPSDR has a transceiver board in drafting that takes the present system and mount it on a 4 inch by 6 inch card. RX dynamic range higher than any other RX I have measured and MDS around -140 dbM with a 1/2 watt exciter having an IMD3 on 20 meters in the mid -50s dB. On 75 even better. Flex software is pretty accurate inside its operating range and very useful.
Yes it freaks out if a signal is too strong but the only thing I have ever seen saturate it is my own TX. Once in a while the A/D flashes saturation but that is with a BB antenna and without filtering on the input.
Any good RX will show you the clean signals and the dirty ones but the spectrum display shows 10 to 20 of them at once.
I would be willing to bet Flex is working on a system similar to HPSDR because it uses less hardware. I bet they could make a bundle if they offered new boards for the 5000 to convert it to the newer way of doing things. The 5000 is way over priced. The HPSDR system will run circles around it for around $1K once you add a final and filters.
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« Reply #11 on: October 24, 2009, 12:35:59 PM »

Any 60's SSB rig or even a stock 75A4 will tell you the same thing.

And you wonder why I rarely go on 75, it is not much better than CB on either mode and hasn't been for decades.
Then you have the AM jerks telling each other how great their signals are.

Carl
KM1H

I thought this board was about AM'ers. Yes many may have a signal a bit wide but what is wrong with talking about your signal? Can you quote one sentence of a typical AM'er boasting about their signal? Maybe they were just having some fun which by the way if you haven't noticed, your not supposed to have fun in this country anymore. The fun police are out there to get you. Be careful of what you say. It could be used against you. Huh Huh Huh

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« Reply #12 on: October 24, 2009, 01:05:07 PM »

I really enjoy my "poor man's version" of an SDR with the SoftRock Lite and Flex software. It really cleans up a normally noisy signal from MaNature. The variable BW and noise fiters are very handy. It makes a station fighting through the Aether (?) seem like he is in the same room with me. And it's a good test instrument for aligning a receiver's I.F. stages.
My dream would be to own a cared for used FLEX 5000(?) or I would splurge and get the latest, one day as the ultimate radio. My Titan 425 maul linear and I would be set for any mode. A.M. on flex is awesome.
That would be nice for our possible move and retirement to the Philippines. I think I would still want to keep my TS440's. And definitely my R390A as something that can be touched that was made in the USA.

Fred

W6TR posted on the Flex Reflector, 10/22, that he has a Flex 5000A up for sale. I believe it includes all the current widgets.

Once you use one of these rigs, it's hard to go back to the "old stuff".
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« Reply #13 on: October 24, 2009, 01:27:23 PM »


Once you use one of these rigs, it's hard to go back to the "old stuff".

What I notice is that once a ham gets a "Flex" he starts bugging the Non-Flex Nation about it.   Cheesy

Maybe not everyone wants to operate a rig that's dependent on a PC and operating system and upgrades and soundcard and blah blah blah....I happen to like being able to turn the on off switch to on and operate.   Grin Grin Grin 
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« Reply #14 on: October 24, 2009, 01:31:12 PM »

Quote
Once you use one of these rigs, it's hard to go back to the "old stuff".

I agree Pete, they're probably quite nice but I think they bring a bit of a snooty attitude to the ham bands. To me a real radio has tubes in it especially in the transmitter. Perhaps they could gain some self respect if they were hooked up to a tube with handles. They do nothing in regards to preserving a piece of vintage gear. Some people sell all their old stuff and just keep the flex.

To be fair, they have got to be the most pleasing sounding of the SDR radios out there and the things you can do with them remotely simply astonishes me. I wish I could afford one so I could install it at my camp an operate remotely from my antenna-less QTH here near Albany, NY.  Just the same I would have to build a broad band tube amp for it to remove any snooty attributions from it  Grin Grin Grin  
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« Reply #15 on: October 24, 2009, 01:43:58 PM »


Once you use one of these rigs, it's hard to go back to the "old stuff".

What I notice is that once a ham gets a "Flex" he starts bugging the Non-Flex Nation about it.   Cheesy

Maybe not everyone wants to operate a rig that's dependent on a PC and operating system and upgrades and soundcard and blah blah blah....I happen to like being able to turn the on off switch to on and operate.   Grin Grin Grin 

The Flex has an ON/OFF switch  Grin plus the rig gets updated on a regular basis  Grin  plus it sounds great on AM  Grin plus it easier to lift  Grin and in answer to Terry's post, it can drive tube amplifiers without a problem  Grin and the audio output of my Flex now feeds a Bogen audio amp with a pair of 6L6's in the output driving a 3-way speaker enclosure.  Grin

Quote
W2PFY said: They do nothing in regards to preserving a piece of vintage gear. Some people sell all their old stuff and just keep the flex.

I'm a firm believer in recycling vintage gear, so if the current user doesn't have any further need, move it on. It's a lot better then having some piece of vintage gear become a closet queen or stacking the stuff from floor to ceiling in every room collecting mounds of dust and decay.
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« Reply #16 on: October 24, 2009, 02:02:47 PM »

Quote
I thought this board was about AM'ers. Yes many may have a signal a bit wide but what is wrong with talking about your signal? Can you quote one sentence of a typical AM'er boasting about their signal? Maybe they were just having some fun which by the way if you haven't noticed, your not supposed to have fun in this country anymore. The fun police are out there to get you. Be careful of what you say. It could be used against you.  



I havent a clue what any of the above is supposed to mean in the context of my prior post.

