Maestro arrived yesterday and I spend the evening playing radio from the couch. What a sweet unit. Very smooth and seamless operation. Even the wife was impressed that I was in the living room. (However, I didn't take Steve Hicks suggestion that I could take the maestro into the bedroom!)
As posted earlier, I ordered October 28, got the invoice last week and wondered if it would arrive in time for Field Day. Well it did. Just reading the "tea leaves", I believe Tim posted that the backlog a week or so ago, was down to 4-5 weeks and it appears FRS is rapidly closing that backlog out. Congrats FRS.
From my one night testing, FRS got it right. Thank you for taking the necessary time to do this properly.
So, the Flex is going to Field Day, for the invasion. It's an invasion, as up to this year, it's been all K3, 3 station setup.
I offered today, to set up the Flex as all of these guys have never used one (and many even seen one, except maybe at a hamcation). They are excited.
I didn't offer last year, with a computer interface. The addition of the Maestro, makes the operations much more familiar to these guys, and a better "invasion".
We've got a portable tower and beam, plus some wire antennas, plus the necessary band filters to operate multi stations. I'll be hooking to that some of the time. However I'm also taking my MFJ 1788 mag loop.
The unique element here, is you can visually see where the loop in tuned to, on the Pan Adaptor. Tuning the loop on a Flex is simply unique to the Flex. Many of the condo dwellers and HOA restricted guys are interested in that. I'm also interested if the loop, as a high Q antenna, provides enough separation, that coupled with the Flex's ability to deal with adjacent signals, we can forgo the band filters?
It's going to be fun, to expose the guys to this.
For those us you looking forward to your Maestro arrival, it was worth the wait.
Brent W8XG