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Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines

Hi Len,

Good response; I just have a couple of minor things to add:

wrote in message
ups.com...
If we look at what exists now, we get blase' about all the effort
involved to make a product (almost as if "it always existed...")
available for others to use. Too many of us take the THINGS we
have for granted.

When you can run down to the local computer store and buy something like a
wireless router containing a 54Mbps digital radio with very sophisticated
modulation schemes running from some embedded CPU with the equivalent
horsepower of an 80386 with 64MB of RAM, all for $39.99, I can see why. :-)

Very little actual "government software" was ever done, nearly
all was hired, contracted outside work.

I was thinking of programs such as Berkeley SPICE being "government software,"
actually.

What "the universities" do is NOT NECESSARILY what goes on in
the rest of the world! True, despite the self-promoting PR of
"the universities!"

Very true, although I think that many univerisites have found -- in the past
couple of decades -- a need to become somewhat more aligned with industry in
order to continue to procur funding.

As far as IP protection on radio hobby magazines, that's
still up in the air for many. If everyone wants to sit
around and rebuild the regenerative receiver or "design"
two-tube (or teeny two-transistor) transmitters, fine, but
that is just re-inventing the wheel for the nth time.

It is, although it can serve as a great educational tool for the person doing
it. Since ham radio is -- for most people -- a hobby, re-inventing such
radios is about the same as someone rebuliding the engine or transmission on a
classic car: The end result is still not going to be as, say, fuel efficient
or powerful as a modern design, but someone who understands the basics is then
a very large way towards understanding the modern design... if they have any
desire to do so.

When you go to student engineering design expos these days, there's usually
plenty of wireless interfaces to robots, data collection devices, etc.;
they're almost always implemented with a little wireless module where you feed
in digital data, and everything else all the way to the antenna is a black
box. What you almost never see is something like a discrete transistor radio
design implementing, say, BPSK at 1200bps (which often would suffice for the
wireless data transmission needs). Although I find this a little lamentable,
I realize that these days indsutry needs a lot more people creating such
system- or IC-level designs (rather than, say, 50 years ago when I'd expect
that most "electrical engineers" found themselves performing discrete
transistor -- or tube! -- design), and I also realize that industry still
seems to find graduates who become good RF IC designers, so clearly the
problem isn't as bad as I might imagine and is probably more a reflection of
just becoming set in my own ways instead! :-)

Much
of the output of the radio hobbyist press (other than new
product info squibs and "reviews") is the publishers
essentially copying their own old works...for their own
profit.

Sure, or someone taking an old design and adding a microcontroller
interface/LCD/etc. (Seems to crop up a lot with auto-tuners, power meters,
etc... I've been tempted to do one of these myself... something like a mobile
2m amplifier for an HT... 300mW in, 30W or so out, with digital display of SWR
or whatever... clearly the "core design" of the amplifier and SWR meter has
been around for decades now...) Granted, a lot of any "new design" is just
modifying old designs with various new ideas, but the ARRL's standard to
publish a "new" article is perhaps rather low.

If we don't have IP protection, radio hobbyists will still be
at least a half-century behind in most efforts of "radio,"
the practitioners busy, busy with nostalgic recollection of
"the good old days" that were not that "good," just
fascinating to individuals (like me) of a long time ago.

What's missing is some reasonable means of licensing IP to people who want to
use it on a hobbyist basis. A lot of the really good speech CODECs out there
are legally protected, and although I'm sure the hobbyist developer would be
happy to pay some few dollars to play with one, a large company is (typically)
not interested in dealing with a single user to license a single instance of
their technology... And even if that hobbyist's software is good, he might
sell... what... 100 or 1000 copies of it? The royalties from that pale in
comparison to licensing a CODEC to a cell phone manufacturer.

As-is, HDTV reception and demodulation by a hobbyist is still legal -- but
just barely, as various interests continue to push for "broadcast" flags. HD
Radio probably wouldn't be legal at all to sit down and demodulate, but given
that it's a proprietary standard, no hobbyist is presently able to do so
anyway. I'm all for making sure that owners of IP are fairly compensated, and
I believe that most hobbyist are willing to pay to do so, but the commerce
models to do it just aren't there yet. How far would ham radio have gotten if
it had been illegal to build your own FM radio? Or ATV receiver (since they
usually still use NTSC as the baseband format)?

