This year, Mel Whitten (K0PFX) and Walter Holmes (K5WH) manned the FreeDV booth at its normal location in Building 1. Booth traffic was heavy throughout the weekend, keeping both busy answering questions about FreeDV and demonstrating RADE live over the air via remote connections to their respective radios.
Additionally, Flex users flocked to the booth wanting to know more about the Flex Waveform-Docker implementation. With the Waveform running on Walter’s remote Flex, “seeing is believing” so it made a good demonstration. On top of that, additional radio software developers came by and mentioned they had already added RADE into their application, or it was being added right away.
As Mooneer (K6AQ) was unable to attend this year, we had a new presenter, JJ, KG4VCF in the Digital Modes forum. JJ’s presentation was an in depth guide on how to set up and use FreeDV’s RADE to achieve “Great Audio and Smooth Digital Voice.” And it did just that describing what RADE digital voice does and why it sounds better. His use of professional level graphics and accompanied voice sound bytes garnered attention from the attendees. A larger meeting room was granted this year for the forum filling it to near capacity indicating RADE is gaining a foothold in HF communications.
Demonstrating RADE continues to show that for the user to have significant interest in using the mode, the top three priorities are: 1 – Perceived good voice quality, 2 – “Wow” factor of robustness over SSB and 3 – Ease of set up and use. FreeDV is quickly proving to the wider amateur radio community that RADE excels in all three priorities, with further improvements in all three as work continues.
I was at the presentation in Xenia this year. I did come by the
table later and ask about Flex 6000 implementation. Right now I have
the GUI installed and am listening on;y, have not gone to RPi to update the SDR; (my networking will mean digging out the long long CAT6 to get the Flex on the router, right now it is CAT’d directly to the computer.
Would it be possible for someone to do a Zoom presentation for the Atlanta Radio Club monthly meeting in June? I have started to experiment with this and think there are a few club members who would also be really interested.
I am President of the club. Feel free to hit our web page to verify.
Hi Bill,
Thanks for reaching out! I’ll connect with you privately to see if something can be arranged.
Thanks,
-Mooneer K6AQ
As an old time digital operator, I have see a lot of software coming online over the years from the good to the awful. That said, this software is going to rock many boats. As the HF band and other fill up with people who should not be there judging by their operating practices, and the increase in QRM and CB chat (apologies to the good CB ops), many radio amateurs are either selling up or migrating to digital modes. Bad manners and jamming from multiple sources now rules the bands as norm.
We in the UK who live within town / city limits are forced to use wire antennas, many times with a single pole some at a max 5m height, some with 10m height and yes many with stealth or wire on wooden fences.
Until and if our laws change, this software will become the primary operation mode for many around the globe. With the influx of people into our countries, there may well be a kickback against the status quo in planning laws, as they dont like being told what they can and cannot do and this may well break the state’s grip. I have high hopes for its advancement and long may it continue
M0ELS
RADE is not a digital mode, though, is it? (If you think it is digital: what is its data rate? If you think that being implemented in software makes it a digital mode: suppose I implement FM in software, in the sense of transforming the input signal into two signals to be used as input to QAM. Does that make FM a “digital mode”?)
And not being digital is responsible for its superior quality.
(Homework: when are digital modes are superior to analog ones?)