jgorman01 wrote: > I'll try to keep this short. > > First, the review I quoted was the first one the ARRL, I went back and > read the second one. Some comments: > > I agree the numbers that came out of the test are impressive. --- snip --- > > Now a little of my engineering scepticism. --- snip --- > > I understand your promotion of your products. But again, if I > understand what your promoting, forgive me if I have doubts that an > $85,000 system is comparable to what you say may cost less than $300. > In my soon to be 56 years on this earth, I have learned that you get > what you pay for and seldom, if ever, get a deal like this. If you > can offer one at that price, again, congratulation, you are going to > be the next Bill Gates! > The entire purpose for HPSDR is to do this experimentation "for the good of us all". We have come together to provide these capabilities in inexpensive systems for the amateur radio and SDR experimenter.
I can only assume that Ulrich Rohde (Rohde and Schwarz, he of the many tens of thousands of dollar toys) tells us he is so interested in this work because it is so interesting. He is a regular contributor to HPSDR concerning LO's, Mixers, etc. and is absolutely looking at the technology to mine it for the "XK-5000". THis is understood by every contributor. There are many big company manufacturers there listening, lurking, consuming. We are having exactly the impact we wanted to have and money has not been a motivational factor. I hope it never is. The "pay for what you get" comment is probably appropriate. You will not be given a life time warranty and pay tens of thousands of dollar supporting large corporate offices and stock holders who do not provide any service to you at all but you will also get no "on-site support" or after market hand holding. For some applications, the cost of these things is worth every dime because the end user must be supported. In our case, we are aimed at increasing knowledge and providing tools for the "modern day homebrewer" in the best traditions of amateur radio. We are in the chasm between "the old way" of doing amateur radio and whatever excitement the future may bring. We have done little beyond changing out tubes for transistors and added in a little DSP shaping. SDR with all that means, is our way into the future, since it is "programmable to meet the demand". By the way, Ulrich Rohde is not the only super star member of HPSDR. There are several serious industry players who are lurkers. > You might also be up front and tell the folks on an HF Digital forum, > that as of the last ARRL review the turn around times of your system > makes it usable for ARQ modes at the least. Like 170 ms versus 24 ms > for the Icom ProIII. Likewise that the group delay of the software > filters requires reducing the number of taps from around 2000 to 200+, > thereby reducing their effectivness for digital communications. You > might mentionthe ARRL tests showed the SSB carrier suppression and > opposite SSB suppression on TX is only 53 dB vs the ProIII's at >70 > dB. Again, over my lifetime, I have learned that not everything comes > up roses. Products require compromises and you need to be up front > with the pimples. > Isn't it great that we are doing a software defined radio? I love what Willi Rempel said. "Each new day and each new software release is like a brand new radio". That may be an exaggeration but in this case, that is not far off. The radio switching times was entirely a software issue AND IS COMPLETELY RESOLVED. I am not happy with all parts of it, but a couple of months of software investigation, badda-bing badda-boom, and you have personally walked into my spider's lair and given me THE PERFECT opportunity to make my point. The radio switches in 5 ms from receive to transmit and transmit to receive and in this case, ON CW and digital modes, with a single release of software, it is like a brand new radio. > Lastly, you said "...it is frustrating to me personally that what is > happening right under amateur radio's nose is so badly misunderstood > and insufficiently appreciate. I believe as strongly as I believe I > am typing this note that most of you have purchased your last > conventional HF transceiver because of this work. What vehicle should > I use to scream these roof tops so educated interested people like Jim > can understand how much things are changing?" > > I do understand how things are changing, but I also understand how > they are not changing. A little background. I am a BSEE, and when I > started work at Southwestern Bell Tele. (now AT&T) I was like you and > couldn't believe how backward folks were. How computers should be > changing the world RIGHT NOW. However, I learned there were budgets, > for hardware, software, and most importantly, hiring and training > people. These budgets were limited and controlled how fast things > changed. > I do not believe people are backwards. I believe that a lousy job is being done of telling the narrative we should be shouting from the roof tops. We need "market place penetration" in the market place of ideas and beliefs. I hope we cross that chasm soon. > Now some marketing/product advice. --- snip ---- > > You want to multiply sales. Integrate it all, screen included. Make > it absolutely as small as possible, i.e. portable with a handle. Make > it run entirely off of 12 volts. Forget hard drives, find as small as > OS as possible and use a flash drive that can be exchanged for > upgrades. Make every file read only. Let the experimenters/devlopers > that know how use a regular computer and make the files writable. > > You have a decent product but so was the Edsel, betamax vcr, etc. You > have to find out how to make people want it, not bemoan the fact that > you built it but they won't come! > The HPSDR Odyssey is an SDR transceiver base that people can use as a component in their efforts. It will consume well under 1 watt and provide 10.7 MHz IF in and out. Gerald and Flex are designing new radios. I believe they will be introducing those things you are asking for. As I said before, I am neither an employee or a stock holder in Flex and I do not speak for them. I do speak for the open source software project of which I am a leading contributor. It is the single best business decision Gerald made. > Jim > WA0LYK > > Thank you for a stimulating thread. 73's Bob N4HY -- AMSAT Director and VP Engineering. Member: ARRL, AMSAT-DL, TAPR, Packrats, NJQRP, QRP ARCI, QCWA, FRC. ARRL SDR WG Chair "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." - Einstein Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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