On the upside, today it's easy to purchase RF components that allow one to
build radios that have better performance and are cheaper to build than ever
before. It's the hardware--software interface -- with software defined
radios starting to become commonplace -- where you can't just go to DigiKey
and purchase a CELP software license off the shelf; this is one of the
problems holding back the development of ham radio. Granted, hams could --
and do -- development a lot of these things themselves, but given their
technological sophistication, ham radio will now more than ever have to follow
commercial standards (as they have with FM, NTSC for ATV, etc. -- it's been a
_looonnng_ time since ham radio was _setting_ the standard, although the APRS
guys do like to point out that a lot of commercial systems today still aren't
as good as they are).

---Joel

Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines

From: Joel Kolstad on Wed, Feb 22 2006 10:30 am

wrote in message

If we look at what exists now, we get blase' about all the effort
involved to make a product (almost as if "it always existed...")
available for others to use. Too many of us take the THINGS we
have for granted.

When you can run down to the local computer store and buy something like a
wireless router containing a 54Mbps digital radio with very sophisticated
modulation schemes running from some embedded CPU with the equivalent
horsepower of an 80386 with 64MB of RAM, all for $39.99, I can see why. :-)

Microchip Semiconductor will tell everyone the same about their
PICs (or Atmel about theirs)...and you have a good analogy! :-)

But, as some 1950s-technology hams may grouse, "that's not RADIO!"
[I've heard that bs way too often...grrrr] Those folks can go
look into the Analog Devices ICs such as their various DDS or
log-amp-detectors, all definitely working at RF, not "digital."
Or some of the old (pre-split-up) Motorola definitely-analog
complex arrays for various functions at RF, some still made and
available 30+ years after first introduction. PLL by itself has
made "boxes of rocks" (quartz crystal units) relatively obsolete
after becoming state of the art in communications electronics
around 1970. Look at the 1 GHz RF in cellular telephony and
cordless phones operating at 5 GHz...I got into "pro" leagues
in microwaves at 1.8 GHz in 1954, thinking that a 6-wide rack
of radio relay equipment (using tubes) was "hot stuff"...only
to think of regular use of a 2.4 GHz cordless handset as being
"ordinary, everyday thing" 50 years later.

Hey, the huge electronic supermarket called Fry's is just a
mile and a half from my house here. Lots of low-cost, very-
high-tech "toys" available in there.

What "the universities" do is NOT NECESSARILY what goes on in
the rest of the world! True, despite the self-promoting PR of
"the universities!"

Very true, although I think that many univerisites have found -- in the past
couple of decades -- a need to become somewhat more aligned with industry in
order to continue to procur funding.

If they want to TEACH students what goes on in industry of the
day, absolutely. They've gone insular amongst themselves in
the last few decades...in the teaching part of their activity.

As far as IP protection on radio hobby magazines, that's
still up in the air for many. If everyone wants to sit
around and rebuild the regenerative receiver or "design"
two-tube (or teeny two-transistor) transmitters, fine, but
that is just re-inventing the wheel for the nth time.

It is, although it can serve as a great educational tool for the person doing
it. Since ham radio is -- for most people -- a hobby, re-inventing such
radios is about the same as someone rebuliding the engine or transmission on a
classic car: The end result is still not going to be as, say, fuel efficient
or powerful as a modern design, but someone who understands the basics is then
a very large way towards understanding the modern design... if they have any
desire to do so.

That's true, yes, but those hobbyists have to stay within their
own group to praise their work amongst themselves. I like
some nostalgic things well enough, but I've already lived
through (and worked in) the radio-electronics technology of
the 1950s and do NOT think such is very close to state of the
"radio" art of NOW.

When you go to student engineering design expos these days, there's usually
plenty of wireless interfaces to robots, data collection devices, etc.;
they're almost always implemented with a little wireless module where you feed
in digital data, and everything else all the way to the antenna is a black
box. What you almost never see is something like a discrete transistor radio
design implementing, say, BPSK at 1200bps (which often would suffice for the
wireless data transmission needs).

A discrete transistor radio would be too bulky for that purpose.
Also a bit higher on the portable power source demand. :-)

I finally got around to fixing and cleaning up an "old" Sony
AM BC radio that was beloved by my late mother (the D cells
had all stayed in and leaked out while she was ill). Great
AM radio, very sensitive due to an added RF amplifier stage
(rare in designs of 30 years ago and now). [it's so "old"
that the push-pull linear AF stages used coupling transformers]

About the same time my wife got an under-the-cabinet AM/FM/CD
radio for her sewing room station (one wall of a guest room).
That radio has a SINGLE IC that does the PLL functions for
both AM/FM LO frequency control, all the RF-IF-detector stages,
AND includes the time-of-day clock PLUS the LCD display
functions! That IC is only available in very large quantities
(from Asia) but it shows the tremendous amount of mixed-signal
capability of a single IC nowadays.

