Alrighty, So this is the FTX one series. And the reason we're saying the series and calling it the series is because it really is not just a radio. It is a series of radios on there. This model that we have here a lot of people have been seeing, obviously the FTX one, but this is the FTX one in the optimum version. So what is the optimum version, Well, it is the FTX one here with the SPA one as a package deal. So it's not just when you buy the Optima. It's not just hey, I'm just getting
the amp or something. You're getting the whole complete radio set with it on there. Now, we built this with a concept of as someone said yesterday and I don't even know it's a real word, modularity. It's going to be buzzword. Sounds good, but what it is is basically, it's like you're at home. You want to do one hundred wats through HF and six meters, but now or fifty watch on VHF and UHF. Now what I want to do is I want to go out somewhere. I
want to take it with me to go camping. Whatever, whatever you do, you simply push the button on the top here and then it's gonna go ahead and disconnect that simple, that easy on there. Now a lot of people have had questions about the connections. The connections, yes, are built into on there and then you have in essence, technically, if you come both in TENA ports, you have five intena connects or five connections you need to do on
the radio, we suggest always powering it off. But what you're gonna do is you're gonna pull this part out here and then that is the antenna connections for the HF and then as well as VHF. Next you're gonna go ahead and unpluged the speaker connection on there. You're gonna unplug the thirteen point eight volt DC, and then you're gonna unplug the actual tuner amplifier connection cable on there. Now,
this is the radio. This is good to go. What you can do then is you could either connect it with thirteen point eight volt s DC or as you see on the back here there's the modularity concept. You can attach the battery to it. You can actually attach to FC eighty and TENA tuner over the battery with it two. So it allows you all that functionality in there. Now win on battery does only do six walks. When you connect in the thirteen point a old DC, you're
gonna be able to do ten walks. But as you see here, very simple, easy, I mean, it's it's kind of like the old old like military style. You know, Hey, you'll be calling in there, you know. But it does have a whole list of features on there too. This is the actual GPS chip.
Is that available now?
It is? If it's not available now, I know they're shipping. We have a lot coming in right now. That's where there's been a lot of confusion and people saying, well, how soon is the optimal? How soon is the SPA one. We have them coming in right now. It's just a matter of getting them in and then getting them to the dealers for their how do you wanna say, their their pre orders? However they have it set up. We
don't know that with the dealer's on there. But the SPA one itself, which you can buy later, is coming. That's probably gonna be maybe say a month or two, is what we're saying. We don't know how fast shipping is going to be. That's the only thing on there. Could be tomorrow, could be one or two months from right.
So when you say sbe SPA one, you mean the amplifier by itself.
Without this, so right now, So like if you bought THEFTX one F, you're gonna get this, the battery, the microphone, everything you need to take this and start using it right away. This is going to be the SPA one, which you can buy separately. So you're saying, hey, you buy the FTX one F, you know what, I really want one hundred watts to really want more power, then
later you can come and buy this now. You do get a discount if you buy it as the Optima package right off the bat obviously, but yes, this is available on there. The other thing we did look at it is we got the handle on the side. You have your connections there so you can actually there's actually feet if you see on there. So there's a whole host of mounting things out there. What are the things I will address? You get a lot of questions already on there. Well, why is what was the designed to
be mobile? Realistically, it wasn't designed to be mobile because this takes about twenty I'm gonna say twenty two amps conservatively. I think it is for running at full high power. Not a lot of times you can do that in a mobile environment. Yeah, you can run off the battery, but it's really designed to be this is the base you keep at home. This is what I'm take it in the car wherever I want to go and do it and then give you either six or ten watts. Now, if we take a look over here, this has the
actual Yazu design bracket on there. So somebody asked me about that yesterday.
I've never seen them.
Yeah, this is one of the new features on there, so locks into there. It's designed to be. Or Now, this is a stand that we have for it on there. It's not a specific stand or anything on there, but this is what you can do. You see, it's got handle grips there for you you want to hang it suspended. Now, a couple of things. I'm just gonna show this here because we've been showing it all morning long. Right now, it's on battery. Now I'm gonna take and plug into
thirteen point eight old DC. Now I'm gonna do It's gonna take now the batteries off. That's simple, that easy. Now it's plugged in directly with the thirteen point eight bols. I have ten watts coming out of it right now. Then you want to go ahead and go back to portable operation, We're gonna take and slide the battery back on there. That's what happens when you get old. You can't see now, I take it on there now, watch as you see. Actually take a look at it, see
that it's actually charging. I'm standing there now, Yank, I'm still operating. So it's that easy, that's flexible for it to go to do. What are the other big things I do want to point out for people they've kind of asked this question. Stuff grounding scools located on here too for you. So if you are going ahead and using like the FC forty connector, or you're going to be using something where you want to have the radio have a good ground plane for your antenna, you do
have the actual grounding screwl on there. Like I said, thirteen point a little DC jack out there for data bands on there. Because some people I'm asking can I hook my own antenna tune or to it or amplifier. We don't test with third party devices, so we don't know, right, But then you have all the functionality there speaker right into the bottom here for you gives you the main and sub concept. That's the other kind of thing. People have asked, well, what is the concept is like an
A and a B band. No, it's like the seven to ten over there that kind of has a main and a sub, the ft five to ten main and sub kind of concept down there.
We were at the campsite yesterday and there was probably twelve people around me and we hooked infant halfway intended to it and turn the and found a station that he's working poda and we turned the volume way up and it sounded freaking fantastic. It was beautiful, beautiful audio coming out of that front firing speaker exactly.
