SDR Transceivers

[Buzzweiser]

Hello all. I've been looking at some of the new SDR Transceiver kits coming out on the market. There's various ones, some look cheap but others look pretty decent. Was just wondering if anyone has built one yet or even tried. I did get the SDR receiver kit from SoftRock and it works really well. It's not that difficult of a build and was actually a lot of fun for my son and I to do. Just curious of anyone's opinion. I think the FlexRadio 6700 looks like a nice unit but I'm going to look around and see what else is out there.

[231]

I'm no guru on SDR's, but I plan on springing for a Flex 6300 when they get the bugs worked out. Right now there is a newer firmware/software revision Flex is due to release soon (already 9 months late) that fixes a couple of irritating issues. One of them being no FM comes on the rigs. And on the upper part of 10m and 6m, FM is pretty commonly used. This comes from close friends who run the 6300 & 6700's by the way. There are a couple of other minor things too...but overall, I'm a believer in the latest Flex family and will have one down the road.

I had even considered getting my feet wet with a Flex 3000 or 5000A as they are really coming down in price...but I don't care of the over processed audio of the older Flex models. The 6000 series is a completely different radio to those as I'm sure you already know...and their audio just sounds allot more natural (in spite of what the scopes say). To me transmit audio is everything...and while the older Flex radios work well, there are few that sound outstanding to me. Either they are mushy and over processed or just never dialed in right for the mic and voice of the operator. I've not heard that on the 6000 family radios though (yet).

There are a couple of others too...couple of buddies of mine run the SoftRock and are real happy with them. Another friend of mine runs an Italian SDR (can't remember the name) that is really good too...but he's had several problems with it requiring a trip back to the factory. Not a cheap trip each time and takes months.

Should be interesting to see the responses you get.

231

[Slim Pickins]

I talked to a guy running an ANAN200-D a few weeks ago. It looks like a pretty nice product as well and it had great TX audio. I am looking at the 6500. I like the idea of being able to plug balanced audio directly in and out so I bypassed the 6300 all together.

[Buzzweiser]

Thanks for the response guys. I think it will be a neat project to do. Just have to figure out which one I want to go with. There's another one out there I just heard about called Genesis, going to look that up tonight. I'm hoping to find one that will also let me use it on 11meters just because I haven't heard one yet and maybe I'll be the first in my area.......lol. With the weather getting warmer I can move back out to the garage soon and start up my projects. I'm sure the wife will be glad to get the space back in the house for the summer too.....

[MDYoungblood]

There is one called "Panadapter" that is interesting, looks like they are mainly used on Yeasu FT models and I saw one Icom, checking out the YouTube's and I like the waterfall and they are said to be very wide banded.

3's

Greg