Although I find this a little lamentable,
I realize that these days indsutry needs a lot more people creating such
system- or IC-level designs (rather than, say, 50 years ago when I'd expect
that most "electrical engineers" found themselves performing discrete
transistor -- or tube! -- design), and I also realize that industry still
seems to find graduates who become good RF IC designers, so clearly the
problem isn't as bad as I might imagine and is probably more a reflection of
just becoming set in my own ways instead! :-)

Well - despite being (originally) a "mustang" EE who DID do
discrete tube and transistor stage design - the electronics
industry has tons of already-designed ICs for various RF
purposes and the folks who thunk them up. The problem is more
that they came about for MARKET SPECIFIC applications. Right
now one can get almost anything needed for cell phone designs,
including the cell site stuff...it has been the market driver
for a few years. Maybe automotive electronics is next (some
applications using RF for "wireless" things like tire pressure
measurement while rolling)? PCs are old hat in the industry
since the user market is starting to get saturated.

Case in point for HF range transmitters: Asian designs for CB
finals were already in production (in lots of thousands-plus
per model) and being sold (by the tens of thousands) before
1970. Motorola started pushing power at HF, avoiding CB but
going below and above it in frequency, having lots of designs
of PA transistors of some power. Helge Granberg of Motorola
bossed a lot of detailed, good Appnotes on the how-to and
how-come aspects of various power amplifiers. [Communications
Concepts has the ANs available and sells most of the "MRF"
power transistors now] Motorola didn't sell as many as they
thought and eventually dropped that line (before the double
split into ON and Freescale). Yet Asian designers were, at
the same time, turning out amateur radio power amplifiers in
the 100 to 200 Watt category, lesser power outputs on VHF
on their own. Nowhere can be found the depth of detail on
design of those Asian HF power amp designs, but the Motorola
Appnotes are still studied (even if the "MRFs" are getting a
bit scarce). The detailed information EXISTS, but it doesn't
exist for public distribution. The market doesn't allow it.

Much
of the output of the radio hobbyist press (other than new
product info squibs and "reviews") is the publishers
essentially copying their own old works...for their own
profit.

Sure, or someone taking an old design and adding a microcontroller
interface/LCD/etc. (Seems to crop up a lot with auto-tuners, power meters,
etc... I've been tempted to do one of these myself... something like a mobile
2m amplifier for an HT... 300mW in, 30W or so out, with digital display of SWR
or whatever... clearly the "core design" of the amplifier and SWR meter has
been around for decades now...) Granted, a lot of any "new design" is just
modifying old designs with various new ideas, but the ARRL's standard to
publish a "new" article is perhaps rather low.

Well, in my view, there's too much ham emphasis on transmitters
and power and mechanical aspect of things. Some other things
have been neglected, but taken up by others selling a product.

Another case in point: Neil Hecht's neat little frequency
displays out of AADE in Seattle. No more than three ICs
(all DIP) on a board plus a 2 x 16 LCD character display
module. The main ingredient is a PIC microcontroller that
does both the frequency counting (!), the display module's
input, AND (optionally) a compensation for IF offset in
multiple-conversion receiver/transceiver models. It can be
mounted IN just about any boat-anchor (or smaller) HF
transceiver and functions the same as a many-IC frequency
counter. Strangely enough, it was "pioneered" NOT by a ham
but a UK experimenter who was interested in getting a simple
frequency counter. The Internet allowed the idea to spread
all over the world. The microcontroller source code for
similar units can be obtained (most places for free) but you
need a programmer to stuff the code into the microcontroller.
Or, find someone to do the PIC's ROM code burn-in for you.

I bought an AADE L/C-Meter recently. Assembled, noting the
extra cost wasn't all that much. It saved adding to my
hobby workload. It is based on the same PIC microcontroller
(but with different code). AADE publishes the schematic
and component details. Had I bothered to learn the PIC
instruction set (prodigious even if RISC), I could have
done the programming myself...after about a thousand hours
of fooling around with routines versus hardware. It was
much easier for me to BUY the whole works, leaving precious
time free for other things.

