[Elecraft] Flex Radio - is it real?

[Don Melcher]

Yes - I have one (actually two) and it is quite real - if not quite ready
for prime-time yet - but close. They just released a new Band Pass filter
board that has a more rugged final and gives some additional functions. That
should give it a full 1 watt output as before it was pretty anemic and fussy
about what it was running into. It should also drive my Tokyo HyPower amp
that I use with my FT817 and a Z11 tuner.

The receiver is VERY impressive and will only get better - I have one in
their enclosure and will install the QRO amp (100 watts) when available. The
other is just the board stack and I am looking at putting it into a smaller
enclosure for portable QRP work. I was just looking into different
soundcards this morning - I am using USB Creative Labs Exitgy on my laptop
and Turtle Beach Santa Cruz in my desktop - but was noticing the Creative
Audigy 2 PCI has a better SNR by about 10 db. Since I just built a new
desktop machine and want to add a second sound card, I may try a Audigy.

That is one hot button - not any sound card will work - basically, in
addition to good specs - the mixer has to have separate mic and line input
controls as it switches between the two on tx & rx - i.e.: the Audigy 2 USB
has great specs - but doesn't have separate mic and line inputs - so it
won't work without some external hardware (guess how I know?).

Of course the other issue is enough horsepower in the PC - nothing REAL
exotic - minimum spec is 800 MHz - but it seems like around 1.2 GHz is more
realistic. Oh - and a USB Printer port won't work either - I believe you
need a native LPT port.

Don
W6ZO