Slashdot Mirror
Shortwave Radio and The PC
An anonymous reader writes "Ars Technica has an indepth guide on the Ten Tec RX-320, a shortwave radio receiver that connects to the PC and is controlled by software (both Linux and Windows). The article goes into depth on different high frequency modes, broadcast shortwave, and even a bit on ham radio and new digital modes."
Yeah, why stream higher quality stuff through the Net at higher quality when you can have to mess around with more hardware, have a smaller user base, etc..
A friend of mine from college is currently in the Peace Corps in the South Pacific.
She is only able to check her email around once a month or less, and the only telephone is a multi-dollar-per-minute satellite phone.
She is never more than a day behind on world news thanks to BBC shortwave.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
A couple of things here - (I'm a ham for over 25 years too, i.e. since tubes were the "hot" technology ;-) PC's CAN AND DO interfere with radios. The FCC requirements in effect today help alot, but you can still have cables, etc from the puter that cause grief.
Also - the author states that ham radio isn't dead. I'd counter that it is indeed sick at this point. The average age of amateurs is constantly rising. There is almost NO new blood coming into the hobby. When I first got licensed, I joined a ham club called the West Valley ARC (West San Fernando Valley) and the average age of the members was perhaps 20. Unfortunately, when I go to a ham club meeting, all I see is folks older than myself..and I'm an OLD FART! (For those not in the know, Old Fart is a technical term...means ancient as the hills).
The Internet and todays communications technology has taken all the magic out of ham radio. I don't see the genie being put back in the bottle easily either.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
The pleasure of listening to SW can be increased considerably with the use of the PC. You can download extensive lists of station broadcast schedules and easily program the radio to try all the known frequencies for a particular broadcaster before settling on the best one. If I want to listen to the BBC, I can quickly pull up all the current BBC freqs and try them all. One day I may get a better signal from the Caribbean, the next I get a better signal from Singapore. This setup makes it easy to try them all.
It's also great for identifying those rare catches when you're really DXing. Push a button and the software tells you which stations are scheduled to be broadcasting on that freq at the moment. It's nothing you couldn't do by flipping through books and pages of notes, but it's a whole lot easier and faster.
There are also signal processing programs that can clean up noisy signals that the typical notch filter and passband tuning just can't handle. You're not going to get that kind of processing without passing the signal through a computer. And as long as you're using the computer anyway, might as well control the radio with it.