The Ham Radio two point zero audio podcast rip. Thank you for downloading and listening to this podcast. So basically what I do is I take all the audio clips out of my videos and upload them to spreaker, and then from there they're spread out to iTunes and SoundCloud and now Amazon Audible as well. But I want to welcome you and thank you for joining the audio section of
this series on Ham Radio. I hope you enjoy it, and I would appreciate you leaving us a comment or a review on whatever podcast service you're listening from. Thank you in seventy three. I hope you enjoy it, and we are live. Good afternoon. It's twelve oh one. I made it. I made It's twelve o one, Him Radio Him Radio two point o lunchtime live stream. So yeah, I was talking to my Brother's a big mac head, so he would get along with Mike probably, but I was
talking to my brother. I'm just gonna tell you the short story real quick. Talking to my brother the other day, and he got into job a year or two ago, and they're making all the computers or windows, and he likes to gripe about windows, of course, which I don't really blame him quite frankly. But leaving that aside from the moment he was talking about how Windows crashes all the time. I'm like, what do you talk like? Literally, I have four machines, including my laptop here at home,
and I never get any crashes. Well, guess what happened ten minutes ago. My whole system froze. The whole system froze. Uh yeah, I had a hard reboot reset and uh obs is our restreams doing something weird where my chat overlay is not working? I don't know. So yeah, I should keep my mouth shut about how Windows is. I guess because he was blaming teams Microsoft Teams for making a system crash, and I'm like, well, Teams is not an operating system. Well it's made by Microsoft though.
Yeah, but it sucks, so stop using it. But that's what they use in their in their work, all right, So little right exactly. Yeah, they can't hear you right now, Michael. But yes, he says, don't confuse the symptom with the root cause, which is totally correct. So special shout out to people in green text in the chat. I saw Andy Calley in there. He was there pretty early A zero a MS in there a C three AK, Phil W zero, hp K seven t
RD. You guys are YouTube channel supporters, and I really appreciate you guys supporting the channel and being here today. So we got a pretty cool show lined up for you. I did a really short video at Hampkation in February and posted that the week after I got back about Flex Radio amplifiers and tuner geniuses, power genius, tuner genius, and ten genius. All of the geniuses except for the Apple Store genius. They don't sell that crud. Okay,
all the geniuses being so are being sold at Flex Radio now. So and this whole show was Michael's idea. So I'm gonna bring you guys in and on mutu and good afternoon. How are you guys doing. We're good yourself. I got the system back up in time, so I can't complain, you know. So. And you you were munching on all those potato chips at the same time, right, doritos, doritos, Yeah, so very true. You were slamming Windows. I'll be honest. I run Windows
on my remote at my remote station. It's sort of the core tool for the remote and in running a remote since when did I start this two thousand and five. It's never been a problem. It's been rock solid ever since. Honestly, it's yeah, it's not it's it's not a it's it's a pretty great I mean ever since Windows ten, Windows Windows uh, what was the one before not Vista Vista was crude? Windows seven. I think the Windows seven was pretty good. Windows eight, I never really cared for Windows
ten has been pretty solid. I haven't gone to I haven't gone to eleven yet. Um, generally, I waited about a year after Microsoft releases a new version of Windows to upgrade, long before they sunset the old version. But still, Steve, are you an early adopter just by design? Yeah? Are you really? Wow? Okay, well that's cool. So okay, But then, but then again, when I left the military in two thousand and nine, m the network a network on the ship was still Windows
NT Yeah. Yeah, so you know, and my laptop I'm on right now here in the conference room is Windows eleven. Okay, well it's working, so can't can't complain with that. But yeah, I have, I have, I have very few problems with my systems. I built this computer here just just for streaming, because I wanted something beefy with a lot of memory and CPU power for streaming, and it's been rock solid for pretty much the whole time. And I don't know that I'm ready to blame Windows.
I think it was I think it was either OBS or Restream that actually crashed the system just now. I don't think it was Windows. But anyway, moving on, we will move on. We're not here to talk about Windows today. So Flex Radio is uh, yeah, as everything except the radios I believe is now being sold at gigaparts, and I could pull that up
here in just a minute. But why don't one of you guys kind of start from the beginning and tell us how that sponsorship came or that that partnership came about, and then we can kind of dive into whatever is on the agenda today. Oh I didn't get the agenda. Okay, we'll talk about us. We're just hey, I'm very shoot from the hip man. That's all right. We just talked about whatever funny we were in a meeting yesterday Steve and I and our associated manager. So what are you talking about?
