Terrible design feature on 6000 series radios ...

W7NGA

Touch, brush, breathe on the front panel switch on/off switch and the radio shuts down? Yeah, I know ... keep your fingers off the switch. However, it happens and in the middle of a QSO your elbow brushes against the switch when you adjust something else and you watch the light flash and the system die. Poor guy on the other end wondering what has happened to you ... maybe demand a more concerted effort before shutting down?

W7NGA

Trucker

Honestly, I have never encountered a problem with the power switch being in the way. Much less brushing it with my elbow. How do you have the radio positioned for that to happen? Maybe, it's time to rethink the layout of your station if this is something that happens often.

James

WD5GWY

W7NGA

Doesn't happen often .. but it is still a poor design in my opinion.

km8v

I'm not a huge fan of the button on the front. I've managed to somehow like, double-press it when turning it on, which sends the radio into some weird mode. I agree it could be more of a deliberate button.

Trucker

The front panel button for power is a soft start button. It simply indicates to a chip in the radio that it has been pressed. Either a short press or long press depending on the state ( off or on) of the radio at the time the button is pressed. That initiates a start up procedure for the radio and if there is a front panel on the radio, a delayed start so the main processors in the radio can initialize in the proper sequence. Once that happens,the front panel is started.

On shutdown, the reverse sequence happens. A hard power switch would not give the proper timing for start up and shutdown for a 6000 series radio. Soft start has been used in a lot of Amateur radios over the years. Even my old Icom 706 MKIIG had it.

I guess the real solution is to pay attention to what you are doing near the radio and it's power switch.

James

WD5GWY

Neil D Friedman N3DF

Wow, the “terrible design” features that Flex gets hit up for!

W7NGA

Wow, the “terrible design” features that Flex gets hit up for

I think it is "well deserved" and you do not ... I'm fine with that.

I guess the real solution is to pay attention to what you are doing near the radio and it's power switch

I have well over $100k invested in my electronics research lab here. No issues, soft-start or not. I pay attention, but I do use my radio for many applications where I need access to moving it to gain access to the rear panel. Please understand that I might use my equipment differently than you, and that having such a sensitive power button can be problematic. I'd like to see a longer dwell time (.5-1s) where exiting requires more of a commitment.

Trucker

I can appreciate your use case. And you are probably right, my usage may differ from yours. I tend to not move the radio when powered on. I don't know if the chip that actually controls the power on and off sequence and timing can be changed. Most likely that is controlled further downstream in the firmware. My radio experienced a problem with the Persistence Database in such a way that the shutdown time wasn't long enough for the settings to be properly saved. So, sometimes ( more often than not) the last band, frequency and mode used wouldn't be saved on shutdown. And my radio would come up on the Flex default settings. ( 14.100 Mhz, CW mode and AGC-T, volume and other settings way out of whack) Finally, with version 3.5.8 , that problem has been fixed. I think if they extended the timing very much, they would start getting complaints about longer start times. So, I guess there is no easy answer to your particular situation.

James

WD5GWY

W7NGA

Funny .. and no more click-bait I promise. I am upgrading my ranking to 'poor design' feature. 😊

In the processing of debugging problems with my new TGXL I managed to somehow brush the front-panel button and power down prematurely several times. Lots of cable swapping, oscilloscope probing, and perhaps .. an overindulgence of a fine French Burgundy (I just returned from three months in Paris).

Au revoir

W7NGA