I have watched a hundred intellectuals fail where one brave man succeeds...

Einstein said, to the effect--genius is 1% inspiration and 99%
perspiration...

Difficulty is expected, only cowards refrain...

In the end, such a radio is not only desirable, it is exactly what is
needed... no argument will change that...

Warmest regards,
John
--
Sit down the six-pack!!! STEP AWAY!!! ...and go do something...

"Joel Kolstad" wrote in message
...
| John,
|
| "John Smith" wrote in message
| ...
| You missed the point... what I propose is simpler... it is a radio--not
a
| computer... and still can be done by those who ignore the nay sayers, no
| matter how loudly these nay sayers attempt to shout down progress...
|
| Have you ever heard the saying to the effect that the beginner sees only
one
| option, which the experienced designer sees many? It really is something
of a
| curse. :-)
|
| By all means do keep pursuing your interests, but by the same token you
might
| want to start learning more about RF design and understand where some of
the
| other posters are coming from. Addressing your original idea, there ARE
| "modular" radios out there -- I know I've seen some guy's web site where
he
| takes this approach -- but the idea that a modular radio can somehow offer
the
| same performance as a more integrated one is about the same as claiming
that
| you can build a CPU with the same performance and price of a 3GHz Pentium
by
| using discrete modules for the ALU, memory controller, cache controller,
| instruction decoder, etc. -- it just isn't going to happen. On the other
| hand, you certainly COULD build some "many MHz" sort of microcontroller
with
| this approach, and the sames of microcontrollers today swamps that of
Pentiums
| anyway. Hence, I think there would be a market for your modular radio
| design -- especially within the amateur radio community -- but I doubt
you'll
| be getting calls from Nokia any time soon.
|
| Software defined radios accomplish a significant amount of the
| "reconfigurability" that I think you're looking for, and with
ever-increasing
| ADC/DAC speeds and DSP horsepower, it probably won't be too long before
most
| radios digitize directly at RF or IF and the rest is software (oftentimes
| highly non-trivial software, however). Even so, you'll always need
someone
| who understands traditional RF engineering to get the signal from the
antenna
| to the DAC while preserving the best SNR possible.
|
| ---Joel
|
|