My recent thread

Steve G1XOW · May 2017

Guys,
The recent thread (that I started couple of days ago) has proven beyond all doubt that there are many unhappy customers with regards to V2 before some of the basics for V1 are in place. I am sure that the massive amount of noise and displeasure within that thread has been read over and over again by those at FRS.

Tim says they have been listening and will act accordingly. So now let’s give them a chance to respond with direct actions, not just words and promises for the future. Let’s see what they come up with to set the situation of unfinished v1 straight. Below are a few helicopter observations from that thread:-

-Most users want FRS to succeed, and like the hardware platform greatly.

-Most will happily pay for new feature (benefits) in V2 as they become available.

-The cost of V2 is not really an issue for people.

-An annual subscription is not unreasonable, provided that they deliver against promises made – for that I would expect an annual roadmap of deliverables in exchange for my subscription.

-FRS are still a young and overly eager business. They have to evolve a better more joined-up approach to product release strategies and marketing to their new, and more importantly their existing user base. Some focus groups will help a lot.

-FRS cannot afford the cost of unhappy customers, or to get a bad reputation. Remember MFJ? It takes many years to remove dirty stains from your shorts!

I believe that deep down we all want FRS to be successful, and constructive criticism is a good thing for all. Those that label us as “the same old complainers” are wrong. Complainers without passion would only tell the rest of the world how **** things were. They certainly wouldn’t hang around for years helping FRS make happier customers and better products for us all.

Remember we talk, a lot, we talk to friends, we make recommendations at clubs and DX conventions, QRZ, Twitter etc. We offer insider awareness to prospective new buyers. We are (potentially) their best sales people and their hardest critics. FRS knows this. The ball is now firmly in their court.

73 and QRT de Steve G1XOW

IZ0CBB · May 2017

Time has been granted and even so, but they have used it badly and do new products not to improve those sold.

EA4GLI · May 2017

I just keep on agreeing with Steve! Spot on again.

I have been following Flex and this forum for a while now. Owner of Flex gear for 4+ years. My comments come with my most sincere respect to all.

There is a sense of "us" versus "them".

Any criticism is always met with a barrage of comments from Elmers that do not really answer or present facts to alleviate the concerns... not only that, they exacerbate the discomfort of the persons criticizing, upsetting them and ultimately alienating them from voicing their opinion. Many owners of Flex gear outside the USA do not even post (you have no idea how many people that do not speak/write English fluently are afraid of even posting here).

I personally feel like the alpha team, the elmers and a close group of sympathizers (some of them, not all of course) *allow me to refer to this group as the flex insiders* are doing a great disservice to FRS by always replying to any criticism instead of allowing Flex to reply first. Tim is always on top of the threads and Gerald and co. do respond from time to time. Let FRS respond to criticism.

Please, allows for this dialogue to happen. Allow even the disgruntle ones (baring personal insults) to voice their complaints. There are interesting nuggets even in the most odd posts.

I also personally feel that the flex insiders and FRS are living in a bubble. By removing any type of Road Map we (outside of that bubble) cannot provide feedback until it is too late. And of course, it feels like criticism... that is what happens when your only option is to complaint after the fact. The forum is always a reaction to the software and gear that gets introduced. Reading through the critical posts is how the majority of us get a glimpse of what to expect. Reading the posts from those in the "know" it feels like FRS is not getting the necessary criticism and advice before hand.
If all the feedback for new software features and hardware comes from the people who are fine with whatever FRS comes up with, you are not getting the best advice. Had you asked the forum at large what do they prefer, I feel comfortable stating that the vast majority would have preferred to get features in v.1.0 of the SmartSDR vs new gear that replaces (*and devalues) their own.

We vote for the Ideas through this forum and that gets almost no traction. We request basic functionality and we are told the ultimate childish come back "well... the other brands do this or that" "try to get kenwood owner to reply to you" "try to get any software releases in a timely fashion from Yaesu" ... how lame is that?? I could care less what Microsoft, GM, Yaesu or Icom do poorly in the context of these criticisms. The fact that some other brand sucks at something doesn't justify FRS **** at it too.