We don't know. We'll figure it out, yeah, you know. But anyway, so I still find it surprising, but maybe I shouldn't. You know. We go to a ham FESTUS Flex Radio and people come up and say who are you? And never heard of us? But then they're not on social media, they probably don't get any magazines and they just operate ham
radio all day. So we a long time ago decided that we needed to expand our horizons, and especially since the four oh three A products, which amazing set of products they build in HF Radio, from filters to pretty much everything you need to go to. Their website also supports not only the Flex Radio and the Flex Radio ecosystem, which means everything communicates over a computer land which makes it verily throw a bunch of buzzwords that I'm really sorry, but
scalable. It grows, It keeps Kyle busy, you know, so he can interface everything to everything and note red and so those the products, the Power Genius and the tuner Genius Excel also work with OM Radio. So we don't deal that much radio. So we met with I guess Laurie or my VP met with getting parts not I guess. A while ago was after the Huntsville ham Fast, and it took a while to get in place and we thought, geez, why don't we make it available in their store because they're
such a great online presence and a great amazing marketing program. Um and just to show there's more to it, right and hum and there. I don't know, Steve, We're still building it, right. It's taking some time to get it out there, and it's a whole new world and uh type of thing for that. And we do have customers that you know, run their p Power Genus XL amplifier on their seventy six ten or there's seventy three hundred and the same thing for the tuner. But it takes a bit more
plug and play. It's not quite as plug and play ash, so it's a bit more plug and understand and make it workish Steve any want to add as well? I was, I was, you know, not to cut you off there at the end there. I would definitely agree with the plug
and it is. It is in a sense plug and play, but plug and learned with with everything that I did prior to Orlando learning it, collaborating with you know, Michael Andy and a few others with flex it works, and you know, one of my concerns from the beginning was taking a Flex and I'm putting it to a one on one D and I'm going to put it on a TS five ninety and I'm gonna put it on seventy six ten. I had no issues, and the little hurdles that I had are very
easy hurdles to overcome. And do we still have do we still have things to figure out and work on? Absolutely? M Yeah, we um uh. It's no different than taking any radio and making your mf J amplifier track or you know what. You you know, you bought a CAT five hundred from Ela Craft and you wanted to work with your cam with TS five ninety. It's the same hurdle, you know. It's just usually a couple of wires. And I have a kPa five hundred that I put on the back
of my Flex sixty four hundred. Yeah, and it works well. And we keep that Flex sixty four hundred down in Costa Rica. So the last time we went down there, I packed in my UH in my check bag. I think I packed my kPa five hundred and packed it really well and it was fine. I took it down there and plugged it into the Buddy Hecks XPEAM and we did five hundred fifty one. So that's a great little amplifier. It really is that amplifier is that is that is a plug and
play amplifier. It takes one cable and that's it and it just it just it just goes so um. But yeah, it's it's it's I've never done it the other way around. Because so Jason at Skaggins, he tells me at Hampkation that I need a power genius sitting right here behind me and all my videos, and I said, yes, yes, side, do let me know the tracking number when you send that, because now you guys have
those, Steve. So that's Jason's fault. I'm not blaming you for that one, Steve, because Skagan says, I think I think one of the guys it wasn't Robbie, but I think one of the other guys says, why didn't Jason have a power gee? He's on the desk behind him, and it's like, bro, you know, I'm gonna just let that question float, but but I would love to have one. One of these days
I might be able to grab right. Yeah. Well, well, I mean I bought my I bought I bought my flex radio and I bought the Flex radio for Costa Rica, which the guys that we all share the spot down there, they they pitched in and they so we ended up splitting out about four four or five ways. Um so, and then of course I bought that Flex radio and Laurie made me a pretty good deal on that Flex radio that I gave away on my hundred K live stream, which was January
of last year. And the lady who won that was at our local ham fest last weekend, so we got for a bit, so that's pretty cool. She showed me a picture of it and everything, so um yeah, yeah, definitely getting getting some good use out of the Flex radio. But uh yeah, I haven't haven't hooked up the I don't have I don't have an antenna up at the house right now that would handle of legal lim and
amplifier. But um but if I had a legal limit amplifier that I could plug up and I can, I can solve the antenna issue pretty quickly, so you know, that's that's kind of the thing there. But yeah, I mean I know somebody who sells I know somebody who sells intendants. Yeah, I've got it. Yeah yeah, yeah, this yeah insert DX Commander joke right here. So, um, which I actually I actually just got those of you who took advantage of the d X Commander um Easter special with
the expeditions that Colin was selling. I bought three of them. Insert second DX Commander joke right here. But we're gonna give two of them away on the live stream probably next month, probably in May, perhaps like the weekend before dating something like that. We're gonna do a giveaway. We're gonna give away two brand new d EX Commander expeditions. So more to come on that
later. Just a little side note there. So cool, Okay, So, um, is there any is there any plans to carry the full line of Flex radios at gigabarts or or I mean, why did this why did the decision come about to just carry the genius equipment? Um, there's no plans to bring in the Flex. But you know that's today, right Do you never know how the crystal ball gets polished? Uh type of thing?
And if i'm you know, we've always considered it as well, um, and as always looking for ways to get the radio in front of different people. So that's certainly not an impossible discussion. Baby steps we've got. I was telling um Daniel yesterday, it's amazing the heat we get from you know, you you can't get this out fast enough. Why did you bring them
in? You know? It was like, Um, but you know, with all about eleven thousand plus radios in the field, you tend to you'll have a few, a few guys and the it was a good opinion. Called the person. We had a nice long chat. He goes, oh, I understand what you're doing now, and so maybe long term, but maybe tomorrow. You know, it's like somebody will wake up and say, yeah, you need to get some product here in the shelf. And we were in DVA three CW and I were down at their store, their twenty
fifth anniversaries special. Is that what? It was? Just radio day? Yeah, a couple of weeks, just a couple of weeks ago. Then yeah, and Stephen, his lovely wife, took us out for dinner. We had a great time and we went through the Signals Museum, which I said we were going to mention as well. We mostly give them a plug
because this is a big deal. This is just not a museum of radios, right, Steve correct The Signals Museum originally was Museum of Information Explosion came to be a brain child two years ago and that brain child now is quite amazing. Um, there's a flex correct me if I'm wrong, U sixty four hundred. We've got, we've got we have a club station. But the whole Signals Museum is the history of not only Ham Radio, but radio
teletype photography. It's it's a work in progress. It's probably three quarters of the way there. It's there's a lot of final touches in place right now. And you know, I know Mike and Andy when they came for you know, Ham Radio Day, they stopped by and they visit some of the curators and dosins as you know the common word here with the Space and Rocket
Center dosins, and so they got to see everything. And I think one of the big things about this museum is once it is open, and we're gonna have an open house Hunts moll Ham Fest weekend, probably that Friday before maybe Thursday for the earlier earlier arrivals, since Saturday and Sunday, you're going to be crazy and let everybody see what the history of technology because there's there's
there's so much going on the way everything is interfaced. I know at one point you were talking about you take your cell phone, you scan a QR code and it plays a video about what you're looking at. M But the automation, like the the it's interactive. If you want to play with a telephone switchboard, you know Lily Thom's Tomlin style with the plug ins. Uh, there was a whole CW uh you know, interactive station with monitors that pop up and animated graphics. I mean this is you know, it was
blown away. It's just not sort of a trivial. Here's a sign and here's you know, here's what a CW key works like. It's it's hands on and what it's probably be as you said, eighty percent down. I've never seen so many cathedral radios in one place, you know, all too and they were amazing and MIT and I guess Mark finds them everywhere, right.
And I was gonna say, Mark between the museum has home, and I hear he has a lake side home probably about an hour away, so he has plenty of items available to bring in, you know, swap things out from the museum with other things. And last night I didn't get to go to the meeting last night. But last night they restored I think a litho lithograph. I know they restored. It seems like every month they were restoring something and making it better. There is there are so many tubes.
