And the crystal ball says:

Jay -- N0FB

"Hope Springs Eternal!"  

It appears to me that we are just a little over 2 months away from the Dayton Hamvention.  We all know that if an Amateur Radio Hardware company is going to announce a new product, it usually occurs shortly before Dayton so as to increase excitement.

I look at the product line of Flex Radio and see the lonesome QRP 1500, a relic of the direct conversion, quadrature sampling era.  I'm betting that a new QRP, single slice 6000 family radio will debut sometime soon to round out the SmartSDR family.  The FlexRadio 6100 has a good ring to it.

As Takeshi Yamada said in one of his posts:  "And it is fun to speculate.  Thank you FRS for giving me another fun!!"  I couldn't have said it any better!

WA2SQQ

Ya and 1.4 won't be out before Dayton. They need something to announce!

Tim - W4TME

"Ya and 1.4 won't be out before Dayton."

I would not put any serious money on that bet... ;-)

WA2SQQ

Hold it until it's right - ive been in your position. You are **** if you do and **** if you don't!

Jay -- N0FB

Tim, I need to stop leaving these sticks lying on the ground for people to pick up and beat you with.   Sorry about that!

Tim - W4TME

As long as they are sticks and not baseball bats or rebar.  :-)

Ned K1NJ

     A 1.5 demo, perhaps?

Ned,  K1NJ

K2CM

I will order a low power 6100 for my portable, qrp operation.

K4SC

Write a reply  I think FRS already has done that; the 6300.

Jay -- N0FB

Nope...I have a 6300.  It is a QRO (100 Watt), 2 Slice radio.

Ken - NM9P

My guesses... totally a guess...possibly for Dayton:

1) a 6010 QRP rig.  5-10 Watts, smaller pans, one or two slices.
2) a VHF/UHF version of the 6000
3) Aux equipment/interfaces for the 6000 - i.e. amp, rotator, antenna switch, interfaces, etc.
4) a new FlexControl knob with a few more buttons, and Key Paddle input.

5) (total fantasy) a USB3-to-Firewire adapter that works with the Flex Legacy rigs. (:>P)

Any one of these would be neat...

Dan -- KC4GO

for Ken NM9P your #5 maybe http://www.amazon.com/Firewire-Ieee-Ilink-Adapter-Cable/dp/B0049DJ0JG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=142...

Ken - NM9P

I have not heard that any of them work on the flex SDRs.

Jay -- N0FB

The latency would be prohibitive.  I also would doubt that the 3000/5000 Firewire device would even be recognized by Windows via a conversion to USB connection.

Tim - W4TME

It won't work.  It is snake oil.

George KF2T

I kinda like the idea for a VHF/UHF version. QRP portable doesn't seem to be the right place for a radio server. Other products are probably better contenders. While we are idly speculating...

KY6LA_Howard

Why need a QRP anything when you can remote...

OTOH....the new SPE EXPERT AMP 1.3K will put out 1.5KW from 5 Watts input
EXCEPT in the USA where we need to be protected from CB'ers by the FCC

Steve-N5AC

Periodically the whole Firewire-to-something discussion erupts (not that this is an eruption).  Here's the deal:  the Firewire chip we use in the radios (5000,3000) is not just a Firewire interface chip.  It is a custom chip with a microprocessor, a specialized Firewire crossbar switch and streaming interface.  The chip is provided along with drivers for various operating systems that talks their protocol for stuffing everything into the channel and controlling their chip.  Their driver expects a hardware Firewire interface in the computer.  It will not work with a USB-Firewire interface since it has no way to talk to a USB driver.  We investigated several options for upgrading the interface and they were all expensive, time consuming and technically risky.  We all wanted badly to bridge the interface to something else.

At the time we picked Firewire, it was the only option that could carry the data rates we had.  Unfortunately, it has not continued to garner favor in the computer community as it once did.  This is probably because of the ubiquity of Ethernet interfaces and much of the shift into USB with higher data rates.  If there were a simple solution, we would have long since deployed it.

Ethernet has really learned by separating the logical and physical interfaces.  You can take programs that were written to work on 10-Base-T (predating Firewire) with RG58 coax and run them on a 100Gb Ethernet network with fiber.  It's unfortunate that Firewire didn't work like this.

I recently saw someone with a Motorola StarTac telephone lamenting that he could no longer use it on the cellular system at all (AMPS is long gone).  I myself, have an Oki 900 and the matching mobile rig (can't remember the number).  I keep these because of their significance in the technology industry and my personal history with the phones. I loved that I could put my phone in test mode and look at the network status, signal levels, etc.  I was always an early adopter and the cost was not particularly important to me.  I actually enjoyed understanding the network enough to know how to dial into a foreign city's cellular switch and then dial the MIN of someone I knew was there to reach them.  Roaming came later...  Learning how things worked and understanding the technology world around me was paramount.  But of course these AMPS phones no longer work on the network at all.  Fortunately this is not the case with ham radio.

We'll keep our eyes peeled in case a solution comes up, but all the ones we've investigated in the past have been untenable.  For now, you'll need to continue to use a Firewire card in your computer since an alternative is not available.  Because of the specialized nature of the chip, I'm not holding my breath for a good solution to migrate to a different interface, but you never know.

EA4GLI

A VHF-UHF all mode version would be awesome. There are very few radios on the market that work as a solid VHF/UHF all-mode, the only options> Icom IC-9100 and Kenwood TS-2000. I am not taking into account the FT-991, FT-857 or IC-7100 as those are not duplex or even dual-watch or independent antennas per band.

A 6300 VHF/UHF rig will be very very appealing.

Is this even on the radar for FRS?