New FLEX radios?????

VE4SW makes a good point. We've recently learned FRS figures 10 years is the production life span of their amateur transceivers, due to parts availability, or for whatever reason. Technology moves on so this is understandable.

As we know, production on the 6300, 6500, and 6700 models have ended, but FRS states they will continue to service these models as long as parts remain available. This is great, although at the same time, for owners of these older radios, knowing repair parts may or may not be available, and unlike other equipment brands, there's no other repair source available; it's disturbing.

The 6400 and 6600 have already been in production for approximately 6 years so I suppose it's safe to assume these newer models will experience the same fate in approximately 4 years.

I'm hoping my current Flex rig, which is out of production, ends up holding up, or at least repair parts remain available, until the next generation Flex rigs are announced.

While I understand why FRS doesn't want to discuss their future projects for fear they may be hounded by some over production dates, I don't see the harm in at least hinting FRS has plans to continue future amateur platforms. While some may say it's perfectly normal for amateur radio manufacturers to end production on a model after 10 years or so, I agree. But for companies like Yaesu and ICOM it is pretty much a given that these companies will come out with new models. As for Flex, which seems to talk more about their commercial side than their amateur side, I wonder.

I read somewhere very recently, may have been on the ARRL WEB site that Flex is part of the committee along with many other manufactories to come up with the best way to implement Enhanced SSB TX "pre distortion" correction.

So I think I would wager that Flex is still planning on implementing it some day, Flex is probably one of the very early company's to talk about this but must be harder to implement than originally thought because it was part of the features for the future when I bought my 6700 in 2013.

My guess is that it WILL be a big deal and selling point in the version 4.0 someday when it comes out and NOT kind of lay there update like Multilink has been and break CW thing.

Flex seems to be late to the party so to say, BUT I think this is the BIG Differences between Open Agriculture software and Proprietary software being able to build off what others have done before you and not constrained to a bunch of rules has huge advantages.

Flex was a BIG contributor to PowerSDR (that ran Flex1000, 5000, 3000, and 1500) that OTHERS have built from including K9ES and Thetis PowerSDR versions.