Odd band switching behavior in v.4.01

I have seen a similar if not the same behavior. When switching bands or modes which I normally do by using pre-saved profiles for each band and mode. Many time (not all the time) the radio will disconnect. I have not submitted a ticket for it yet as I am trying to determine if it was a bad install or maybe something corrupted in my profiles. So far I have tried a factory reset on V4. Reverting back several versions earlier and then reimporting the profiles. The upgrading back to V4. These have not fixed the issue yet. So now I am doing a factory reset while on V4 and then I will not import my profile but rather start setting them up from scratch on V4. Hopefully, that will correct it. If not then I will also submit a help desk ticket.

For some, the only way to totally resolve these random type issues, and ensure a 100% clean install is to do a complete factory reset (hold power button until turns WHITE), then go through standard install procedures (and follow instructions completely in chapter 9) with of course a COLD reboot (power down, turn off power supply, disconnect power poles for 30+ secs) before operating radio. And finally, rebuild your profiles from scratch. This is truly the only way to ensure a completely 100% clean radio firmware base. Do you have to go through to this extent? No, but if you want total 100% assurance, then Yes. The key is a total factory reset and COLD reboots. This does not include any Windows client issues that may or may not happen. That is a whole other sequence to ensure clean client install (which on Windows is never actually totally clean), that is beyond the scope of this post. Or use SmartSDR for Mac which does not have these issues on client side. Dan WA1QZX

Ok, a little more testing. Basically, all of Saturday was spent testing to narrow down the issue. This includes factory resetting and cold booting at least a dozen times to start from a clean slate. I need to do a few more tests today and will then submit a ticket. I have the following hardware network setup. Flex 6600M, TGXL SO2R, PGXL, Antenna Genius 2x8, Unifi Dream Machine, 10G Aggregation Switch, and all Unifi equipment, CAT 8 LAN cables, all equipment, including LAN rack grounded to an 8ft ground rod. Windows 11 Pro on an Intel Core 9 13900HK with 64GB.

Before the upgrade to V4 I would see a disconnect very randomly. Maybe once a week. I leave the equipment on 24x7. My Network statistics do not indicate any issue. For example, right now they show 5 green bars and dropped 5 out of 4025900 packets.

Now with v4 when switching band/modes, the Flex 6600M disconnects from SmartSDR somewhat randomly but frequently. Sometimes after one or two changes, and other times after five or six changes. The only way to get a reliable connection after this happens is to cold-boot the radio with a complete removal of DC.

I won't go through all the testing I did to try to narrow down the issue, but it includes reverting back to older versions, cold reboots, factory resets, and clean installs of V4 with and without old profiles. I also tested with a different Windows computer and using the iPad with SmartiOS.

Right at this point, it seems I have narrowed my issue down to some kind of timing issue when switching bands/modes that seems to be caused by the PGXL. As you can imagine, with the equipment stack I have a lot of Flex devices need to change settings for each band/mode, and if I take the PGXL out of the stack, all band/mode changes work reliably without disconnects, even with the old profiles loaded. All the Flex equipment is connected to the same switch, VLAN, and I even configured them to have Priority QOS.

Today I will try setting up the Flex equipment and PC wired directly to the router and also on a separate router/network by themselves. Even thou the Unfi Network Diagnostics do not indicate any issue with network traffic, these two tests should further rule it out as a cause.

I am now wondering if the V4 changes implement additional delays or workload within the system that the PGXL cannot reliably handle. Also, all Flex equipment is on the most current releases of firmware.

One new wrinkle I just discovered is that it seems the TGXL fw 1.2.17, which has been available for 6 months (and the version I am using) and is shown on the 4O3A website as the latest version, is not listed on the Flex website. Flex only lists fw 1.2.11 on their website, but fw 1.2.17 is needed to use the TGXL SmartSDR integration that was release a while ago. In the community, some other users indicate they had some disconnect issues with fw 1.2.17 on SmartSDR v3 so they downgraded back to fw 1.2.11. So I guess today I will check if the PGXL timing issue is really because of the fw 1.2.17 in the TGXL by downgrading it back to 1.2.11.

I had a similar problem. On my desktop PC, Mac, and iOS everything worked fine under v4.0.1. On two different Win10 laptops, I'd get a similar behavior when trying to change bands. What I ultimately had to do was a factory reset and then import my old profiles but exclude the "preferences" from the import. Then I had to go into each band on each of my 5 devices and reset everything under the 'Display' button along with the AGC-T. What a pain! The profile information lives entirely within the radio. There's no excuse for an version upgrade to wipe out profile/settings like this, yet it's always the help desk's go-to response, "do a factor reset and see if it still happens without your profiles, if it doesn't, recreate your profiles". This is not an acceptable support procedure. Flex needs to fix the root cause of these issues.

I have the same problem. I have 3 computers and two 6600 radios on the same local network. When I upgraded to 4.01 everything way fine. I could use any computer with any radio.

After a Microsoft Windows 11 update on one of the computers I can’t change bands without breaking the connection to the radio. Other 2 computers with fine with either radio. Two of the computers are on the Ethernet cable and same switch. One works other does not.

I have done a cold boot but doesn’t appear to be the radio. Have uninstalled Flex SmartSDR versions and reinstalled 4.01. No change in behavior. It happens without using any global profile. Just manually setting pan adapters and slices.
When 4.01 first installed it worked fine for a week or so. I did notice that 4.01 had a couple time it crashed when not around. Last 3.10.15 was solid as a rock as Flex is 24/7.

That the radio blinks two reds multiple times until the radio restarts itself may be a clue. Computer message is that Lost connection to the radio.

Latency is 1 ms.

73

Bill W9JJB

The Factory Reset fixes the band-switching crash when connecting to the Radio over the LAN network ( in my case), when using SmartLink, random crashes on connection or when switching bands.

Looking forward to the patch release by the lexRadio development team (Tested on Flex-6400)