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My recent thread

Steve G1XOW
Steve G1XOW Member ✭✭
edited June 2020 in New Ideas
Guys,
The recent thread (that I started couple of days ago) has proven beyond all doubt that there are many unhappy customers with regards to V2 before some of the basics for V1 are in place. I am sure that the massive amount of noise and displeasure within that thread has been read over and over again by those at FRS.

Tim says they have been listening and will act accordingly. So now let’s give them a chance to respond with direct actions, not just words and promises for the future. Let’s see what they come up with to set the situation of unfinished v1 straight. Below are a few helicopter observations from that thread:-

-Most users want FRS to succeed, and like the hardware platform greatly.

-Most will happily pay for new feature (benefits) in V2 as they become available.

-The cost of V2 is not really an issue for people.

-An annual subscription is not unreasonable, provided that they deliver against promises made – for that I would expect an annual roadmap of deliverables in exchange for my subscription.

-FRS are still a young and overly eager business. They have to evolve a better more joined-up approach to product release strategies and marketing to their new, and more importantly their existing user base. Some focus groups will help a lot.

-FRS cannot afford the cost of unhappy customers, or to get a bad reputation. Remember MFJ? It takes many years to remove dirty stains from your shorts!


I believe that deep down we all want FRS to be successful, and constructive criticism is a good thing for all. Those that label us as “the same old complainers” are wrong. Complainers without passion would only tell the rest of the world how **** things were. They certainly wouldn’t hang around for years helping FRS make happier customers and better products for us all.

Remember we talk, a lot, we talk to friends, we make recommendations at clubs and DX conventions, QRZ, Twitter etc. We offer insider awareness to prospective new buyers. We are (potentially) their best sales people and their hardest critics. FRS knows this. The ball is now firmly in their court.

73 and QRT de Steve G1XOW
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Comments

  • IZ0CBB
    IZ0CBB Member
    edited May 2017
    Time has been granted and even so, but they have used it badly and do new products not to improve those sold.
  • Clay N9IO
    Clay N9IO Member ✭✭✭
    edited August 2019
    Sorry, I mean this respectfully but this sounds like round 2.
    Your point was made.
  • Steve G1XOW
    Steve G1XOW Member ✭✭
    edited May 2020
    Clay, that was not my intention at all. After 60+ contributions it just needed a summary and a reconcillation of emerging "sides".

    Guys, respectfully, please please let the dust settle now. Hold back on the flack until we get to see some action from FRS.

    Thanks,
  • Ken Hansen
    Ken Hansen Member ✭✭
    edited May 2017
    As a new 'Flexer' I don't know the history (and am not asking for a review of it), but it seems to me that, reasonably, Flex is introducing a new set of features and called it V2 of the software, people ASSUME (or don't trust) that any development will continue on V1 of the software - only time will tell if that's true. It would be nice to see a public roadmap document, for both V1 and V2, but I can understand Flex's reluctance to put one out that was specific enough to appease most critics/supporters. I suspect the issue may be that until V2 was announced, many/most flexers just assumed that everything ever discussed to that point was intended to be included in V1, and to find out that isn't the case has left them understandably upset. In hindsight, maybe Flex could have done a better job laying the groundwork for V2 software earlier, explaining that some new features enhancements would require paid software upgrades. There also was likely some confusion between discussion of future product 'possibilities' and promises of future product 'features', only more disciplined communication in the future can change that. No amount of review/discussion will change the past, and only time will tell if things are improving at Flex with regard to communicating future plans. Anyway, that's my take on it.
  • EA4GLI
    EA4GLI Member ✭✭✭
    edited May 2017
    I really appreciate this post Gerald. Thank you.
  • Steve Gw0gei
    Steve Gw0gei Member ✭✭
    edited April 2019
    Good summary Steve Thanks for the further comms Gerald. As someone who stayed up late here in Europe last Thursday hoping to hear about new features in 2.0 and a timed maintenance release to fix the radio hang up issue, the lack of official communication, other than the brochure release, was a disappointment. However, the 6600 and 6400 look very competitive, and as someone who still loves his 6300, even with the random hang ups and dax corruption, after contesting with it for last four years on hf and vhf, I am pleased flex is going to give icom a run for their money. As the previous owner of ic7400 and pro 3 I know the 6300 is a better dx and contesting radio, and icom never admitted to their screen, pa, or ssb drive issues. They lost me as a customer who regularly used to upgrade radios every few years. I understand that you have to react to the competition, and a detailed roadmap is difficult to continue with. Hope the change of strategy with the m radio fronts builds the user base and enables you to deliver enough new features in 2.1 2.2 or 2.3 to tempt me up upgrade. Wan and demountable windows is probably not enough to tempt me, but better anf and nb along with sorting out the hang up issue and other bugs will see me upgrading the 6300 and buying the non m 6600 for contesting. Better integration of my antenna genius plus and the new power genius may well make me upgrade sooner as my priorities are all Contest orientated. 73 Steve gw0gei / gw9j
  • Steve G1XOW
    Steve G1XOW Member ✭✭
    edited May 2017

