6300 vs TS-830S

Kevin Mahoney

I am brand new to my 6300 and can only operate with the most obvious functions. No complaint just learning.  I also have a Kenwood TS-830S Goldline with all of the filters.Some  say it is one of the finest receivers out there. I have been running side by side non-scientific comparisons. I was quite surprised at the number of stations I could hear clearly that I could not hear at all or not decipher on the 830. Very happy I have moved in this direction, Love this radio!  

Steve W6SDM

And that's just the beginning.  You will find that as the enhancements in 1.5 come about, you will be able to work even more stations that you couldn't hear before.

Welcome to the Flex community.

Jay -- N0FB

Welcome to the world of Direct Digital Sampling radios.  You'll never go back to a super heterodyne again.  The inherent lower noise floor of the Flex receiver is going to allow you to hear things you never knew were there.  

With your new Flex, you have an infinite number of filters.  And they are brick walls.  They are amazing!  

Welcome to the group!!!

Mike Whatley

Kevin....

In another time, I would have challenged you to a Duel over such a slur on the venerable TS-830.  Whenever I work someone on the air and they tell me they're running an 830, I uncontrollably jump up and snap to attention as if a Drill Sgt. entered the barracks! Laughs.

I've had a 6300 for just 2 weeks!  And despite the fondness I have for the great Super Het radios of the past, they all seem soooo yesterday now.  In a short time, I have been converted!  Some guy called me a "Flex Head" on the air the other day!  I took it as a compliment!  Laughs.

I'm gonna make a  "Flex Head" Baseball cap!

Cheers,
mike/wa4d
charlottesville, va.

Ken - NM9P

Run! Run! and sell the TS-830S while you still love it and can demand a good price for it.  Before long you will gladly take a lot less money just to get it out of the shack!

But seriously... I had the same reaction when my 1500 and then the 6500 arrived and I compared them to my TS-850SAT and its excellent receiver.  I couldn't believe the difference.  The 1500 kicked its ****.  And the 6500... all I could say was WOW!  And that was with pre-1.0-release software.  It has only gotten better over the past year.  

As has been said, V.1.4 and V.1.5 will make it even better!

Welcome to the FLEX family.  Indeed... wear the "Flex-head" label as a badge of honor.

Ken - NM9P

KY6LA_Howard

A better test would be a K3 vs a Flex

George KF2T

Had a TS820 a long time ago. Was a great rig and I remember being blown away by the receiver, especially after coming off of a tube set. The first thing I noticed when I got the Flex was just what a leap the receiver is. Then I realized just how much !@(*&amp(@# noise is in my neighborhood. Surprised I still have hair, but mitigation works wonders and allows the 6000 series to shine.

Kevin Mahoney

Here to now my TS-830 was my newest radio. I love that radio and feel very disloyal like I have been caught cheating on my best girl. Thanks goodness I did not go for the TS-590 which I was planning on which I am sure is a fine radio - but there is no going back now.

K6NOK- Bill

I've run many on the air A/B receiver comparisons between my TS-590 and my 6300. Comparing sensitivity and S/N, as far as I can tell, it's pretty much a dead heat. So while DDS is very nice, it doesn't seem "Light years" ahead of a modern state of the art superhet receiver (as far as sensitivity and S/N are concerned) in the real world. In my humble opinion.

Mike Whatley

Bill...

Recall Alan Greenspan's remarks in the 90's about overheated rhetoric?  "Irrational Exuberance"?   Actually what he said in context was: "how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values".   Still appropriate in these times. I give you the domestic "Ebola" scare or the  "Terrorist" reports every other week, in the press.

Some Flex owners do have a touch of "irrational exuberance" (me among them). I haven't seen any claims of "light year" differences--- though I take your point.  I believe the excitement is about the fundamental re-thinking of the Ham Radio operating experience.

To me the paradigm shift provided by the SDR model is the more intellectually invigorating part of the equation.  The process and traditional "work flow" of the near century old model for Ham radio HF base station communications has been through dedicated single purpose boxes often piled high on a table fed to metal mounted in the sky in one's back yard.  The operator for so long, isolated to observing a single frequency and making "adjustments" as he see's necessary.  The past decade has seen the opening of radios with simultaneous access to wide chunks of spectrum (and recording too!)

The maturing Flex 6000 series  is now "plug n play" stable.  (At least it was for me)  Filter transparency, spectrum visualization, all in software....the "Big Iron" box looks more anachronistic each day. (See? This is part of the Irrational exuberance!)   The SDR has shown significant technical advancements in receive and xmit purity that out pace the incremental changes of the Super Het model) . 
  
Yes, Yaesu,Kenwood and Icom have  incorporated SD elements into their products but they remain, largely single purpose appliances.  The SDR model let's Hams escape from the tyranny of big iron.  (Ok, ok, there's still all that metal out in the back yard! Laughs) 

As for spec's?  Frankly I can't hear the difference between an 830 and an ICOM 7700. Nor can I discern the diff between a radio with a noise floor that is 90 db down, from  a rig 110db down.   If we were to place an Kenwood TS 830, a Yaesu FT 990 and an Icom 7800 under 3 black cardboard boxes all fed from a single antenna via an RF Splitter tuned to the same frequency with no filters/passband/or tonal adjustments. How many of us could tell you which radio was which under which black box?

So to me, the issue is now workflow. App's and integration.  I no longer have a "ham station".  The Flex 6300 is a peripheral to my Mac/PC based multimedia content production center. I take on-line classes. Use Video conferencing. Communicate globally And try to stay informed. Oh Yes. And I have a portal to HF spectrum  and applications  for short wave communications.  The "radio" is almost incidental  to  this globally connected  "Information Eco System".   

Cheers,
mike/wa4d
Photo of "Non-Ham-Radio-Station" here:  www.wa4d.net