What's missing is some reasonable means of licensing IP to people who want to
use it on a hobbyist basis.

A lot of that IP is already free. A major problem is that
there are too many kinds of programming conventions for
source codes. Few can be "expert" in all of them. Usually
one can be "good" in only one, realistically speaking. As
an example, Microchip has lots of utility routines of
various kinds for free on their website...but one needs to
know the PIC instruction set to make sense of them.

In source code it would be (in my view) better to show the
program flow rather than the code itself. That way anyone
can translate flow into the particular source code they
know. Oddly, most hobbyist programmers don't like to show
flow diagrams...those aren't as "cool" as source code
statements neatly arranged by the source code development
program. :-(

On the upside, today it's easy to purchase RF components that allow one to
build radios that have better performance and are cheaper to build than ever
before.

Absolutely!

It's the hardware--software interface -- with software defined
radios starting to become commonplace -- where you can't just go to DigiKey
and purchase a CELP software license off the shelf; this is one of the
problems holding back the development of ham radio.

I don't quite agree with the gist of your argument. SDR is
the new buzzword and it can certainly apply to digital-based
communications (cell phones, etc.) but not necessarily to
the analog HF world.

MOST of the transceivers for amateur radio, HF to UHF, are
ALREADY software-controlled, courtesy of a built-in micro-
processor or microcontroller. For PLL or DDS frequency
control AND display of same, that is a necessity to achieve
incredible (to 1950s standards) frequency control. That
same little digital subsystem can do myriad other tasks to
eliminate the physical mechanics of construction. The
multi-wafer rotary bandswitch disappeared from ham
transceivers on the market decades ago...and it's hard to
get the parts for such rotary switch assemblies now for
any electronic purpose except high-current switching.

Because that ubiquitous internal micro has become so
commonplace, it has led to a "radio box" that is controlled
by a PC. That's a natural extension of the internal
digital control already present. But, having the PC
display the equivalent front panel does NOT make it an
SDR! It's a neat selling point, makes it LOOK high-tech
and "the latest thing" but the PC-controlled "radio box"
is really just another version of the existing manually-
controlled HF transceiver.

IF - and only IF - amateur radio voice communications goes
digital on HF will there be any real need for SDR in ham
radio "bands" (the ones on HF). Right now the existing
analog-only amplifiers and whatnot are mature and quite good
enough. One problem with digital voice is that there isn't
even a hint of a standard protocol or of many experimenters
yielding any results on same. The Data modes allocated now
can make do with peripheral adapters since they are not yet
that numerous on HF.

Granted, hams could --
and do -- development a lot of these things themselves, but given their
technological sophistication, ham radio will now more than ever have to follow
commercial standards (as they have with FM, NTSC for ATV, etc. -- it's been a
_looonnng_ time since ham radio was _setting_ the standard, although the APRS
guys do like to point out that a lot of commercial systems today still aren't
as good as they are).

Well, if we dwell on such true facts, it will lead to toxic
levels of acrimony in here. :-)

Back to watching HDTV from the Winter Olympics in Turin...

Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines

Hi Len,

You have a lot of interesting history in there!

wrote in message
ups.com...
But, as some 1950s-technology hams may grouse, "that's not RADIO!"

Yeah, I'm surprised just how 'neatly' some people seem to be able to decide
what is and isn't 'radio.'

Hey, the huge electronic supermarket called Fry's is just a
mile and a half from my house here. Lots of low-cost, very-
high-tech "toys" available in there.

I think it's ironic how the cool fashion accessory today is something like a
Motorola Razr phone with its associated millions of transistors buried in
numerous ICs running software that even relatively few BSEE's would fully
understand without a fair amount of additional study (turbo codes, direct
sequence spread spectrum systems, psychoacoustic codecs, etc. not usually
being a large part of the undergraduate curriculum...), yet 30 years ago
anyway hauling around a brick-sized ham radio or CB was quite the nerdy thing
to do... Incredible how times change...

If they want to TEACH students what goes on in industry of the
day, absolutely. They've gone insular amongst themselves in
the last few decades...in the teaching part of their activity.

IMO one of the biggest problems universities face is that everyone is
"expected" to get a 4 year degree these days, and yet the reality of the
marketplace is that relatively few jobs truly require anything approach that
level of "hard core" education. Hence, engineering courses get watered down,
and a lot of BSEE of BSCS students end up performing straightforward
programming or digital design using techniques that a 2 year technical college
could have easily provided them with. Industry has often contributed to this
problem, requiring even technical sales people to now have those 4 year
degrees... sheesh!