    Hey Gerald,

    Thanks very much for what is clearly a heartfelt reply. You don’t need to apologise. Despite all the flack on here and the irritations most of us would not actually leap to an inferior radio.

    The F6k and SSDR combo are presently a pleasure vs pain scenario for me. The radio is truly world-leading and for the most part SSDR is useable (acceptable), but do not underestimate the power from constant niggles that eat away day after day “constant knocking breaks the stone”.

    It is great that you are ambitious and looking forward to even greater things, but please remember that some apparently trivial stuff will make people very unhappy if neglected. Each time I need to mess around to get a reverse split, or need to adjust the audio passband up from 100Hz, these albeit trivial things serve to remind me that it still lacks elegance and refinement. It reminds me that my F5000+PSDR did it so much better, and even the IC-7300 costing quarter of the price does it better. If this were a year after product release then we’d label it as “work in progress”, expecting it to get better soon. So 4 years later it really needs to be super-swish and highly polished, befitting of a top-flight radio.

    Regarding roadmaps: I feel that this is essential if you want to maintain confidence from the userbase. Dropping it from the radar was a bad thing. You need to share it via a two-way dialogue (focus groups) and be confident of getting our buy-in at an early stage, not just springing new stuff out of R&D and hoping it gets acceptance.

    I say don’t worry about the public nature of a roadmap. FRS is poised to go places that even the big 3 wouldn’t try to follow. Those businesses don’t like the constant innovation model because it doesn’t fit large scale production lines.  Getting early adopter buy-in from the userbase (aka your sales force) is much more valuable than the small risk of 2nd tier emulators. Set the benchmarks high and let the competition eat your dust. If you want to be the best then **** them and get on with it. Be proud and don’t look back wondering if they are playing catch-up. Above all else, be inclusive with your userbase and they will support your onward business development and success because that is a win-win for all parties.

    73 de Steve G1XOW

  • Gerald-K5SDR
    Gerald-K5SDR FlexRadio Employee ✭✭
    edited May 2017
    Steve, my experience with the public road map was awful when we had to change it for very valid technical or business reasons that we were not always able to communicate publicly.  I swore I would never do it again with hams.  It was just about like what has happened over the last couple of days.  It works much better in the commercial world where I spent most of my career.  

    Our team is extremely frustrated that we have not had the bandwidth to do a lot more of the "visible" things to date.  Now we will be releasing SmartLink, which was a major development effort that builds on the server architecture we built over the last 4 years.  I think you will start to see more frequent visible feature additions in upcoming releases.  Hmm, that sounds like a forward looking statement that may get me in trouble again.  ;>)

    Gerald
  • Gerald-K5SDR
    Gerald-K5SDR FlexRadio Employee ✭✭
    edited May 2017
    Steve,

    You do understand that charging for the software motivates us to create cool features that cause you to want the upgrade.  It puts our interests in alignment.  

    By the way, there were many people who came to our booth in Dayton who initially were not interested in SmartLink and were blown away when they saw it.  We were able to run any of a dozen stations across three countries from Maestro, iPad, and SmartSDR on a PC as if we were sitting at the station.  We could launch a station and it was up in a few seconds.  I think you might be surprised.  You haven't seen anything like this before.

    Note, we are committed to fixing the random hands as soon as we can recreate the problem here.  We are also committed to resolving the DAX issue but we have to integrate new third party drivers to do that.

