SO Happy to be Back to a FlexRadio

Peter K1PGV

Hi!

I've been away from ham radio for a number of years. Family issues, plus a move to a very antenna restricted community had me pretty much off the air for five years. Before moving house, I sold my Flex-6500 and my SPE amp. Those were sad days.

Shortly after moving, I found that I really didn't like being off the air... so I picked-up an IC-7300, which I occasionally connected to a portable antenna that I'd temporarily put out in the side yard. It wasn't fun. Putting up and taking down the antenna whenever I wanted to operate for sure wasn't fun. But most frustrating was the fact that I had almost never used a radio with actual, physical, knobs and buttons. Using the IC-7300 took a lot of adjustment. Since getting my ham license in 2007 I had pretty much exclusively used a Flex radio (starting with the SDR-1000). But after using the IC-7300 for a while, I did eventually come to appreciate being able to change bands and frequencies and filters using physical knobs as opposed to always having to use a mouse. I also kinda dug not having one of my screens being occupied by SSDR (though, to be honest, the panadapter on the IC-7300 never really fully satisfied me).

To make a long story short, in December 2023 I decided I had to get back on the air "by any means necessary"... so I got a Ciro Mazzoni stealth loop and hid it in the woods behind my house. And, because I never did really love my IC-7300 I picked up a used Flex-6400M.

Now I've got nice sized, fully adjustable, panafall display, awesome receive sensitivity, AND knobs and buttons.

And, despite plenty of remaining restrictions (like, I can't operate when the loop when it's buried in snow... go figure 😉) I'm now back on the air and loving it.

The point of this post definitely is not "IC-7300 bad, Flex-6400M good" -- They're two very different radios, at two very different price points. And, no... I'm not posting a question or an issue for the community. Hope that's OK.

My only point is that ham life is sooo much better when you love your radio. And that's it's really, really, nice to be back, after an extended absence.

Hope to work a bunch you newer Flex owners soon,

Peter, K1PGV

Trucker

Peter, it's great to hear you are back on the air with a Flex. I found I like the M model radios as it gives me the best of both worlds. Knobs only when I want and SmartSDR on my pc other times. I also like that I can compare my attempts at programming to SmartSDR on the radio at the same time.

Welcome back!

James

WD5GWY

Peter K1PGV

Hi James!

I have to say that you're at least in part to "blame" for my return to Flex. It was exchanging email with you recently that made me think about my previous Flex experience.

So... THANKS to YOU James. It's nice to be back.

Trucker

Kind of like the commercial where a guy is asking people what they do for a living. After a couple of interviews, he asks this one shady looking character what his name was and what did he do for a living. He responds, Arnold and I am a bad influence! The interviewer says, really?

Arnold says yep,wanna go get loaded???

Now you know who Arnold really was!

Wanna go talk on a Flex radio?