They actually have their own tech center. They really it is real joke. I mean they can fix it. If they can't fix it, there's something wrong, and you know, I don't want to give him that shout out and all of a sudden people are like, can you fix my old antique? You know, you know, but right there is you know, there's a Tesla coil. There, there is a spark gap. I don't know if they're going to put that on the floor, but there is one RFI city Wow. Yeah. They asked him if we wanted to stay in repair
radios because there's a whole repair center in the back. You should be able to smell the oil of a model twenty eight KSR teletype screaming away. Wow. Right. You know they hadn't gotten to that part right, that was sort of in the back. But so we were we were at our our local our small local hamfests that happened last weekend, and we talked about this on my Sunday live stream. But I don't think you guys caught that. So if you look at the zoom window right now, you can see one
of the fines I found. I did not buy this, but I got a I got a small crash course from the guy who had this on his table. This is a KWM two Collins and it's one of I think he said it was the first, but if not, it was one of the first transceiver that they ever built in colin circa nineteen sixty two to four ish, I think. And he had a set of calling um uh, I can't remember one tens or one of ones or whatever it was that the transmitter
receiver. He had a set of those two and those he said those were from the fifties. But yeah, the vintage radio thing is fun to to read the history on and to see how this all this stuff came about and see how they did things back in the day and how you know, some of the stuff that exists today. Why why does why is this knob over here? Or why is this called this? This term? Where did this term come from? A great example is a term pl tone? What's a
pl tone? You don't see the term pel tone in any of the study guys for Technician, General and Extra. But it's an old Motorola Team term that means private line, which is what we call CTCSS. It's the same thing. It's not actually private, that's kind of what they called it back then. But but stuff like that I like to see. I'd like to see things like that that are M vintage and especially this one. Look. I mean, it looked brand spank and new. It looked like that he
had done a fantastic restore job on it. Even on the inside it was a little bit dusty, but it looked like it it was very well taken care of. So um So your museum if it has stuff like that, I'm already interested in it. So I was already thinking about coming to Huntsville maybe a little bit, maybe a day earlier than I did last year. So we're gonna have to see what the timing looks like for all that. Okay, but I was at it is. Yeah, yeah, you're gonna
are you planning on are you going? Well, first of all, you're going to Dayton, Michael. I will be at Dayton this year, okay, for sure, for sure? Okay, which reminds me I need to write my presentation on remote operating, So we'll take the shameless plug. And I do have part of one of the foreign presentations, and back in January
I had to write the schedule for it or the description of it. But we really want to focus on I want to focus on new users, you know, the not not the geeky guys that already know every thing because they're
painting on the butt to argue with just like me. Yeah. No, I want to focus on the new years and give them some some steps they can follow to getting into remote operating, being whether it's down in your shack or just in a different room or in the backyard, or maybe taking a device to shut in so he can get on the air on eighty meters and describe all the meads he's using, you know. Oh sorry, well there you go. Okay, then yeah, that shot should be a lot of
fun, good, good good. Yeah. That that's always a fun show. We were just talking about it the other day. And of course hunts Field's right around the corner after that, well a couple of months after that, but not too long. Don't don't tell Kyle, but I want him to do some stuff too. So he was in the chat earlier. I
think he's probably still out there. He's still there, yeah, but yeah, he's probably at work right now because we're we're actually heading to a Overland show in Springfield, Missouri, tomorrow and Shane and I are going to meet Kyle there. We're gonna hang out at that show this weekend. So I kind of represent Ham Radio. I'm doing a presentation that says how to get started in Ham Radio, which I did at the same show last year and had a dozen or so people there, so that was a fun thing.
So that's what Eric was doing at QSO today as well. Right he wanted to more focus on the new stuff. And we're going to be at IDXCC and Vasilia, California this weekend as well. Oh okay, okay, good, Yeah, I've heard of that. I don't know anything about it, really, but I have heard of that show. So okay, good, awesome. Well, um, how's um? I guess how's the what of the I mean, I don't want you to give me. I'm not asking
you to give me sales numbers or anything. But how has the response been Steve to Flex Radio being there, have you seen people come by and ask for it or online. Have you seen much questions sales? Whatever I mean about sales are when it comes to the tuner genius and the antenna genius, I'm impressed. Of course, you know, people above me may have different
answers to that. The you know, like I just went to the club breakfast this morning and we were talking about the amp, you know, and I gave them what I you know, my own personal review, and I said, my only con for the amp is just the SOPs because I'm a kPa five hundred owner. Also, yeah, so my only thing is just the size of the amp. It doesn't fit my atmosphere in the shack. Yeah, that's my only thing, that is it. You know, I plugged it up. You know, I wasn't told necessarily break it. Yeah,
but I tried. I did. I did, and I was impressed right out the box. You know. I tried to avoid you know, looking at the startup guide how two things and one on one D fifteen hundred solid to the one sixty vertical seventy six ten same thing, TS five ninety, same thing. And I was doing RF sensing. So okay, so let me stop you there, because I I don't know the answer to this question. But I think it would it's um, I think it's good info.