On the other hand, if some brand does something well, it is logical to copy it. We should strive to improve not call our own shortcoming "good enough" because others' shortcomings are worsts that our own.

Back to our current situation. A large percentage of us feel we are not getting what we thought we would be getting before new gear was announced. It is that simple. We feel betrayed because the original expectations have not been met.

Steve has pointed out in a very clear manner some of the basics, I would like to add my own list.

DStar, FreeDV and all WAVE forms..... completely forgotten.
Diversity, not even close to finished.
GUI strange behavior.... i.e. countless times I go back to saved profiles to find the waterfall all the way up in the panadapter.... I then proceed to drag it down and it jumps back up... very odd behavior. It takes a few tries to get it back to where it is supposed to be.
No RF Gain on FM.
Auto Black ( in the Display gain section)... works poorly.
Pre-distorsion... where is it?
The piece of hardware that was going to make the 6300 and 6500 SO2R viable... not an option anymore *info we just found out about on a Q&A published yesterday.

And we will never get those in version 1. That is it. FRS comes up with new hardware so they can fund new software, and we all have to pay for new software in version 2 so FRS can afford to develop new software. Which one is it? I thought that my $200 for version 2 was paying for the software development.

And what am I getting on Version 2 for $200? As far as I can gather I get SmartLink and dockable windows. Multiclient, at a later date TBD. Noise Mitigation Improvements, Predistorsion, Diversity, waveforms, etc... not even mentioned. There is no road map, no clear feature list.... when am I supposed to pay for 2.0, when FRS is done adding all the features in 2 years time? Or am I supposed to (again) trust FRS and pay up front hoping that 2.xx will get me what I want?

FRS can do hardware.... I do not feel they really know how to do software. Not in a timely fashion. Not well enough to be a leader in this market space.

Clay N9IO · May 2017

Sorry, I mean this respectfully but this sounds like round 2.
Your point was made.

Tim - W4TME · May 2017

That is an uninformed statement. There are many previous examples where we have investigated a problem for the 6700 and the fix was applicable to all radios (6500 and 6700). That dynamic will not stop due to new radio hardware but will increase because there are now 7 radios in the FLEX-6000 family rather than 3.

Steve G1XOW · May 2017

Clay, that was not my intention at all. After 60+ contributions it just needed a summary and a reconcillation of emerging "sides".

Guys, respectfully, please please let the dust settle now. Hold back on the flack until we get to see some action from FRS.

Thanks,

Tim - W4TME · May 2017

Salvador

I have to agree with Clay, this post is just picking up where the previous one regarding this thread left off. It is the same people reiterating their same points again. As I posted previously, your complaints, feelings, and concerns have been adequately expressed and received by FlexRadio Systems.

We get it. Your expectations, however, established have not been met. What I see in this topic is a group of users that want nothing more than for an excellent radio to reach it's potential and achieve a high level of perfection. We want the same thing. And as we continue on the journey, we will get closer to that goal.

There is a lot of very reasonable wisdom in Steve's Idea post above.

I have received a lot of off list posts from users who feel the same way you do and others that are becoming very weary of the repetitive rehashing of the same points over and over again. There must be a balance to the Community for it to work as intended. As with the previous post, the passion you feel is real and we hear you loud and clear. Reiterating the points already made and received will not benefit anyone. It becomes fuel for argument and violations of our usage policies. That is a recipe for anarchy and FlexRadio cannot allow for that to happen.

Ken Hansen · May 2017

As a new 'Flexer' I don't know the history (and am not asking for a review of it), but it seems to me that, reasonably, Flex is introducing a new set of features and called it V2 of the software, people ASSUME (or don't trust) that any development will continue on V1 of the software - only time will tell if that's true. It would be nice to see a public roadmap document, for both V1 and V2, but I can understand Flex's reluctance to put one out that was specific enough to appease most critics/supporters. I suspect the issue may be that until V2 was announced, many/most flexers just assumed that everything ever discussed to that point was intended to be included in V1, and to find out that isn't the case has left them understandably upset. In hindsight, maybe Flex could have done a better job laying the groundwork for V2 software earlier, explaining that some new features enhancements would require paid software upgrades. There also was likely some confusion between discussion of future product 'possibilities' and promises of future product 'features', only more disciplined communication in the future can change that. No amount of review/discussion will change the past, and only time will tell if things are improving at Flex with regard to communicating future plans. Anyway, that's my take on it.

