Flex 6600/6600M ATU question.

Martin Monsalvo - LU5DX

Do these units come with two independent transmitters? Meaning they also include dual ATU units, one for each of the transmitters. I believe that beyond the SO2R software capabilities the flexibility needs to be also achieved on the hardware architecture to fully take advantage of true SO2R. 73, Martin LU5DX

Ria

From what I understand it is one transmitter with one ATU but it is a memory tuner which is very fast when QSYing.

Ria

Martin Monsalvo - LU5DX

Thanks Ria for your reply. It gotta be real fast for 2BISQ. If it is not, then the solution would be to use two 6400s. 73, Martin LU5DX

Ria

If it's as fast as the 6700 (which has this capability) then it is plenty fast. 

Ken Hansen

Not a contester, but curious how one operator (SO..) would use two transmitters (..2R) simultaneously? If not used simultaneously then 'fast-switching' should suffice, right?

Clay N9IO

Absolutely, in SO2R only one transmitter can be on at a time so yes the 6600 and 6700 were developed for and are perfect for SO2R.

Martin Monsalvo - LU5DX

There are several ways to work SO2R (scenarios). Some of them, specially the latest techniques such as 2BSIQ (Two Bands Synchronized Interleaved QSOs) require that the switching is done in just a few milliseconds (very few). Transmitters never transmit simultaneously though.

Here are e few videos on how it is done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42TCOtmJuEI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ncFJZqkTAt

Under ideal situations an ATU at the transmitter would not be needed of course. Furthermore,  ATUs should be placed at the feed point of each antenna to work more efficiently.
However that ideal situation is not always possible, then you need an ATU at the TX output. In those cases , since ATUs may involve mechanic systems to tune to the lowest SWR, the delay makes it impossible to do effective SO2R, unless there are two separate ATU units (one for each transmitter).

This was just a question to know more about the hardware architecture of the new models. If they have just a single ATU unit, it is not a showstopper at all, external ATUs can still be placed at the output of the two antenna ports.

73,

Martin LU5DX

Ken Hansen

"This was just a question to know more about the hardware architecture of the new models. If they have just a single ATU unit, it is not a showstopper at all, external ATUs can still be placed at the output of the two antenna ports." Understood and agree about outboard ATUs. Mine was a question to understand SO2R operation, thanks