So for the power genius says, I understand it. You know, you plug your Flex radio the sixty four hundred that you guys can probably see, that's right there, So you plug the sixty four hundred into the Ethernet port. Okay. Also that it's plugged into an antenna into the power right now, obviously, and I could go in, well, I could take that inside and plug it into my switch in my in my office upstairs, if I had a power genius down here plugged into my antenna, and then
those two will see each other across the network. How does that work with a seventy six ten or a you know, an Icon radio or something, or a Yasu radio? Whatnot? Does the does the RF sent or I'm sorry, does the network matching up still work? The same? Good question? Um? No, you have to do the old the other school, which is um where you have to send banned data or frequency data directly from
the radio into the amplifier. Okay. And that's always been a challenge when you have multiple devices because generally you then make the computer the key part to communicating. So before you do anything. You get a boot up the computer, um and um. But in a one on one just like your kPa five hundred, you have to have one cable or you could run the kPa five hundred in RF sense mode and it just works. You just put up a single RCA push to talk cable which we don't use on a on a
flex radio. So that works really well. And kay uh you know I have I have cool ways you know where we can take the amplifier and get it off your bench, Steven. You can extend it over you know, a couple of geeky ways to get it a little further way or even at
the base of the tower type of thing. Right, But you still want it's a nice amp you want to sitting in front of you, and just I'm gonna take a minute because there's one feature I want to talk about with the amp if you don't mind, sure, no, no, go ahead, you we um And it's the harmonic dummy load And what the heck is that? And I remember when I told it to Steve, he went, oh my god, I never heard of this before. Let me let me
interrupt your Steve's never heard of that before. Because Steve don't watch my channel, not because you've mentioned this on this channel, So shame on Steve. But this is a cool feature. Go ahead, Michael, I just had to throw that into rad Steve from minute. Okay, let him defend himself. Oh that's that's okay. When he said when he asked to borrow the amp now right, yeah, yeah, I just shot myself. Yeah, then I'll just shot myself the foot, okay, all right, all right,
go aheads a harmonic dummyload. So you remember you remember from Ham school. If you amplify a radio signal like say fourteen mega hurts and you make it more or fourteen mega hurts more volts, you also get more harmonics, right, so you get a big signal at twenty eight and then the third, fourth, fifth harmonic. So and legally we can't allow that that energy to flow out the antenna, right, so we capture it with a very
simple or no amplifier. Manufacturers capture it with a very simple device called a low pass filter. So it lets fourteen megaherts through, and somewhere about halfway in between, there's this big filter that prevents all this energy from coming out. And essentially it's a bad SWR is what it sees because it's and it reflects. So if you could measure, if you could re measure that reflected
wave at twenty eight megahert sealed ceds actually fairly big. So in every every other amplifier hits, the low pass filter goes nope, not making it. The antennant bounces back and it goes right back to the lmdos, which can cause bad IMD intermodulation distortion, and it can corrupt how how clean your signal sounds. So credit four O three A with this design part of the clean
Signal initiative that we're starting to go down that whole path. We don't want that reflected energy to go back into the lmdos because it's going to make our signals sound worse. So they actually add another filter, a high pass filter that grabs that energy coming backward and deflects it over to a dummy load and
turns it into heat. Now I didn't think it was a big deal, and I didn't think it was that much heat, But there's a four hundred wat dummyload in that radio and it gets hot from just capturing the reflected energy and it's not doing anything wrong in fact, it's doing everything right. And this is why the power Genius XL has some of the best IMD numbers out
there, and it's from this technology design. Of course, this all adds to the cost, but you get a cleaner amplifier, and you know, the amplifier also supports two two OEM radios at the same time, meaning that you could be actually listening on forty meters while transmitting on eighty. Now generally only contesters do that in s O two R mode, but it's just it's part of the amplifier. Can you okay, so two OEM radios, So can you not have an icon and a flex radio at the same time?
Yeah, oh you can. Okay, okay, I thought you meant two flex radios, but okay, you could do. No, you could do like a sixty six hundred, which is like two radios, yeah, the whole talk on the spectral capture unit, right, or you could have a sixty four hundred or you know, one radio dedicated to one half and the other radio. You know, you're five ninety, which is a great HF radio for the money by the way, um, yes, very good contest radio for the money on the other half and you know, you gotta work
out a few tricks, but yeah, it works. Cool, Okay, I remember why I told Steve and his guys there and they were like, oh, I've never heard of this before, right, this harmonic dummy load and it's it's a feature. It is a cool feature. I yeah, and we did. I couldn't tell you which episode it was, but Michael has been on the show three, four or five times in a while, and yeah, yeah, yeah, but we have talked about that for and I thought it was a cool fee you're back then, so yeah, that's
definitely worth bringing up again. Good. Um, So Steve, have you tried the what do you think about the uh? Well kind of a loaded question. What do you think about the tuner genius? Because the tuner genius? Uh because to me now, and I'd like to hear what you have to say about this also, Michael, I mean having a tuner and the tunor genius is not it's not cheap, it's it's it's a few bucks.
And having a tuner genius just means that your antenna is not resonant, basically or having having an Aintenna tuner, meaning it means that your antenna is not resonant. So if you have a hex beam or a triband or something like this, then you should already have a resonant. You have a step yr which adjusts itself obviously, then you should you already have a resonant antenna.
So is there a reason to have a tuner genius if you're using a resonant antenna and I think you can hook up like what six or eight different antennas to the thing. Not really, Now, the tutor question is a good question. I'm just going to speak in tuners in general. I'm not a tuner guy because my old fart, my old elmer's long since passed away, said what do you need a tuner for? Fix a pagan antenna? Use
it right, you know. And so tuners just your intenna system starts at the connector you put in the back of the radio, right, and you're supposed to, you know. We were all taught to match impedances as best you can all the way through. So but the world's gotten generally lazy and said, well if it tunes, I'm great, And well, sure it tunes. The radio sees a great SWR, which is highly overrated. Doesn't mean your antenna is radiating very well, and you'll radiate, you'll get some
signal out, but you can do better. And yeah, so the Tuner Genius is good to tend to one. I'm going to pass it to Steve because you've used it your first impressions. I'm biased obviously, and I have a stepper antenna, So I use my Tuner Genius, but I have it in bypass mode just so I can use it as my watmeter. Oh okay, the Stepford which is really handy. Sorry overkilled, but go ahead.
Yeah. Well, and what I was going, you know, I don't have a contest setup, which we're thinking maybe you know version two of living here in Alabama, so you know, the only resonant intendant I do have is my Mosley Cel thirty three that right now is only ten feet off the ground because I can't put it. Can't put a tower up on the water table in the backyard. Is horrible. So for I'll use the seventy six
ten in is as my example. When I went to use the tuner, I'm like, okay, I can wire it up with our little interface kit that we offer. Great, I have to put it in am okay, put it in am Press tune. Puts an AM by the way just to get twenty one so out because that's what the tuner wants. It was just an easy way to do it. Okay, So you know, put do do the AM trick and it's not a bust on any other product we offer, Harry Giggle parts a lot quicker than the LDG, you know at one
thousand. Okay, I have never opened up a palstar box here. I don't get them back. So to me, if I don't get them back in returns, they must work. That's a good thing. Yeah, okay, you know, I'm not going to bash the three letter company because someday they work, someday they don't. But yeah, yeah, the tuner worked, and it was a very quick you know, with my one sixty vertical, I've got it set right now for eighteen forty ft eight one sixty.
