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Joe Acevedo, manager at HRO (now closed), joined us at our February 21, 2018 meeting to discuss two technologies driving Ham radio today: digital communications and software defined radios. He bought samples of current products. Some key points were:
Software defined radios are now available from $100+ (receiver only) to $1,000's for some of the best ham radios made.
There are two methods of digitizing, but direct digital conversions (converting analog signals to digital directly at the radio input) gives the most flexibility on signal processing.
SDR radios usually give you great displays of spectrum (frequency domain) and waterfall (time domain). You can see your radio world in ways never possible before.
For digital communications there are three popular formats; Yaesu's C4FM, ICOM's D-Star and Digital Mobile Radio (DMR) which is mostly commercial.
Joe seems to prefer C4FM because Yaesu has implemented it in a manner allowing their radios to operate in any combination of analog, digital or combined. This technique they call "System Fusion". Other digital radios will not work analog. You must have two radios.
An excellent presentation. Thank you Joe!
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