Gerald-K5SDR · May 2017

Steve,

Thank you so much for your reasoned comments heading this thread. I try to read and consider constructive and respectful feedback as much as I can allocate time to do so.

There is nothing I would rather do than to be able to share a public road map. However, that has two fundamental problems.

First, we learned the hard way that not everyone understands the inherent nature of a road map. It is just like a battle plan. It lasts only until the first shots are fired and then you have to make changes. The problem we learned the hard way with the public road map is that some people believe that if it goes on the road map it is a commitment to both the feature and time frame. As a business, we must have the flexibility to change priorities based on business realities at any given moment. For example an intermittent bug might take man weeks to isolate and results in some feature getting dropped from a release. We must have the flexibility to spend those man weeks when warranted. In the mean time we have to generate revenue with those software resources to pay for ongoing development.

The second problem is that you must know our competition will read the road map. We choose to make some things public for strategic reasons even though the competition will know. It all depends on what we think best serves all involved.

There is another fundamental problem that I struggle with how to handle. It goes back to the joke, opinions are like belly buttons - everyone has one. Well features are like belly buttons - everyone has their must have feature. Your pet feature is not my pet feature so your pet feature doesn't count. Remote is one example. There are many of you who say they must have remote and many of you who could care less. We are about to deliver on the promise of remote with the new SmartLink in June. It kills us all that it has taken us so long to deliver on that promise but there were many decisions along the way that delayed it, which I would make again the same way. There are other decisions I would clearly change looking back. However, someone else would be mad if we changed that decision.

If someone says to me in Dayton, you need to do "X" because it is very important to me. I may nod my head and say that sounds like a very good feature. I wish I had that too. I can almost guarantee you I won't remember that conversation out of the hundreds I had over last weekend. That person thinks, "I just spoke to the CEO of FlexRadio and he said he thought X was a good idea. Next year I see that person. I might remember the face out of thousands I meet but unlikely the name/call. That person says, "Why haven't you done "X? that you promised" I say explain to me "X." I might not even remember "X" but to that person "X" was a commitment. This happened to me this weekend. I said, yes that sounds like it is important to people like you. I don't know when that will come to the top of the priority list but it should someday.

Charging $199 for Version 2 will not fund our software development for any material length of time even if we were to be able to sell software for one of our competitors radios as well. We must remain competitive selling new radios to fund ongoing software development.

By the way, it is an urban legend probably propagated by some competitors and/or their customers that we charge a subscription fee. That is just and has been false.

We have also made mistakes because we are visionaries who see all the possibilities of the platform we have built. Our vision gets ahead of our execution because software is not a crank you can just turn. We are optimists. Shame on me for being one.

I have much more to say but this is getting too long to read. Let me end with this:

In the new world of true SDR, it is in your own self interest that FlexRadio sell the most radios we can, gain market share, and be able to generate revenue from software so that we can deliver more software.
Free software forever without new competitive radios to sell is a going out of business strategy.
Innovate or die. Where are Collins, Heathkit and Hallicrafters today? Some are more recent examples I won't mention.
SmartSDR is the radio. That means as we release new versions of SmartSDR, the FLEX-6300 and FLEX-6500 will get new features and are thus not obsolete. That's a better deal than any last year's model car I ever owned.
We will listen all constructive feedback and will do our best to incorporate it within our resources and ability to do so.
Sales of the new radio models already have been everything we hoped for and more. SmartLink was demoed to rave reviews in the booth at Hamvention.
Given what I know today vs. what I knew last Wednesday, the one thing I would change is to have a detailed FAQ posted Thursday evening. This fell through the cracks at the last minute and I apologize.

73,
Gerald
K5SDR

EA4GLI · May 2017

I really appreciate this post Gerald. Thank you.