So during the one sixty contest, that's when I really got to play with it, and I was able to go up to nineteen twenty park myself there zip zip within less than three seconds and it had no issues. Great, So that's what I used it. And even when I moved ten ksees it was a very quick. Zip zip. It wasn't right like others. Yeah, I've I've heard that about the tuner Genius, that it's incredibly fast.
So that's good. Even when and even when I went back to let's say nineteen twenty or went to nineteen forty nineteen fifty to chase somewhat, I call him the Jersey Boys, where when I was still living up there, it right to it, click, click, done. There wasn't no all you know, I'm going to have that little one second click and then it goes up. No, it was milliseconds. Wow. Okay, Tunior, you asked what in Tennis. I didn't answer the question, Tunor. Genie.
It comes as in the s O two R model, which pairs beautifully with the power Genius for single operator two radio, which of course pairs beautifully with you know, a sixty six hundred or two sixty four hundred or two AM
radios. Right, there's only one in ten a part. And that's when you really if you're building that sort of station, that's where you really want the intended genius as well, because you have eight antennas that you can share among those two gotchas, and there's also a tuner Genius, which is a one by three meaning one RF porting and you've got an antenna switch on the back for three antennas, which is pretty typical for most most urban operators,
right. Not many get past three, you know, hf antennas. Some do, right, So how do you switch that? Is it emmanual switch or is it you do that in software? If it's tracking, it'll do it. You assign it when you set it up and say, hey this is this is eighty forty and this is my tribe, right, But I mean like, like, how how are you switching those? You said it
had three outputs, So how do you choose which one is it? Is that something you can do in smartest dr that um, But there's also you can send it banned data from the radio so the radio knows so when you go to say six meters, the radio will send the six meter cat commanded. See this is where this is where we it gets a little more, a little more cable to have both the tuner Genius and the antenna Genius working
at the same time. So we've got some solutions we're working on. We don't have all the equipment to go test everything, but you know, the math does they say, The math says it should work just fine by by splitting RS two thirty two parts. And there's many if you know, if you know how to do this, you don't even need to listen to me
because you already know what to do. But as a user, if you don't know what serial RS two thirty data is and how it works and how you make it multi I don't know multi cliented, then there's a bit more bits you got to throw at it type of thing. It's not complicated if you understand the technology, which is a retty typical question. It's part of the reason that I have, you know, I have this talk called the Death of the RS two thirty two parts because I think it's you've heard it
right, It's you've heard a little limiting right. Is we get more and more integrated in any hamshack And you know, in my case, you can look behind me. All my hamshack stuff now in the shelf behind me, and this is now just really a desk with the mouse and then a little bit of stuff on it. Is it is the antenna genius weather proof?
Is it made to be mount outside? No, outside's fine, but you need to come up with your own weatherproofcase, okay, which isn't hard today, right, No, I'm just yeah, I'm just I mean, because a lot of guys use those. Uh well, MFJ makes one, but there's a couple of other companies that make them. Also. That's just one one one coax coming out of the shack, and six or eight intenas you know, vertical horizonal whatever to even even including two meters if you have a
transverter. Even heath Kept made those, right yeah, yeah, so, but but those are typically you want those mounted outdoors so that you don't have six or eight or ten coaxes coming into the shack. You just have one coming out of the shack, and then it controls the antenna switch on the
outside. So that's what I was wondering. If or you can get really carried away and put a little shack at the base of the tower, run a lane cable to it, and put all the radios out there, and guess what, You've actually significantly improved your station because you've gotten rid of feedline losses m which is what I do in my remote right even when I go to the cottage where my remote is, I have to use my rote remote remotely because it's two hundred feet away. Okay, that's easy to fix things
because I have to watch cross field. But you know, and and CAT five is a lot cheaper than lmr FO. You know, yes, UV resistant Cat five at that it's easy to get. That would be a good idea. But I usually whatever crap I have lying around, and then I said, oh see, I place it next summer. And then it's like five years later, right, and it's still working. We'll see that the sun in Texas would kill it the summer. The summers and Texas would kill
it. If it's not UV resistant, it might fast, it might last a couple of years. But of course I have the I have the canine dog problem as well. So I got three dogs in the backyard and they like to chew on things. So Basco sauce, Yeah, yeah, I could do that make your signal really hot? So all right? Cool? Uh so okay, so tunor genius we answered that? So in tenna genius is I think you said it was eight output. It's a two by eight. We actually also have a I don't know, Steve, if you know
this, we actually have some one by eights as well. Which means one in and eight out, which is it's a little younger brother. We've got those in Stocker in Texas. So yeah, okay, Ranco's team at four or three a I've done. You know, their stuff is not inexpensive, but it's really good, good, good, Okay, okay, cool? So so what else? Those? Those are the three items that the tunor genius and tenner genus and power genus. Is that the three items that you
carry, Steve, Yes, that's the current genius profile we have. Yeah, okay, that's a whole bunch of other Ham Radio stuff. Yeah, yeah, true computer stuff. Okay, that was you know, I plugged the computer. You know, because Mike and Andy when they came for Ham Radio Day, you know, they were right as soon as you come in the door, and you know, Jason, you've been to the store several times. Their table was right as soon as they came in the door on
the right hand side, second door in right right. The first thing that they said is this is a computer. This is a computer store with amateur radio in the back. Corn. Absolutely, they were very happy. And that you know when somebody that has never been to the store says you have computers Okay, Yes, we are a technology superstore. We're also a technology town. Oh we still have our flavor of ham radio and makers. And arguably, by the way, the computer today is fifty percent of our Hamshock,
if not more. In some cases. It's a beautiful mix a lot of a lot of times. That is true, Yes, very true. So so okay, I'm looking at this antenna genius on the Giga Parts website right now. So this is the eight by two. So so you've got you've got, well, I can switch the I can switch the views. Everybody sees what I'm looking at here, you've got them. It looks like RCA or composite type cables on the top there. Yeah, I can't really tell what that is. That's the green port in the center. I think
is probably power and probably I think those are the dip switches. And then okay, okay, there are other connectors. It will take, it will take BCD band data. Okay, first we're switching. There will be a land connector or power connector, or the dB nine's are or do the idnsities or for your your BCD inputs. Okay, okay, but you could you could, you could run um but you could run this at the base of your tower and just connect an ethernet from it to your hamshack and control everything
