Flex-6700 Fantasies – “Dreaming What Might Be!” Series – The Down Side

What will the Flex-6000 Flex-6700R/6700 leap forward put at risk?

There is no doubt that as such a game changer, this new series of radios will have some less than positive impact on Amateur Radio.  Some thoughts on this are:

• Internet Able and Control PC Independence will require security to control use of the Series 6000 hardware by unauthorized users.  Without this who really knows who is in control?
• You radio may become an unwitting part of a SDR Botnet– Whether by capturing control of unused “slices” or entire machines, a very powerful RF machine could be created with control of not just one Flex-6000 series machine, but with the control of a great many.
• Keying up several hundred coordinated Flex-6500/6700 transmitters could take down frequencies in terms of usability.  If you think the games that are played at 14.275 and 14.313 are rough and tumble, imagine one of these guys coming up on 500 transmitters across the globe at one time.
• Signals from several Flex-600 units could be combined for to bring “contest cheating” to a new level. How will anyone know where a signal is being listened to or transmitted from?
• The operator is moved even further from the technology of the hobby.  Outside of basic I/O and other connections, this new style of radio truly is a black box with little opportunity for the average ham to dig into the stuff inside the box.
• The difficulties in updating competition rules will see the Flex-6000 Series potentially temporaily banned from events until the organizers figure out how to classified 8-slice diveristy and wide-area receive monitoring stations from the common ham’s shack.
• A Part 97 update will be similarly forced by Flex-6000 Series as the advanced operating abilities exceed the vision used to create the rules.  Dozens of issues that never appear in Part 97 because they were technical impossibilies will overnight become reality.

As with any change of this magnitude there will be collateral damage, some quite unexpected.  There will be backlash and righfully some efforts to limit the downside impact.  In this case the change is as profound as many of the great leaps forward that the hobby worked its way through over the last 100 years. Big changes ahead!

73

Steve

K9ZW

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First post of this series Flex-6700 Fantasies – “Dreaming What Might Be!” Series

Planning in a few weeks to have another first hand look at the Flex-Radio Flex-6000 series radios at the W9DXCC Convention in Illinois.

Flex-Radio Flex-6000 Series

……one can imagine, dream and scheme can’t one?

Reading the Flex-Radio literature, Insider newsletters and reflectors there is one massive amount of promise to this new radio an architecture!

I’d like to touch on a few items that have caught my eye, and what I imagine they might offer for the future of amateur radio.

Be absolutely certain I am speculating, I have no extra insight or sources (nor would I betray information given to me in confidence) and I am doing analysis based on what it out there.  I’m going to have fun speculating what might be.

Putting some guesses and construction to the pieces of information over the next few weeks, we’ll see if I guess right on anything announced at the W9DXCC or later when radios ship.

I’ll try to get a thought out every few days in the lead-up to the W9DXCC Convention and then an assessment in the week or so directly after the event.

I’ll link them to this “Flex-6700 Fantasies – “Dreaming What Might Be!” Series” starter and again in the wrap up.

73

Steve
K9ZW