Maybe automotive electronics is next (some
applications using RF for "wireless" things like tire pressure
measurement while rolling)?

I think we're just about there -- I've seen chipsets that'll provide, e.g.,
some tens of bytes of data once every second or so and consume mere tens of
microwatts (on average) to operate; that seems like the kind of thing some
clever person can generate just from the rotation of the tire itself using
some horribly crude & dirt cheap implementation of a "generator."

Well, in my view, there's too much ham emphasis on transmitters
and power and mechanical aspect of things.

What would you like to see more of?

Another case in point: Neil Hecht's neat little frequency
displays out of AADE in Seattle.

I haven't used one, but I'm aware of their existance. I bought one of Neil's
L/C meters years ago now and put it together myself -- I don't recall if an
assembled version was even available as an option then. I came across his web
site again recently while tracking down a copy of his filter designer (which
includes some very useful hints and tips on various transforms), and was
pleased to find that he now gives it away for free, stating that he was
selling so much more hardware than software anyway, it wasn't worth his effort
to keep charging for the software!

Oddly, most hobbyist programmers don't like to show
flow diagrams...those aren't as "cool" as source code
statements neatly arranged by the source code development
program. :-(

I always figured they just didn't want to go to the extra effort. :-) I
agreee that source code alone usually isn't as good as a clear flow diagram.

I don't quite agree with the gist of your argument. SDR is
the new buzzword and it can certainly apply to digital-based
communications (cell phones, etc.) but not necessarily to
the analog HF world.

I did mean "true" SDRs, such as GNU Radio, Flex Radio, etc. I think it has
plenty of application to the HF world (indeed, the development of digital
modes for HF seems much more active than on VHF/UHF, which has always struck
me as kinda bizarre given how much less bandwidth is available there in the
first place... but of course the fact that you can get a signal to the other
side of the planet on 100W in good condition is always a big motivator...)

IF - and only IF - amateur radio voice communications goes
digital on HF will there be any real need for SDR in ham
radio "bands" (the ones on HF).

I agree with you on this (in that, with analog HF modes, you don't really gain
that much by using SDR), but I hasten to point out that there's no "real need"
for the analog modes either :-). Whether or not that means
Yaesu/Icom/Kenwood/etc. actually make a full-blown HF SDR that supports both
the traditional analog modes and some set of newer digital ones, I don't know.

One problem with digital voice is that there isn't
even a hint of a standard protocol or of many experimenters
yielding any results on same.

Have I mentioned how some of the best low-bit rate CODECs are proprietary
and/or patented and not licensable by a single lowly hobbyist? ;-)

Back to watching HDTV from the Winter Olympics in Turin...

We have an HDTV tuner but only an "EDTV" TV (an older plasma set), and it
still looks fantastic; I've been most impressed.

---Joel

Fry's Electronics ,was : Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines

Len Anderson wrote:
Hey, the huge electronic supermarket called Fry's is just a
mile and a half from my house here. Lots of low-cost, very-
high-tech "toys" available in there.
==============================
Indeed an amazing place,(I visited the Manhattan Beach CA store 2months
ago) It is also a place with a limited selection of
(pre-packaged)discrete components (Rat Shack style) However they only
sell semiconductors under the NTE designation code ,so if you need
semiconductors ,it is wise to bring a cross-reference table.

Frank GM0CSZ / KN6WH

Want: 73 & Ham Radio Magazines

From: Joel Kolstad on Wed, Feb 22 2006 7:54 pm

Hi Len,

You have a lot of interesting history in there!

I feel fortunate to have experienced (first-hand) the
electronics technology revolution of the last 60 years.
Truly remarkable times!

I think it's ironic how the cool fashion accessory today is something like a
Motorola Razr phone with its associated millions of transistors buried in
numerous ICs running software that even relatively few BSEE's would fully
understand without a fair amount of additional study (turbo codes, direct
sequence spread spectrum systems, psychoacoustic codecs, etc. not usually
being a large part of the undergraduate curriculum...), yet 30 years ago
anyway hauling around a brick-sized ham radio or CB was quite the nerdy thing
to do... Incredible how times change...