pretty much in the flex ecostructure. Yeah, in the non flex you may you know again, you may call Kyle. I love picking on Kyle. You may you may use Node red to drive some information to it, you know, if you're getting to that level of integration type of thing. Okay, okay, um, yeah, there's there's you know, the world's great now with the technology because thanks to think in all honesty, thanks to things like Node red and in the couple of hundred actually we have but two thousand
members playing around in that world. It's allowed us to really integrate stuff that wasn't designed to be integrated. Let's do look like our connect Yes, yes, PTTA in and out and ptt B in and out. So that's for cascading things, that's right, okay, okay, yeah, cool, okay, well perfect, all right, So I've got some RS two thirty two
and civ b CD converters that are actually now available. So yeah, could with the Array solutions, I think they call it a cat CR five you come out of the radio and RS two thirty two you go into that and then it'll control three devices, so you can send one to the tuner, one to the power genius, and one to the intenna genius, and then
it's a Joe magic right, and just write the check. Okay, hmm, interesting, interesting, Okay, Well, I'm kind I'm trying to think about my own setup here and thinking about how that I could incorporate something like that because I've been wanting I've been wanting a some sort of out external intenna switch for a while. So um currently only have currently have one HF intenna up, but I have a hex beam that I'm working on. And then
and I can't put a d X before everybody starts. I can't put a DX commander in the backyard because of dogs, because it does require a bunch of I don't want something with ground radials in the backyard. But we can take that to the hunting lease and use it there, so that that might be something in the future for that. But yeah, I'm just kind of thinking about my own I play. I'm just trying if I put it into my own application, I kind of get a better understanding how it works overall.
So good. Yeah, there's just the mind's the limit, right, we right know, because we are customers, which are you know, like the Marks of the World at the Signals Museum, right that they just they and or they're retired and they just got a new hobby for their hobby, right, and the integration is huge. COVID made remote mainstream. Yes you know, and you know how and you know how plug and play. You're you have a sixty three or sixty sixty four. Yeah, you know you
know how plug and play that is, right? So oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Our biggest issue with that radio on there is the internet because it's not stable. So when the Internet goes down at the site, through no fault of the radio, we can't connect to the radio. So you know, that's the biggest problem we have. Uh, but you know that it is what it is. So but when it's when it's up and running, it's great. So cool, all right, Well, what hey, I got to ask the question, and I know what the answer is going
to be, but I'm gonna ask it anyway because it's my show. Right, So, what's what's new coming down in flex radio? Do we have it? The answer is, um, so I can't tell you. But and the reason I can't tell you is you know, in the early days, you'd leak stuff out, but I mean social media has really killed the ability to let out rumors because say, yeah, we're working on working on thing and we hope to have it out by me, and then you know,
something comes up. Whether you're there's parts. Availability has always been an issue in different areas. You know, whether and I've said this about the Maestro. You know, we went to buy this is what delayed the Maestro's along with issues with the tablet. And then you go say something like and I wasn't there, but yeah, we'd like to buy five thousand of these and stockpilems so we can build radios for five years. And they go, oh, yeah, we're weren't going to make that many. So you then
have to requalify different hardware. Yeah, and you know when we're seeing in every HF manufacturer has this problem too with you know, power app chips. Yeah, once you've used for twenty years aren't available anymore, right, you know, so because we were the amateur radio was the only people using them, not a big industry, right, So yeah, we're not gonna do another production law and so I can't say anything we've got some new radios coming
out that are commercial, the ninety six. So yeah, so Dawn in five SKT he put a picture in the chat and I'm like, that looks photos shopped. It looks like you took a sixty four and put a new number on it. But no, he says, it's the military. So what is it if there's we're doing a lot with the military. Now I'm a Canadian, so they don't tell me anything anymore. Well, if I'm learning want to learn anything, I have to google it and look for the
press release. But that being said, the military, whether the Air Force or water, has been incredibly impressed with the technology of the platform, the ability to scale. They loved waveforms. Now while amateur hasn't done much with waveforms yet. If we, if we, Hams came out with a really new mode, and I'm going to get beat up on this, but I'll say it anyway, and you generally you would have had to go buy a whole new radio. Well you could write a waveform for that and just load
it and the radio do it, or a new mode of mode. You know, it's even a better example where you just the sort of thing. So that's where a lot of that development time is right now. We will I know I've said it before. It will benefit us in the long run and good. We would all have liked the gotten more of it back in the amateur world sooner. But if you've ever run your own company or work
for somebody, you know sometimes the priorities are different. Right. That was the big That was the big theme at the Flex Radio dinner at him Mention last year, is that these these military agreements had not come to a finish, but they basically they fulfilled their obligation and they they kind of finished some projects somewhere and now they're now they have time to work on more to the
amateur side. So which day that's happening. Not as fast as we'd like, But sometimes you get Scope Creek too and we say no and then they say, well we'll pay you something with a lot of zeros on it if you do it. Oh okay, well okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's understandable. I did you brought up the Maestro and I meant to I was going to ask you about that earlier. What is there still a backlog on those or what's the story on the lab? There will be a
I don't know what we'll call it. Let's just call it Maestro se for for fun, because there was an Ambu and the ma models which have the front panel, yes, built into the right, which is like this one. It's backwards over my head here. Yeah, yeah, and it's double backwards because anyway, they they've all been impacted by this. This is the display. And it's like I said earlier, So we quantified a display,
We got it to work, it'll do what we wanted to do. We can write the software for it. And then all of a sudden there's no displays available or not enough displays, so you do the second one. This went on through three cycles. Oh wow, and so and I don't know if you know this. The display on the sixty four hundred m and the
sixty six hundred m and the Maestro is eight inches. Yeah, it's a little less common, right, where seven and eleven are the norm, and all hammers like you seventy six ten and even my seventy three hundred there you know, Yeah, they're much smaller displays. So you know we have these you know, all these discussions you think about, they happen internally too, right, Oh yeah, we like screw it, man, just go to a seven inch. Well, then we have to retool and that really drives
the price up and everything even more. So. We thought the eight inch display was still such a huge selling feature in both devices because how many people are on this chat that have at least two pairs of glasses sitting at their desk. Yeah, you know, we're not going and it's an aging group. So that's what the lay is. But targets the fall with a big push to exceed that. I don't know if I could say that out loud. But the work continues and there are many things to have to happen.
