February 7, 2019 Club Meeting
Thursday, February 7, 2019 at 7:00 PM Medford Police Department Community Room, 219 S. Ivy St., Medford, OR
Program: Flex Radio SDR, Michael Walker, VA3MW
Michael Walker, VA3MW will present on Flex Radio.
- SDR radio and the Flex implementation and how we leveraged it, filters, noise blankers, etc.
- Designed for simple and easy station integration - not limited to just 1 RS232 port like all other radios.
- Remoting of HF radio for either your friends to share or a more detailed station that is 100% remote.
- Product overview of the models Flex has for sale and trade-in programs
Biography: Michael Walker, VA3MW is a product manager for Flex Radio Systems in Austin, Texas.
The group order for the Ed Fong antennas and accessories closes at the Feb 7 2019 club meeting. Must bring filled-out form and check to the February 7, 2019 Club Meeting.
Announced in the February 2019 issue of The Repeater.
Meeting Notes
From the March 2019 issue of The Repeater.
20190-02-07 RVARC Meeting Minutes
Meeting was called to order at 7:03pm by President John Laybourne. There were about 25 attendees, including 3 visitors.
The presentation got underway at 7:05pm, featuring a video teleconference by Michael Walker, VA3MW, of Flex Radio, discussing the features of their SDR-based transceivers, the 6000 series. They are a direct-conversion architecture using FPGA’s capable of more than 10Gbits/sec I/O combined. (See Fig. 1 for a comparison of the current models, Figs 2 & 3 for some more detailed specs.)
The Flex6000 radios cover 160M-6M at 100 watts transmitting and receive from 30kHz to 54MHz or 77MHz depending on model. There can be from 2 to 8 separate receiver ‘slices’ usable simultaneously. Using their SmartSDR software for Windows or iOS, or DogParkSDR for MacOS, the radios can implement CAT functions, digital modes, and spectrum waterfall displays. Flex also has SmartLink software for direct remote control over the internet. Third-party utilities also abound, like SliceMaster from K1DBO, SmartSDR from K9DUR, FRStack from mkcmsoftware, SDRBridge from QRV, and also DxLab from dxlabsuite. Mike also mentioned some hardware accessories, like their Maestro remote console, transverters from DownEast Microwave(Q5 Signal), and an antenna switch from 4o3a. For more info, he can be emailed at [email protected]
End of Presentation, Break for visiting and snacks at 7:59pm
Resumed meeting at 8:32pm.
Our Treasurer, Mike, WB6FFC, was out of town on business, and will bring our financials up to date at next month’s meeting.
The WPX RTTY contest is scheduled for the weekend of Feb. 9-10.
The ARRL DXCW contest will be Feb. 16-17, with the DX Phone contest following on Mar. 2-3.
7QP will be the weekend of May 5, and the question is where to have it this year. Agate Lake was mentioned as a possibility. Also, what category to be in this time?
Bill Martin, N7EU, of the CARE club spoke about collaboration with RVARC for Field Day this Summer. Again, there was discussion of the location.
The deadline for the group-buy for Ed Fong’s antennas and accessories was postponed until Thursday, the 14th.
Don Bennett, KG7BP, mentioned the ongoing need for volunteer examiners for amateur license tests.
John, KF7UMK, said that there are some new nodes on our Rogue Valley 2.4GHz mesh network and roguemesh.org is the new website.
Allan, K7GT, made some SOTA contacts at RoxyAnn Peak recently on 20M & 40M, with a 15 watt battery-operated rig, both on CW and SSB.
Meeting adjourned at 8:58pm.
Respectfully submitted, John Armstrong, KF7UMK.
Editor’s note: the figures did not rescale properly when resizing for the newsletter (they turned unreadably fuzzy). Here are links:
Figure 1 listing the Flex-6000 models and comparisons: www.flexradio.com/comparison/
Figures 2 and 3 from pages in the Flex-6000 Hardware Reference Manual: www.flexradio.com/downloads/flex-6000-hardware-reference-manual-pdf/?wpdmdl=3101