Steve Gw0gei · May 2017

Good summary Steve Thanks for the further comms Gerald. As someone who stayed up late here in Europe last Thursday hoping to hear about new features in 2.0 and a timed maintenance release to fix the radio hang up issue, the lack of official communication, other than the brochure release, was a disappointment. However, the 6600 and 6400 look very competitive, and as someone who still loves his 6300, even with the random hang ups and dax corruption, after contesting with it for last four years on hf and vhf, I am pleased flex is going to give icom a run for their money. As the previous owner of ic7400 and pro 3 I know the 6300 is a better dx and contesting radio, and icom never admitted to their screen, pa, or ssb drive issues. They lost me as a customer who regularly used to upgrade radios every few years. I understand that you have to react to the competition, and a detailed roadmap is difficult to continue with. Hope the change of strategy with the m radio fronts builds the user base and enables you to deliver enough new features in 2.1 2.2 or 2.3 to tempt me up upgrade. Wan and demountable windows is probably not enough to tempt me, but better anf and nb along with sorting out the hang up issue and other bugs will see me upgrading the 6300 and buying the non m 6600 for contesting. Better integration of my antenna genius plus and the new power genius may well make me upgrade sooner as my priorities are all Contest orientated. 73 Steve gw0gei / gw9j

Steve G1XOW · May 2017

Hey Gerald,

Thanks very much for what is clearly a heartfelt reply. You don’t need to apologise. Despite all the flack on here and the irritations most of us would not actually leap to an inferior radio.

The F6k and SSDR combo are presently a pleasure vs pain scenario for me. The radio is truly world-leading and for the most part SSDR is useable (acceptable), but do not underestimate the power from constant niggles that eat away day after day “constant knocking breaks the stone”.

It is great that you are ambitious and looking forward to even greater things, but please remember that some apparently trivial stuff will make people very unhappy if neglected. Each time I need to mess around to get a reverse split, or need to adjust the audio passband up from 100Hz, these albeit trivial things serve to remind me that it still lacks elegance and refinement. It reminds me that my F5000+PSDR did it so much better, and even the IC-7300 costing quarter of the price does it better. If this were a year after product release then we’d label it as “work in progress”, expecting it to get better soon. So 4 years later it really needs to be super-swish and highly polished, befitting of a top-flight radio.

Regarding roadmaps: I feel that this is essential if you want to maintain confidence from the userbase. Dropping it from the radar was a bad thing. You need to share it via a two-way dialogue (focus groups) and be confident of getting our buy-in at an early stage, not just springing new stuff out of R&D and hoping it gets acceptance.

I say don’t worry about the public nature of a roadmap. FRS is poised to go places that even the big 3 wouldn’t try to follow. Those businesses don’t like the constant innovation model because it doesn’t fit large scale production lines. Getting early adopter buy-in from the userbase (aka your sales force) is much more valuable than the small risk of 2nd tier emulators. Set the benchmarks high and let the competition eat your dust. If you want to be the best then **** them and get on with it. Be proud and don’t look back wondering if they are playing catch-up. Above all else, be inclusive with your userbase and they will support your onward business development and success because that is a win-win for all parties.

73 de Steve G1XOW

Gerald-K5SDR · May 2017

Steve, my experience with the public road map was awful when we had to change it for very valid technical or business reasons that we were not always able to communicate publicly. I swore I would never do it again with hams. It was just about like what has happened over the last couple of days. It works much better in the commercial world where I spent most of my career.

Our team is extremely frustrated that we have not had the bandwidth to do a lot more of the "visible" things to date. Now we will be releasing SmartLink, which was a major development effort that builds on the server architecture we built over the last 4 years. I think you will start to see more frequent visible feature additions in upcoming releases. Hmm, that sounds like a forward looking statement that may get me in trouble again. ;>)

Gerald

Gerald-K5SDR · May 2017

Steve,

You do understand that charging for the software motivates us to create cool features that cause you to want the upgrade. It puts our interests in alignment.

