Dayton Hamvention 2011

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 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 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.