6000 First Year of Operation

I went QRV with my 6000 on 14 Feb 18. It was ordered at Dayton in May 2017. In the first 81 days of operation it had two HW failures requiring the unit's return to Austin.  Good customer service.  Since that time, it has been rock solid.  In the first year I made 9,774 QSOs.

I am a CW operator, who is a DXer (when the bands are open), a rag chewer, and a casual contester. I join one SSB net a week. I run v2.3.9. I have a decent antenna system for 160m- 6m.  My 6600 interfaced easily with my Expert 2k-fa.  I sold an IC-7700 to buy the 6600. I am not interested in remote ops to answer recent poll requests

I only got irritated one time with comments on this circuit. During the discussion on v3, one EU contester made the statement that a non-contester shouldn't waste his money on a Flex. That resulted in a few under breathe comments best summed up in English word 'Pshaw'.  Why shouldn't a simple cw rag chewer enjoy the best S/N ratio that he can get, diversity reception, a tunable AGC-T so that he can basically take cw on FM and a multi slice pan adapter to watch the bands with. A RX equalizer that gives him another audio filter. The expandable pan adapter makes a DX pile a breeze. My IC-7700 only showed me a big blob on its pan adapter. While contest ergometics is important to him, the above is important to me.

I won the CWops 2018 Rag Chew Award with this 6600.

This is my first Flex product and I truly have enjoyed it.  I look forward to v2.5. Many thanks to WS7M for helping out a Flex newbie.

Bill, N5IR
CWops, HSC, BUG, SKCC