By the way, there were many people who came to our booth in Dayton who initially were not interested in SmartLink and were blown away when they saw it. We were able to run any of a dozen stations across three countries from Maestro, iPad, and SmartSDR on a PC as if we were sitting at the station. We could launch a station and it was up in a few seconds. I think you might be surprised. You haven't seen anything like this before.

Note, we are committed to fixing the random hands as soon as we can recreate the problem here. We are also committed to resolving the DAX issue but we have to integrate new third party drivers to do that.

73,
Gerald

Peter K1PGV · May 2017

.Gerald noted: >Free software forever without new competitive >radios to sell is a going out of business strategy. True dat. It seems to me that there are a number of Flex users who want more and faster software evolution than funding development out of current radio sales can provide. I'm one of those. The people who are complaining about lack of feature refinement in V1 before the release of V2 may be some of those too. Sure, everyone has THEIR personal "killer" feature. But with significantly more software funding available, maybe Flex wouldn't have to make so many trade offs... they could do a LOT of these little individual "killer" features... you know? Make lots of folks happy? I know Gerald is proud of, and stands behind, the "no subscription fee" policy. I hope he knows his customer base better than I do. Because *I*would pay a subscription fee in a minute if that meant getting a more refined version of SSDR. So... could Flex maybe consider SOME way to increase available funding for software refinement over and above just current sales of radios and a rare major feature upgrade fee? I really think that's the road to increased user satisfaction. Peter K1PGV

W9TVX · May 2017

As a relatively new 6700 owner, I just wanted to say that it is absolutely fantastic to see such open and honest dialogue between the community and FlexRadio staff over issues that are passionate to all involved. I can only be optimistic about the future

Gerald-K5SDR · May 2017

Peter,

I wouldn't say I am proud of a "no subscription fee" policy. Some of our competition or their customers claim we have a subscription fee as a way of spinning a negative light on us. We hear it every day.

We want a mutually beneficial model. Those are the only ones that work. A subscription fee model would definitely speed software development - guaranteed. You can scale the development expense proportionately with the revenue stream.

How many people would get upset if we used that model instead of the major upgrade model?

73,
Gerald

Gerald-K5SDR · May 2017

@Steve, G1XOW

It reminds me that my F5000+PSDR did it so much better

FYI, I personally started development of PowerSDR(TM) (then called SDRConsole) using VB6 in 1999. I put 4 years of development in it as a hobby project before launching the company in 2003. Eric started a complete rewrite in C#.NET in 2004. Fourteen calendar years and many more man years of full time development were invested in PowerSDR by FlexRadio so that other companies could build on top of our work and use it to compete against us. PowerSDR was not built in a day. ;>)

Gerald

Bill -VA3WTB · May 2017

Gerald, I remember the road maps,,please don't do them again. I remember the mud slinging and name calling, terrible things said about you and staff, all because of being a couple weeks late. that was a very sad time for all.

KC9EI - Dave · May 2017

As one who is a working RV'r traveling around the country, SmartLink is exactly what I am looking for. Having done the RigExpert remote thing, and I'm not bashing it here, I'm anxious to move up. Way Up. Who knows... maybe one might show up in a compartment aboard the RV someday.

Bill -VA3WTB · May 2017

Well Ross, you will never see this kind of dialogue with any other radio company....

Bill -VA3WTB · May 2017

@ Steve
I am sorry for sounding frustrated with your comments, I need to keep reminding myself that you are like I am and many others. We don't know the reasons why Gerald and team do things, and why some things are not finished as many want, we are not in his shoes trying to keep a small business afloat. Or understanding the day to day problems with software development for radio use.
Standing from were I am it all looks simple.