There will be some new features we've promised, so we'll have some news on that that will be in there. It's a little it's like saying, and I'm gonna say this hypothetically, you're going to support IPv six. Okay, it was common as especially from Europe, because you can't get in some cases an IPv four address hopefully, but it depends on the NICK network card or the modem that's in the device that comes with right, does this support it?
So these are all things that you know, we're sort of a little bit out of our control. Um oh you want a tablet that does all that, Well that's double the price. So yeah, yeah, I wish you could share more. But there's always a bunch of things in the air that drive the end result, right right, Okay, so so they're they're hoping Q four or you said fall, but I think in September, but it really does change, right so when that happens. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, I get it. Yeah, yeah, I like to tease you guys, but you know, I totally And the ship shortage and global supply chain issues have affected everybody, you know, so no, yeah, well, good case in point two is when the first buyer happened. That was the guys that build all the local oscilators right that we use. We had to retool a mother board to take the new oscill later when you
retool it and then you have to requalify the board. So by the way, um, I was talking to one of our designers a while ago, what do you think how much money you have to do? How much money do you think you need to set aside? I think I told Steve this, if you want to design a new radio for Scratch and you're you're you know, Jason's hammer radio company, and I'm going to build a HF radio that I want to compete with us or Alcraft. How much? How much
money do you think you need to set aside? M I'd probably I'll probably get it wrong, but three hundred thousand Steve did I mentioned to this Steve to dinner? You mentioned that dinner. I just don't remember. Then the figure I think a million, and you'll be light Yeah, yeah, I wonder if it was into seven figures or not. So a lot of us just taken up by salaries. Say it takes you six or eight months?
Okay, so we all like to get paid. Yeah, yeah, you know, so you can do start quickly doing the math, and you'll see you'll chew through that pretty fast. And then you have to pay that all back. Yeah. How many where is you going to sell? Twenty? Well? Not worth it? Okay, now it's worth it, right? Yeah? Yeah? Okay, Well, when that my and I'll send I'll send Laurie an email and and propose this as well. But when that Maestro becomes a thing, um, let me let let me know prototype, I
will call you. Well, yeah, dat, and the and I want I want to I want to get one for myself as well, So I'll buy one and then we can get on and do a live stream together and we can go through everything that it does. Sure so, because because I have I think I have a I think my model is the B model, not the A model. I think. But there are other than construction of
them. They're identically the s. There's like the power buttons on a different place or something, right, So, yeah, mine's the one on the mind's the side that's a bee. Okay, that's what I thought. Okay, So and we're gonna have to figure out where to put the power button on the sea hop maybe it'd be someplace differently. Yeah, so you can, Yeah, so you can. You can make it look different. So
yeah, that's good. But no, no, that that'd be a really cool video live stream to talk about that when it's a um right before it releases or right right as it releases. However y'all want to do that is fine, So we should we should plan for that because I always thought that was a cool device. Anyway, I'm getting away with saying more than I should because I know everybody in the company is in a company lunching right now.
Sorry, he's watching. I'm waiting for Laurie to pop up. Shut up, that's good, Okay, we all try, right, Oh yeah, really do care? So yeah, yeah, exactly, you know Hey that Um, I'm not going to mention who but you know, some companies get mad when you speculate on new products. But um, you know, but they yeah, but they they if it's the one you're poking on. Yeah, I think on our end, I got then I get the vendor bulletin. And the first thing I immediately do is when are you doing a
live chat? Because they would send up that vendor bulletin, it would get leaked to YouTube content creators and leaked. Yeah, and then the information was wrong. We saw that with the seven ten m and well there was speculation on the seven ten because their their promo photo had a big screen behind it. There was oh it comes with a screen. I'm sure it didn't come with the screen, but that was a terrible promo photo. But well, and see that's the other thing leaked. If your stuff is getting if your
stuff is not getting leaked, you're not playing the leak game correctly. All of these all these oh leaked Hollywood trailer to this new movie. They didn't leave they leaked that on purpose, you know, it was all part of the plan. So yeah, leak information when you get it on purpose. I mean I have a list. I have a list of trolls. I'll link stuff too, Right, that's good, that's good. You know, it's like it's like giving you an explorer backpack. H Look what happens?
Yep? Correct, that's that's exactly right. So good deal. All right, guys, we're just about it at an hour. So is there anything any final thoughts from either one of you? No, but I'm thinking doritos. M hmm. I think I finished that back. Oh. I always Jason, always glad to be here and talk about stuff. And hopefully if we see some people at Dayton, which is like a month away, a
month away. Yeah, it's coming up real quick. So and uh and Steve are you guess you guys will be at date and we'll see Steve again. Yep, you guys are in building two. We're in building three, right next to Yasu who knows who knows why we'll be putting in the back
of a Blanco. You know, Jason, I gotta tell you this, it will never happen because we just don't have the budget for it, but we poke arounna ideas of what is the booth going to look like or what fizzas you know, and we don't we won't have anything new to announce at that time. But I said, Lauria, we need to go rent one of those you know, twelve by the eight video walls and have it just hanging above the booth, just with a waterfall going on. Imagine that be
great. But we actually made calls, but it couldn't find anybody that would deliver one without like a whole crapload of money, right because they're used to doing concerts and oh yeah yeah, and but I just imagine so why we can get some of those beam those projectors are pretty bright now, we just get a screen up there and totally totally yeah. Kyle's reminding us about the
Flex Radio dinner. So I think Kyle and I and uh one or two other people I can't remember who else right now, we're we bought tickets for the Thursday night dinner, so well, Thursday night will be Um the ham Side guy, Nathan Frizzle Frizzlee Nathaniels, thank you. Sorry, it's not in front of me, so I'm guessing, yeah, looking forward to that because I don't know that much about him, but others said, you know, it's really great. And then for the new Ham or the newer Ham.
