V3 and the Average Ham

Hi Joseph! I do not agree with your proposition that V3 is mainly for contesters, although I can certainly see its usage in big contest stations. I think the majority of usage will be ham clubs, families who have more than one ham or the ham who travels a bunch.  I am an alpha user and I use it more and more because I sit in my living room and play FT8 with my laptop and I don't have to waddle down to the shack and turn off SSDR from my shack computer (like I used to have to do every night because I forgot to shut it down)!

I may be missing some nuance in your post Joe, but one of the many great things about using a Flex radio is that you are looking directly at the CW waveform of some signal right there on your screen!  I just "mouse over" and one left click puts my receiver dead on the center of that signal.  I have my 6500 set for 500 Hz side tone and I keep the Receive EQ slider on 500 Hz with others mostly down; that is supposed to make APF work better (?) and it sure seems to.

I do the above steps every morning at 0630 during a CW net on 40 meters so it is a habit that is easier than falling off a log.  I also own the remarkable K3 transceiver and in fact have an entire "Elecraft Station" sitting here, both amps and the P3 too, as my Official Back Up Rig (HI HI).  The K3 has the CW Auto-Tune feature you wish that Flex would have--I gotta' tell you that I have found it annoying as **** and really pretty useless on the K3.

Been on the air for 61 years now.   Love my Flex 6500.  Not so happy about having to pay annual upgrade fee now, but what the **** it's worth it.

Joseph, you never know. Each main update has a center peace feature, this one coming is about multi client as the main event. There will be information coming out soon that outlines everything in this update and how we can all apply it to our station operating.

Here is an example, I have a couple elderly people use my radio each week a few hours using remote and Smart Link. The remote from a retirment home. When one of them are on my radio I sometimes wish I could use it as well when they are using my station. With Multi client, it would be possible for both of us to use my radio at the same time and never know each one of us are even there untill I see the radio transmit and I know it's not me pushing the PTT.

Keep in mind that V3 will live for about 2 years with many up dates over that time, about 5 per year. that is what they have been averaging. Many updates will likely have to do with multi client but there could be other features introduced as well.

But your not alone, many of us have put in idea request and they never saw the light of day. Heck even the CEO of Flex Radio has feature wants that fail to make it to the top. Even he gets voted down, lol Gerald said...

I too have wants and changes and I may never see them either, but what could I do?

Also keep in mind that Flex is not a hobby for employees, its their living. So they have to decide what is best for the company knowing that does not make everyone happy.

For short wave listening, may I suggest after finding a station you like, save it under memory channels. That way you can always click back to it when you want to.

Joe, I agree with you in that most Flex users don’t care about Multiflex in V3. Yes, they should have used that precious development time to clean up V2, especially the broken QSK operation, see “no fuss QSK” post for details. Shame! 73, Robert-KP4Y

Plus its not an annual mark release schedule so you are getting more than a year for the upgrade fee.

Bill Thank you!  Burt, I don't think I disrespected Joseph's opinion, but rather offered a solution to someone who does not speak for me.  When you bolster your opinion by saying "most hams" you usually have no clue as to what my opinion is, because you didn't asked, but rather made an assumption based on?? I am a biased Flex owner, a biased Icom  owner, a biased Kenwood owner, and a biased Yaesu owner, I purchased each of these products, but I don't assume to know what "most hams" think about my purchases, I am the only one that can voice "my opinion" about my equipment without asking first, what my opinion.  I think the horse is dead here!

Betting on a horse race, one has to pony up and in the end one and only one opinion is correct. Here multiple opinions may be correct depending in the use case. 

I don’t doubt Multiflex has some value, but should it have been a priority? How many of you praising FRS prioritization of Multiflex know that our FRS radios have one of the worst latency performance in the market. How about improving the DSP algorithms to reduce latency? Also, like someone mentioned, how about improving noise reduction features including adding the beam steering capacity to diversity, like in the Flex 5000? And, my favority, how about fixing the QSK implementation? You see it’s just a matter of priorities? It seems line FRS just went for the low haging fruit.


BTW, please save me the speech about selling my Flex if I feel so disappointed with FRS. I think we can be more mature than that and last time I looked, we were still living in a capatilist/democratic society. Good bless the USA...Thus, cool aid drinker, I spent my money however I want and critize companies not meeting my expectation however I like!


73,

Robert-KP4Y

I created band edge markers by making permanent TNF's. My display looks like this.

Very much look forward to Multiflex .. Can't wait to upgrade and will happily spend my 250 USD.  And yes, that's about where it will be in my country with added VAT and lousy exchange rate.

Oh my goodness I hope the bands improve soon looks to me like we all have too much idle time(.)(.)