Peter K1PGV · May 2017

Gerald, Thanks for taking the time to read and reply to my post. >You can scale the development expense >proportionately with the revenue stream. My point exactly. Recall I run a software company. We tried the model Flex currently uses. It didn't work for us. In talking with Howard KY6LA, it didn't work for his company either. Doesn't mean you can't make it work... different products, different industries. Just saying funding forward dev AND bug fixing out of current sales is a tough row to hoe. Of that, there can be no doubt. >How many people would get upset if we used that >model instead of the major upgrade model? Get upset? Or not buy the radio because of it? That's the $64,000 question, isn't it. :-) I'd easily pay $110/year (or $10/month) for faster software refinement. That's the cost of a streaming music service to people these days. Several people earlier this week said they'd be happy to pay monthly. One guy offered to pay $500 a year (OK, I don't know if he was serious). Buy a radio, get free upgrades and updates for a year. After that, pay the subscription fee and get updates (bug fixes, minor improvements) while you continue to pay the fee. Stop paying, you can continue to use what you have... just you get no updates. New software version comes out with major new features? Anyone can buy it... people paying the annual fee get a major discount (like 70% off). You still pay the maintenance fee. I wonder if we could run a poll somehow? Peter K1PGV

Reggie · May 2017

Here is the link to a free online poll maker...

https://www.poll-maker.com/

Ria · May 2017

Salvador,

I respect your opinion but I think your opinion on the elmers and Alpha team is pretty much dead wrong.

I will tell you why -

We have inside information of improvements that will be in the next release. But due to NDA we cannot disclose them. In any case I would never, out of respect for them, disclose something that Flex isn't ready to.

This is why sometimes we really don't sympathize with the endless complaining. Guess what? We complain about stuff too! Not just the bugs but also features. Flex may then decide to make an improvement. We test it and provide feedback. We find new problems. They fix it or decide to change it. And eventually after this cycle repeats enough we come up with something usable that ends up in the final product.

But then some on the community come with a vicious tone and choose to attack people and attack Flex. Some are just fed up of it. How is insulting people going to convince them to help you? I just usually put a giant deep WNB on such people and tune them out. I don't see constant criticism, attacks to be constructive at all.

Then there is the issue of new hardware having better capabilities than old hardware at a lower price point. That is just how it works in the tech world and I thought it was pretty well known that new hardware would be out and old hardware would lose value. I am frankly astonished by people who think that Flex should cease all hardware development just so that their radios can hold value. That makes no sense at all. Even my Icom Pro3 has been severely devalued by the Icom 7300 so if I sell it I get a small fraction of the money paid for it. That's just how it is. Electronic gear especially has this problem.

I also don't know of any radio manufacturer other than Flex who takes trade ins, even of their own equipment. Some dealers do but the prices they offer are mediocre. If you know of one, let me know. I realize this isn't available in Europe, so maybe that should be taken up with them rather than Flex. I believe that due to regulations and customs duties etc it is much easier for Flex to use dealers in Europe than sell direct and ship there. I know European hams tend to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to buying US made gear.

In the end I think we need to step back, be a bit more constructive and if you really want to make a decision it is your money. If you think Elecraft, Anan or Icom can do better for you, go ahead and buy from them. That's your choice, your money.

I will always help people here no matter what. But I do think that attacks on others are not really helping.

Ria

Jon_KF2E · May 2017

Gerald,

I have previously complained about SSDR not getting the same level of updates that Darin is doing with PSDR. If a subscription service would make that happen...sign me up!

Jon...kf2e

Ria · May 2017

Personally I am against a subscription service, at least not a monthly one. If I can pay a lifetime subscription fee I'd pay that instead. I just find subscription fees annoying. I have to deal with it for creative cloud now and a few times my CC bounced due to fraud and I was stuck with non-working software until the credit union could send me a new card. I also hate having to pay monthly for a radio that I purchased. For things like TiVo I bought lifetime service, one and done. If you're going subscription, I'd rather have that option available.

Ria · May 2017

BTW I really don't think it is "a large number" of people. I think it is a significant, but vocal minority. That's the vibe I get anyway.

Peter K1PGV · May 2017

But (just to be clear) unlike CC you get to use your copy of SSDR forever... even if you don't pay. The payment gets you access to updates. Peter K1PGV

Bill -VA3WTB · May 2017

Really though, the amount of updates that Flex had last year were not to bad,,about 12 of them.

Jon_KF2E · May 2017

Sure but how many were related to support for new hardware and contesting? I just want to get caught up on basic features and....yes, dare I say it...eye candy.

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