Flexradio Flex-3000 review

Software Defined Radio

- a look at the Flex-3000.

Brian Morgan VK7RR

Do you remember your rst foray into radio? I
certainly remember mine. My boyhood was spent
building crystal sets, then graduating to a one valve
regenerative receiver, then two valves and then,
one day, a two transistor radio built on a masonite
board. I thought all my Christmases had come at
once with its performance so much better than the
valve radios.

The next fty plus years have kept me interested in the
ever changing challenges of amateur radio. Yes, I have
progressed through surplus military receivers, 10 valve
home built receivers with the then innovative product
detectors which made copying SSB so much easier, to

Photo 1: Brian VK7RR at his portable operating desk, the

laptop in the foreground and the SDR Flex-3000 on the right.

Yaesu, Icom and Kenwood transceivers, all the while

Photo 3: A photo of the complete station, with the 10 + 10 watt external audio amplier (referred to in the text) sitting

16 AMATEUR RADIO APRIL 2010

on top of the Flex-3000.

being distracted by building or repairing repeaters or
some home brew project or another.

Three years ago I was exposed to the new concept of a
software dened radio, one which deed almost all of
the then accepted conventions and did not even have
a tuning knob. I was intrigued and could not wait to
purchase the Flex-5000 radio and then, early in 2009, the
Flex-3000.

This is not intended to be a technical article but a
practical description of a new concept in transceivers.

My shack still has a Yaesu FT-1000MP Mark 5 sitting on
the bench but it no longer even has an antenna attached
to it, so taken have I been with the Flex radio.

The 5000 has become my home station and the 3000 is
compact enough to be taken portable as you can see.
And yes, that is snow outside the window.

The Flex-3000 and my laptop both sit inside a traditional
laptop bag. It is slightly bigger and a little heavier than
the laptop, weighing in at four kgs.

The radio puts out 100 watts on all HF bands and six
metres. The power can be varied manually for each
band, by a very accurate drive control but can also be
adjusted by software, so as to drive linear ampliers
and so on, at different drive levels. It does not have

Photo 4: A discrete photograph of the radio on a reective

surface.

Photo 5: A view of one of the hardships the author has to

endure when playing amateur radio in the highlands of

Tasmania.

AMATEUR RADIO APRIL 2010 17