Dayton Hamvention 2011

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There’re a few hot new releases from this weekend’s Hamvention over in my old home state. And I’m not referring to the sewage issue there!

The new KX3 seen at the Elecraft stand in Dayton - photo by Jeff Davis KE9VThe Elecraft KX3 is a new 1.5-2 pound, 10W PEP (& KXPA100 100W companion amp), 160-6 Meters, Software Defined Radio (SDR), Trail Friendly Radio (TFR, i.e., light, small, ~150 mA current) with many cool features like 8 AA batteries/internal charger & optional microphone, for ~$800. It does all modes: SSB/CW/AM/FM/DATA - including built-in PSK31 and RTTY encode/decode/display. It even has Facebook fans! Only problem is it isn’t released until year’s end. More pictures.

Flex-Radio’s new release of PowerSDR 2.1 and their FlexControlFlexRadio's FlexControl also seem to be creating some buzz. I’ve not explored software-defined radio systems much yet, but software is much more nimble than hardware, so one can expect a smoother upgrade path with such a system – IF implemented properly of course. Also there is at least one open-source variant, which is always a positive sign.

Julie was asking yesterday at the weekly VMIRC's breakfast at Sporty’s about locating repeaters while traveling across the country. A couple new products for this are now available: ARRL’s latest edition of TravelPlus Mobile GPS and RFinder for the Android.

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