Don't forget that MARKETING has been responsible for setting
"the public's" definitions of "cool" things. Lots of the
products on today's market are the work of specialists together
in one product family. It is difficult for anyone to be a
guru in more than one discipline within electronics (and radio).

Take the general MPEG4 compression that enables HDTV to work
within a 6 MHz bandwidth (and enabling 4-channel sound and
assorted whatnot to coexist there). Having been slightly
involved in some test equipment design for same, the concept
is mind-boggling to me. "Tylenol time" to attempt under-
standing it. I'd rather sit back and watch, enjoying the
MUCH better picture of HDTV as compared to the old 4:3 aspect
ratio analog TV. As far as I'm concerned, the compression
techniques are complicated enough that they don't seem to need
any IP protection...

If they want to TEACH students what goes on in industry of the
day, absolutely. They've gone insular amongst themselves in
the last few decades...in the teaching part of their activity.

IMO one of the biggest problems universities face is that everyone is
"expected" to get a 4 year degree these days, and yet the reality of the
marketplace is that relatively few jobs truly require anything approach that
level of "hard core" education. Hence, engineering courses get watered down,
and a lot of BSEE of BSCS students end up performing straightforward
programming or digital design using techniques that a 2 year technical college
could have easily provided them with. Industry has often contributed to this
problem, requiring even technical sales people to now have those 4 year
degrees... sheesh!

I would "blame" personnel departments for the "degree required."
Hey, it's hard enough for them (now called "Human Resources") to
try to sort out applications in all the myriad specialties typical
of an electronics house in the industry now. Over 30 years ago
RCA Corporation used to give two-level interviews to applicants;
initial screening in personnel, final screening by engineering
department folks (not necessarily liking the task). That was a
better, quicker way to separate the good from the bad and ugly.
I got hired by them that way and later wound up as one of those
who did the second-level final screening. It works.

In practical matters, academia just doesn't have the familiarity
with "industry practice" so it can't get a good handle on what
they really need to stuff in a curricula. That's academia's
problem..."industry" is going to go ahead and do its thing
anyway, regardless of title-rank-status blinged into minds by
academicians. "Industry" exists to stay in existance, make
products, make profits. "Industry" ALSO winds up as the general
inventor-innovator-creator of new technology...they just don't
allot a lot of time to write up much of it a la academicians,
only for marketing purposes to get folks buying their new stuff.

I think we're just about there -- I've seen chipsets that'll provide, e.g.,
some tens of bytes of data once every second or so and consume mere tens of
microwatts (on average) to operate; that seems like the kind of thing some
clever person can generate just from the rotation of the tire itself using
some horribly crude & dirt cheap implementation of a "generator."

Well, I'd point out the simple little "fob" transmitter for
the "keyless entry" system. A single IC in there that both
generates the "rolling code" digital sequence AND the tiny
UHF transmitter. The code sequence is flexible enough, simple
enough to set up for tens of thousands of different
combinations, low-power enough to last for years without a
battery change, can work in sub-zero and desert temperatures.
And be relatively cheap to make as well as small enough to
carry in a trouser pocket. One heckuva set of specs there!

The "keyless entry" receiver is as complicated, yet is only a
small part of the overall electronics in a modern auto. My
wife's (she picked it out, I okayed it) new Malibu hatchback
has ten kinds of bells and whistles on its dash display, a
relative drop in the bucket compared to its normal housekeeping
computerized chores of checking things, adjusting carburation,
alert warnings, light control, etc., etc., etc. It's made
possible by the ubiquitous microcomputer (now just thirty-
something old). Wonderful stuff in my view! Takes some of
the worry about cross-country driving as well as everyday
driving.

Well, in my view, there's too much ham emphasis on transmitters
and power and mechanical aspect of things.

What would you like to see more of?

Receivers, subjects that don't emphasize the new buzzwords
of the industry. Oscillators, some practical skinny that
doesn't mirror the current industry need for "low phase
noise" (applicable to FM and PM yes, but not many DSSS
high-speed data communications going on in amateur radio).
Practical simple test equipment for Rx and Tx that doesn't
need some specialty component part or unobtainium. Most
authors use what they had (leftovers from work or other
projects) and don't mention what could be substituted.

Some better theory and practical uses of complex quantities
that involve impedance and admittance...especially how to
measure them good enough for a home workshop environment.
A vector impedance meter and vector analysis system is just
now (in the last few years) appearing in the ham scene.
Some practical stuff on making inductors, Q affected by
what, how to measure approximate Q with workshop gear.