And a lot of people said, what, John, what what can you relate this to? Like like we've seen on your videos, you're saying this, the brochure says this, what would you relate it to? Well, I'm gonna relate it to performance and audio quality to the seven ten. This is this is probably And that's what we kind of tell people as they said, like what is this equivalent to? This is equivalent to the people saying I want to seven ten with VHF and UHF in there gotcha. That's
really what it is. It's not designed to also replace any radio on our line. Okay, you know. So it's like, oh, the nine ninety one is gonna be you know, and now and then this is this No, it's it's really SDR technology, DSP circuitry and that portable transportable based configuration.
The other thing I really really like is that the battery itself has a USBC port on it.
Yep, yep. So so we did that because once again, looking at the USBC is more of the standard thing down there. And so you're in the car, you're operating, you're on thirteen point eight volts DC. Hey, I want to charge the battery before I go walking out. Great, All I simply do is take it, slide it out on there, and then now you know you got it right in there. Hey, I can charge in the car while I'm driving out to the site and you're good to go from there.
Now there's a USBC port on the radio itself. Yes, does that charge the battery or what is that for?
No, battery charging is only going to be through the thirteen point eight volts DC the.
Us when it's attached to the radio.
When it's attached radio. So like in this configuration you see there the red lights on there, it's charging right on there. We want to faster charge turn off the radio. What the USBC is that is going to be your interface going forward because this does have like a built in sound card. You are going to be doing FT eight all those functionalities on there. Okay, we went with it for two things, real estate and then once again USBC.
It's hard to find it a more standard.
Yeah, it's really hard to find it a yeah, but yes, and then like I said, the GPS unit, you're gonna have the APRS functionality in there. You have currently fusion to transmit and receive on it. There is gonna be some wires X updates stuff coming in August and we're gonna cover that, and that's gonna be done by a firmware on it. But right now it's literally vhf uhf. Like I said, functionality of a nine to ninety one, but design performance of an FT seven ten. It's the
best way I can do it. The two got together when we weren't looking, and well, thanks happening. Internal tuner, theop tinner that goes on the back.
What's the spects on that three.
To one, it's about a three. It's like it's like our FC fifties in those it's it literally is the same INTENTNA tuner. It's about a three to one up to about one hundred homes. Hands down. If you are gonna go ahead and be trying to as I said, Jenner or energize a wet noodle, get an external intenta tuner.
We've told that on there. But if you're like me, I play around in eighty meters, I like thirty nine sixty five, thirty nine to seventy five, But hey, I want to get maybe get down to thirty eight to fifty on my homebrew. You know that I did. Then that's gonna go and be great. Now let me hold stay right here real quick. So this is the fan. I'm there. It's really easy and nice to clip on there. I'm going to kind of show you on this one. Here.
I was wondering if somebody asked me if the fan went above or below the battery.
Nope, it's gonna Actually it actually replaces the battery. Replaces the battery, and the reason being is is that it needs to lock in to use it. The fan we looked at the power consumption between the fan, the touch screen, the color screen, everything like that on there, there was gonna be no way that this battery is going to last you a long time. Like I said, that's why we when you're using the battery, you're looking at five to six watts, but it's going to have increased time.
But if you're looking at something that's thirteen point eight volts DC. Now you got the fan, that's why we can go up to ten wats on there.
How I mean if you just stick the battery on a full charge and receive only how estimated how long that you know?
I'm gonna say that's subjective of objective because of how you operate it. You can make display so we see the side by side display. You could change it to be up and down display, and you can actually do single display. So that's gonna all do those kind of different factors on there.
How do you change that? Is that is that easy to do?
Do you remember? I'm trying to remember because like like we've had so many questions come through that there you go, So that's display and then that single display. Oh okay, because there are more features like because it all it all. It is all touch screen.
So see I was looking on the screen for a button, but the button's over there, right, yeah, gotcha?
Yeah, okay. And that's why it's like there's there's a lot of different things too, because when you get into the functionality on there, you can actually kind of turn the screen off if you want to flash the screen, test the screen, change all that functionality on there. So there's a lot to move around on there. Now, this
is the FC eighty. Okay. Now, the f C eighty is designed to you could if you wanted to attach over a fan, but it's more so designed we take the fan off, we put the battery on, we take and attach the antenna tuner onto it. There's the modularity. You connect it up to your HF port on here, and then you connect it up to the actual I won't do that because I got all the plugs in, but you connected into the data jack there and now you're gonna go ahead and have the connection right off
there for the antenna tuner. Another thing I know that a lot of people were asking about. They were saying, what is an M connector that's been the biggest thing. Well, if you see, it's basically like the equivalent of an SO two thirty nine connector, But an M connector doesn't need fifty homes. So that's why you'll see it used a lot, like in video and stuff like that in there. And what better sense if you think about it. Okay, wait a minute, this is an antenna tuner. Is it
gonna be fifty homes here? No, it's not. Why is it gonna be well, because guess what, it's not fifty homes. So so that's that's why it's an M connector. Same thing on the SPA one, which is there's another one right next to it. They're M connectors because you're not gonna have necessarily fifty homes going to it. That's hence why there's an antenna tuner in there. The intended tuner's on there.
But well, the PILL connect it's still worth the same, right, So if you take a look at it, it looks the same.
PEL two fifty nine will connect right to it. But when you look at the operational parameters of an M connector, it is not fifty holmes, gotcha. So that's that's the reason. I know a lot of people were freaking out day. I heard so many people say oh it's a Motorola connector, it says from proprietary. No it's not. It's just non fifty ohms on there.
Okay, perfect, Well that is slick, I like mine. Everyone says, hey, how do you like it, and I'm like, well, it's great, but I haven't.
Actually used it yet.
I haven't taken it out and transmitted on it yet, so but I'm looking forward to it.
Man, thanks for your time, John, No problem,