We could do a whole show on this. But on Friday night Bob from Palmer's going to talk about chokes and was I posted this on the community and got ripped a new one. But I think the what what's missing in today's world is any wire you hook up to a compute, to a radio, not just the intent. The Intenta cable can be a receiving antenna and these all these contribute to your noise floor as well. So he's going to
talk about the use of chokes in a today's common hamshack. And she mentioned to Steve yesterday and because you saw it, right, they have this beautiful like you say, hey, I've got an icon seventy three hundred and send me the choke kit and choke I have, Yes, yes, I have to know what your noise floor starts to go down. Nothing to do with and transfering, of course, but as the importance now is in receiving right, So right right, So Bob's going to talk about that. That's really
I will you know what, that'd be a good live stream too. So maybe i'll shoot an email out here later because i've I have I have one of their seventy three hundred kids, and I bought a kit for something else I can't remember, but I don't have the seventy three hundred here in the shack, so I never have hooked it up. But last that's the seventy seven hundred. I wouldn't mind. Oh I bought a kit for the Flex. Yeah, I bought a kit, one of the because they make one
for the Flex. I think, yeah, he does, and he's a big Flex user too, right, yeah, yeah, But so I bought their seventy three hundred kit and their Flex kit, and I put um, I didn't put every the Flex kit comes with, like everything, Well, I don't have everything hooked up on my Flex, so I put the ones in that that I had connections for, Like I don't have two antennas, I don't have to receive antenna. I don't have an amplifier in the shack
right now. So I didn't hook any of that up. But but the stuff that I did I used, and yeah, I did notice a difference on it too. I need to see if they have a seventy seven hundred kit. But but that'd be an interesting topic as well. Okay, all right, well, good to know that that's that's who's speaking, that's Friday.
And if you need tickets, so if i'll post it in the end of the chat or where to order tickets for the either two of the dinners, or just email me and you know NFO at flex Radio dot com, we'll get you all started out. Okay, perfect, I'll go look for the dinner the link to the dinner tickets. Okay, yeah, I think Kyle shared it with me like a month ago. He's like, Hey, we're gonna go Thursday. I'm like, that's great, I'll go buy mine right now. And I went, I went and bought my tickets. So
yeah, that's that's. I think I've been on Thursday last two years, will the year before COVID and then every year since COVID. So yeah, it's definitely. It's in our insider which we send out one rate this which is about a week behind and it should be done this week, so we'll have to get it done. But I'll pop it in the chat on YouTube. So perfect. Okay, give me a second. Yeah, no,
that's fine, Steve. What's going on at Gigaparts anything special? Some guy named Jason Scoggins decided to sit across from me here in the conference room. Oh um, I did see in the chat somebody asked about the Explorer bag going, um camo or olive drab. I remember what it was. Okay, it's the Desert Tan now Khaki. Whatever we're gonna we're just gonna leave it at the time being Desert Tan. M Okay, I know that posted in the Skype chat, so you'll have to dump it in it says,
I got it, Okay, I got it in the zoom chat. So yeah, Jason said something about it. Um having y'all doing. I think it's an add on for it that will hold some of the masts. Because my only grap about the explore bag it's not tall enough to hold my spider Beam's mask and therefore not my Well, it's not gonna hold a fifty foot carbon fiber that you guys make, but that little squatty one that that you sent me a sample of it wouldn't hold. It was too tall for that
mast as well. That master's too talk for the bag, brother, But UM, I think you are working on some sort of ad on that'll that is like a mask carrying bag or whatever. Yeah, you know, you know our skunk works is always fully operational, right right, So yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing that. But by the way, I want to give a plug out to de Good Parts. When you go to a business the first time, you sort of like, you know what it's all about.
So the beautiful storefront, but I got to go to their distribution warehouse. That's not a trivial place now. Every every time, every time I go in there, they're like, you don't have a camera on you do You like, no, it's in the truck. Okay, you can come in so they will let me film anything. Yeah. Oh yeah, it sounds right. That's a yeah. But that is a cool place, very much so cool. All right, well, guys Stephen and Michael, thank you very much today. This is uh. I always like talking about Flex
Radio stuff on the channel. Um, somebody somebody hit me up the other day. They're like hey, and they reply to when the when I went down there and toured the facility in Austin like four years ago. Somebody recently replied put a comment on that video and said you need to do this again or talk about flex radio and more. And I'm like, well, yeah, I do, but but they need to release a new radio also,
yeah, we know, maybe we'll get bug. You can always and you can always see to show up. You could always be like Elcraft and release a new radio and then have it backwarded for three years, so you know, sting, Well, I can't tell. Yeah, the number of conversations I've been in, you know, there's always an idea sitting there coming. Oh yeah. And fortunately and unfortunately the people that manage the numbers for the
company art hand operators. So it's a good and bad thing, right yeah, right, and and say, okay, well how many can you build? What? You know, what's the cost to build it? How quickly game bring it market? How many you going to sell? Right? Right? And of course you you pay for the rate when you buy a raid today. It pays for the development, and it pays for the support on the tail end as well, right right, you know you don't have to
buy extra support. It comes with right the first two years with it, correct, which is a good thing. Yes, so yep, cool, Well, thanks guys, once again, thank you very much. For the time today, I'll let both of you go and we will see you if not before, If if I don't talk to you all before, then I would definitely see both of you in Dayton. Absolutely. Yeah. So y'all have a good weekend, and Steve, I'll hit you up and we'll do something when we when we get to uh it's not to August, but when
we get to Huntsville, we'll do something with that museum as well. Okay, yeah, okay, okay, all right, Thanks guys, appreciate it. Thank you for for being in the chat today. Go check out. I put links to Gigaparts and to flex Radio in my in the description and the email blast that I sent out prior to this video going live. So thanks to everyone for joining today and we'll see you this weekend sometime later. Seven three seven three