where do beginners go to start with no knowledge of sdr

Hello PropGuy... We all start somewhere... I noticed a couple posts where the gang responded look into this dongle or that dongle... Thats great if you are not yet licensed, but my clock turns over 53 years on the radio next month. My money is very limited but I expect my radio to be unlimited... I'm not necessarily going to suggest you do this, but I had sold my get back on the air in our new house rig a simple FT450D, as I lost my IC-7800 POS in the divorce. The poor 450 couldn't handle a 1khz spacing on DX-peditions CW which was very very sad performance. I was thinking what do I do next? AND what's all this talk about SDR? I'm not one for 5W radios but I picked up a very nice condition Flex 1500 to see what I thought about that. I learned all about virtual audio cables and power SDR... and though I was weak and puny, I still worked a lot of stations. worked a dozen new states on 6m with a dipole stretched across the shack and made my first FT8 QSO's. Getting the radio to work was hard, but getting it to work on FT8 was even harder... I did get it all done and it worked. I had a decent computer as the 1500 uses the computer as the signal processor. But I got a feel for it. Also, the filter bandwidths were better than the 450D... NOTE this radio was a proof of concept for me... I knew I wanted the power of SDR... A few months later I bought a 6500 and still have it and use it daily. It had been used on a mac version and came with its original disc for v1 Smart SDR... Version one isn't very smart trust me. I opted for the version 3 license and made a step back to version 2 for a while when the Flex SDR server was acting up... I had to learn a lot about proper configuration and know some nice tricks like starting your com ports at 10 and going up from there instead of using available lower ports other software wants to grab. If you feel you're a real noob, find a local SmartSDR guy and have him talk you through the setup. After you've redone it 20-25 times like I have, I can do it in my sleep... You will have the least amount of trouble with the Smart SDR and 6K series radios than you will interlacing the zillions of addition pieces of software into the radio loop. I use absolutely the least amount of additional programs as I can. Erika DD

Hi again, Propguy… I've sent in rigs a couple of times, on different rigs and both for problems with the transmitter/power amp board. Flex was very responsive about keeping me informed about what was happening but I have to admit, this was while the 6500 and 6700 were still 'in production'.

Unfortunately now, with your/our 6700 now 'out of production' Flex may be having difficulty sourcing a replacement LED display or trying to retrofit one from one of the other 'shop' intakes :-) My display is also starting to show signs of missing pixels so I'm not sure what will happen when/if it fails.

In any case, you can always use a Help Desk ticket to inquire as to the status of your repair, but with these older rigs, patience is the key.