    73,
    Gerald
  • Peter K1PGV
    Peter K1PGV Member ✭✭✭
    edited May 2017
    .Gerald noted: >Free software forever without new competitive >radios to sell is a going out of business strategy. True dat. It seems to me that there are a number of Flex users who want more and faster software evolution than funding development out of current radio sales can provide. I'm one of those. The people who are complaining about lack of feature refinement in V1 before the release of V2 may be some of those too. Sure, everyone has THEIR personal "killer" feature. But with significantly more software funding available, maybe Flex wouldn't have to make so many trade offs... they could do a LOT of these little individual "killer" features... you know? Make lots of folks happy? I know Gerald is proud of, and stands behind, the "no subscription fee" policy. I hope he knows his customer base better than I do. Because *I*would pay a subscription fee in a minute if that meant getting a more refined version of SSDR. So... could Flex maybe consider SOME way to increase available funding for software refinement over and above just current sales of radios and a rare major feature upgrade fee? I really think that's the road to increased user satisfaction. Peter K1PGV
  • Gerald-K5SDR
    Gerald-K5SDR FlexRadio Employee ✭✭
    edited May 2017
    Peter,

    I wouldn't say I am proud of a "no subscription fee" policy.  Some of our competition or their customers claim we have a subscription fee as a way of spinning a negative light on us.  We hear it every day.

    We want a mutually beneficial model.  Those are the only ones that work.  A subscription fee model would definitely speed software development - guaranteed.  You can scale the development expense proportionately with the revenue stream.

    How many people would get upset if we used that model instead of the major upgrade model?  

    73,
    Gerald
  • Gerald-K5SDR
    Gerald-K5SDR FlexRadio Employee ✭✭
    edited May 2017
    @Steve, G1XOW
    It reminds me that my F5000+PSDR did it so much better
    FYI, I personally started development of PowerSDR(TM) (then called SDRConsole) using VB6 in 1999.  I put 4 years of development in it as a hobby project before launching the company in 2003.  Eric started a complete rewrite in C#.NET in 2004.  Fourteen calendar years and many more man years of full time development were invested in PowerSDR by FlexRadio so that other companies could build on top of our work and use it to compete against us.  PowerSDR was not built in a day.  ;>)

    Gerald
  • Bill -VA3WTB
    Bill -VA3WTB Member ✭✭✭
    edited May 2017
    Gerald, I remember the road maps,,please don't do them again. I remember the mud slinging and name calling, terrible things said about you and staff, all because of being a couple weeks late. that was a very sad time for all.
  • KC9EI - Dave
    KC9EI - Dave Member ✭✭
    edited May 2017
    As one who is a working RV'r traveling around the country, SmartLink is exactly what I am looking for. Having done the RigExpert remote thing, and I'm not bashing it here, I'm anxious to move up. Way Up. Who knows... maybe one might show up in a compartment aboard the RV someday. :)
  • Bill -VA3WTB
    Bill -VA3WTB Member ✭✭✭
    edited February 2018
    Well Ross, you will never see this kind of dialogue with any other radio company....
  • Bill -VA3WTB
    Bill -VA3WTB Member ✭✭✭
    edited May 2017
    @ Steve
    I am sorry for sounding frustrated with your comments, I need to keep reminding myself that you are like I am and many others. We don't know the reasons why Gerald and team do things, and why some things are not finished as many want,  we are not in his shoes trying to keep a small business afloat. Or understanding the day to day problems with software development for radio use.
    Standing from were I am it all looks simple.
  • Peter K1PGV
    Peter K1PGV Member ✭✭✭
    edited May 2017
    Gerald, Thanks for taking the time to read and reply to my post. >You can scale the development expense >proportionately with the revenue stream. My point exactly. Recall I run a software company. We tried the model Flex currently uses. It didn't work for us. In talking with Howard KY6LA, it didn't work for his company either. Doesn't mean you can't make it work... different products, different industries. Just saying funding forward dev AND bug fixing out of current sales is a tough row to hoe. Of that, there can be no doubt. >How many people would get upset if we used that >model instead of the major upgrade model? Get upset? Or not buy the radio because of it? That's the $64,000 question, isn't it. :-) I'd easily pay $110/year (or $10/month) for faster software refinement. That's the cost of a streaming music service to people these days. Several people earlier this week said they'd be happy to pay monthly. One guy offered to pay $500 a year (OK, I don't know if he was serious). Buy a radio, get free upgrades and updates for a year. After that, pay the subscription fee and get updates (bug fixes, minor improvements) while you continue to pay the fee. Stop paying, you can continue to use what you have... just you get no updates. New software version comes out with major new features? Anyone can buy it... people paying the annual fee get a major discount (like 70% off). You still pay the maintenance fee. I wonder if we could run a poll somehow? Peter K1PGV
  • Reggie
    Reggie Member ✭✭
    edited May 2017