Anyone tuning around 75 AM can sometimes hear signals that are trully crummy for any number of reasons and yet are often complimented on their good audio Roll Eyes It sort of tells you where these people bought their licenses or they think its 1928 all over again. Yet the only other band I hear "Rotten Signals" is 6M with those using some of the bottom feeder sets of the 50's and 60's that did the same when new. A Lafayette HA-460 may sound OK to another HA-460 or Heath Sixer but on my Clegg Interceptor the audio peaks pull the VFO right out of the filter passband. Another gem is the G-50, Polycom, Knight T-150 and a few others. Buy a crystal! Quit using the fleamarket 50's mike!

Carl
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« Reply #17 on: October 24, 2009, 02:04:52 PM »

Quote
'm a firm believer in recycling vintage gear, so if the current user doesn't have any further need, move it on. It's a lot better then having some piece of vintage gear become a closet queen or stacking the stuff from floor to ceiling in every room collecting mounds of dust and decay.

I am in complete agreement  Grin Grin
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« Reply #18 on: October 24, 2009, 02:08:27 PM »

Like I said before in another thread, (that has since been expunged), "just what I need is another gee-whizmo gadget to hook and operate with my computer." Just not my idea of fun. YMMV!
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« Reply #19 on: October 24, 2009, 02:33:23 PM »

Quote
Anyone tuning around 75 AM can sometimes hear signals that are trully crummy for any number of reasons and yet are often complimented on their good audio

I agree, it makes you wonder if they have tin ears, are afraid to let the other guy know how he really sounds or simply doesn't know or care.  Grin Grin

Quote
Yet the only other band I hear "Rotten Signals" is 6M with those using some of the bottom feeder sets of the 50's and 60's that did the same when new

What transmitters were those? The "Bottom Feeder ones?"  Huh Huh
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« Reply #20 on: October 24, 2009, 03:04:24 PM »

Quote
What I notice is that once a ham gets a "Flex" he starts bugging the Non-Flex Nation about it

Heya Rob,
I haven't been the recipient, but it's natural to share enthusiasm.  It's the degree that would bother me, or the approach taken.

For example, I probably came on too strong promoting a campaign to rescue old BC transmitters back in the early-mid 1990s..  People who didn't have one (and may never want one) may have thought I was putting down their transmitter as I went on-and-on about mine.

Didn't mean to.

It made me more conscious of avoiding any comparison, deliberate or implied, so that the merits could stand on their own of putting a BC rig on 160-80-40.

Looking gently at the SDR users, I bet they're swept up in the same enthusiasm they want to share with others.  

I agree however, that it's a legitimate complaint if such users deliberately put down other rigs to try to make theirs look better.



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« Reply #21 on: October 24, 2009, 03:20:10 PM »

Quote
What transmitters were those? The "Bottom Feeder ones?"  Huh Huh

 Could be anything. For some it is anything with tubes, for others it may be an over-rated St James Grey box.

 Good  folks are where ever you find them .   I find a lot of fine operators on all the bands. 80 meter CW and 15 CW are two personal favorites. Still 75 and 160 are prime bands to meet local friends. Its all in what you make of it from what I have seeen. Certainly those "too good" may feel otherwise.
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« Reply #22 on: October 24, 2009, 03:44:13 PM »

Quote
Could be anything. For some it is anything with tubes, for others it may be an over-rated St James Grey box.

The question I asked was was, what were the Bottom Feeder Transmitters?
I don't know which ones Carl had a bad experience with or heard? Gonset, Heath, I just don't know. There was a lot of nice transmitters back then because it was mostly before repeaters and there could have been some really cheap stuff I hadn't heard of.  Maybe there is a new thing going around that might be labeled as the FLEX TREATMENT. I noticed when I operate remotely from a site in CT, people are not very enthused by the concept probably because I'm using a computer to talk to them via the internet.   
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« Reply #23 on: October 24, 2009, 03:53:27 PM »

Well, okay.  I had this nice smart a## answer for Pete but I deleted it in the interests of collegiality  Wink so suffice it to say that the PC controlled SDR boxes aren't everyone's cup of tea.  I have seen them; I have a very good friend who owns one and thinks it's fantastic but I prefer to just do radio and not deal with the whole PC part of the bargain.   I want to get things I can figure out and repair myself.

I was at a hamfest a few years ago, an out of town deal, so I had to stay at a local motel.  The morning of the fest, I was downstairs for the free motel breakfast.  The lobby was crowded with hams.  I sat down to eat what I had scrounged and a guy sat down and introduced himself.  As soon as he learned I operated the low bands and ran an amp, he immediately started talking to me about QRP and how wonderful it was.  I calmly stated I had no interest in low power.  That was ignored.  The guy wouldn't shut up about QRP.  I eventually had to get up and leave.  I guess the lesson in here for me is to shut up when I'm tempted to gush to my SSB buddies about AM   Grin  or my new WRL 755 I made a deal on  Cheesy
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« Reply #24 on: October 24, 2009, 04:08:44 PM »

I have been listening around the bands a lot since getting it (new toy thing) and never noticed (before) how poor
many signals and operating practices are.


Brett,

I'm curious about what rig you had before you got your Flex radio.  It sounds as if all of this stuff was hidden from you before.  I mean, as you know, your Flex Radio didn't make all this stuff happen.  All these lousy signals were there all along but it seems you didn't notice them before.  I wonder what rig you were running.  I can certainly hear the distorted audio stations at my place.  I get the stations "off frequency" which I assume means two or more stations not zero beat to each other.   My hunch is that they are running old AM receivers that have such wide passband it isn't noticed by them.  I have one that is so wide I can't tell someone is off frequency unless he's over 5 KHz away.   Sometimes I have to work a station I have trouble copying, by putting the receiver on lower or upper sideband and zero beating him then I can detect his drift because I'll have to retune every few minutes, but to me, these things all go with the territory of hams running old gear.  On the distortion though, my guess is those stations aren't looking at their outputs with scopes and/or listening with some kind of detector monitor or separate rx.

73
Rob
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