Some APPLICABLE (not product-specific promotional-based)
information on making things in the home workshop, whether
it is "manhattan-style" PCBs or even better soldering
techniques. [RoHS is with us, like it or not, an tin
solder without the lead doesn't handle as the old solder
did] How to work with materials properly, metal to
fiberglass-epoxy sheet or whatever. Even something on
standard screws, fasteners, things that can hold something
together. Avoid the TV craft-show techniques of most of
the show content concerned with promoting some latest
maker's new stuff...while it is momentarily interesting
it is also obviously a part of marketing pushing this new
craft stuff. ["product reviews" are a gross example of
this kind of PR]

A "tuna-tin two" two-transistor Tx is cute, but crammed
into an Altoids box? QRP is kind of a specialty niche
and probably deserves a special issue of some magazine
for that, but the lure of "simplification" (in size and
complexity) for simplicity's sake doesn't TEACH much of
anything except serve as a real test of dexterity on the
part of the builder. "Simplicity" in ham radio was very
popular from the 30s to the 50s because ready-built was
expen$ive then. Simple things could be built in a few
weekends, provided some enjoyment, but not a great deal
of real learning (other than assembly) into theory. Today
it is possible to build a "simple" single-conversion HF
superhet receiver with zilch problems of image response
yet have fine selective IF response for AM voice. Takes
all of six ICs on a PCB size less than 6" x 8" in size.
Frequency control in tuning can be simple or complex as
desired.

I did mean "true" SDRs, such as GNU Radio, Flex Radio, etc. I think it has
plenty of application to the HF world (indeed, the development of digital
modes for HF seems much more active than on VHF/UHF, which has always struck
me as kinda bizarre given how much less bandwidth is available there in the
first place... but of course the fact that you can get a signal to the other
side of the planet on 100W in good condition is always a big motivator...)

IF - and only IF - the ionosphere is kind to you... :-)

In digitized "data" modes for amateur use, there's only
ONE new, innovated-for-ham-use mode: PSK31. All other
modes involving "data" are adaptations of commercial-use
modes. One mountain-states small company had their first
product as a "beginner's HF PSK31 transceiver." It didn't
sell despite having some neat, modern microcomputer
and display screen, keyboard included. It wasn't
"traditional ham" gear, wasn't pushed by a big company.
Peter Martinez (G3PLX) had his PSK31 up, running, and
being tested by others using it in Europe for a few years
without any real details of it appearing in USA ham
magazines.

There just isn't much of anything else in "data" comms
standards here in the USA unless it is already developed
and debugged by "the industry." Digitized voice IS
possible in narrowbandwidths on HF but there don't seem
to be any amateur experimenters trying it out. What would
SDR do without any standards to adapt to?

One can PROCESS an IF today and do things like make a
digital spectrum analyzer (I don't see much effort spent
on that). That isn't really a Software DEFUNED radio
system. Firmware-software already CONTROLS most of the
functions in modern ready-built amateur radios. That isn't
really Software DEFINED radio either. OK, the quibble is
a minor thing. Software/firmware/digital-control is
definitely on the scene today.

One problem with digital voice is that there isn't
even a hint of a standard protocol or of many experimenters
yielding any results on same.

Have I mentioned how some of the best low-bit rate CODECs are proprietary
and/or patented and not licensable by a single lowly hobbyist? ;-)

Yes, you did. :-) I also mentioned that there's not much
of a hint of anyone in the USA experimenting on their own to
make a trial or two at their prospective standard. Someone
must BEGIN, be the flag-bearer, the amateur pioneer. What is
bizarre (to me) is that a modern PC has much more computing
power than big mainframes I connected to 30 years ago to do
ordinary synthesis-analysis of circuitry. The tools for
experimentation on coders-decoders EXIST NOW.

Perhaps the biggest bottleneck to all this possible pioneering
is the current mindset of radio amateurs. If it doesn't "look"
like "radio" (of their time), it "isn't real radio." :-(

The editors of the few remaining ham publications have the
paper-version control over what everyone sees for new
things. THEY are the ones needing to look into the future
and do gauging on what THEY think is "good" for readers.
Meanwhile, the Internet is busy, busy showing lots and lots
of new things that ARE done, can be done, to anyone who
bothers to search. [there's quite a bit of material on
CODECs and general DSP out there once you get the right key
search words] Most of what we see on the Internet is not
locked up in truly enforceable copyrights.