    Here is the link to a free online poll maker...

    https://www.poll-maker.com/


  • Ria
    Ria Member ✭✭✭
    edited May 2017
    Salvador,

    I respect your opinion but I think your opinion on the elmers and Alpha team is pretty much dead wrong.

    I will tell you why - 

    We have inside information of improvements that will be in the next release. But due to NDA we cannot disclose them. In any case I would never, out of respect for them, disclose something that Flex isn't ready to. 

    This is why sometimes we really don't sympathize with the endless complaining. Guess what? We complain about stuff too! Not just the bugs but also features. Flex may then decide to make an improvement. We test it and provide feedback. We find new problems. They fix it or decide to change it. And eventually after this cycle repeats enough we come up with something usable that ends up in the final product.

    But then some on the community come with a vicious tone and choose to attack people and attack Flex. Some are just fed up of it. How is insulting people going to convince them to help you? I just usually put a giant deep WNB on such people and tune them out. I don't see constant criticism, attacks to be constructive at all. 

    Then there is the issue of new hardware having better capabilities than old hardware at a lower price point. That is just how it works in the tech world and I thought it was pretty well known that new hardware would be out and old hardware would lose value. I am frankly astonished by people who think that Flex should cease all hardware development just so that their radios can hold value. That makes no sense at all.  Even my Icom Pro3 has been severely devalued by the Icom 7300 so if I sell it I get a small fraction of the money paid for it. That's just how it is. Electronic gear especially has this problem.

    I also don't know of any radio manufacturer other than Flex who takes trade ins, even of their own equipment. Some dealers do but the prices they offer are mediocre. If you know of one, let me know. I realize this isn't available in Europe, so maybe that should be taken up with them rather than Flex. I believe that due to regulations and customs duties etc it is much easier for Flex to use dealers in Europe than sell direct and ship there. I know European hams tend to always get the short end of the stick when it comes to buying US made gear. 

    In the end I think we need to step back, be a bit more constructive and if you really want to make a decision it is your money. If you think Elecraft, Anan or Icom can do better for you, go ahead and buy from them. That's your choice, your money.

    I will always help people here no matter what. But I do think that attacks on others are not really helping.

    Ria
  • Jon_KF2E
    Jon_KF2E Member ✭✭
    edited July 2018
    Gerald,

    I have previously complained about SSDR not getting the same level of updates that Darin is doing with PSDR. If a subscription service would make that happen...sign me up!

    Jon...kf2e
  • Ria
    Ria Member ✭✭✭
    edited June 2020
    Personally I am against a subscription service, at least not a monthly one. If I can pay a lifetime subscription fee I'd pay that instead. I just find subscription fees annoying. I have to deal with it for creative cloud now and a few times my CC bounced due to fraud and I was stuck with non-working software until the credit union could send me a new card. I also hate having to pay monthly for a radio that I purchased. For things like TiVo I bought lifetime service, one and done. If you're going subscription, I'd rather have that option available. 
  • Ria
    Ria Member ✭✭✭
    edited May 2017
    BTW I really don't think it is "a large number" of people. I think it is a significant, but vocal minority. That's the vibe I get anyway. 
  • Peter K1PGV
    Peter K1PGV Member ✭✭✭
    edited May 2017
    But (just to be clear) unlike CC you get to use your copy of SSDR forever... even if you don't pay. The payment gets you access to updates. Peter K1PGV
  • Bill -VA3WTB
    Bill -VA3WTB Member ✭✭✭
    edited February 2018
    Really though, the amount of updates that Flex had last year were not to bad,,about 12 of them.
  • Jon_KF2E
    Jon_KF2E Member ✭✭
    edited April 2019
    Sure but how many were related to support for new hardware and contesting? I just want to get caught up on basic features and....yes, dare I say it...eye candy.


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