67Dart273
Well-Known Member
Just thinking the other day. I'm not very active on amateur radio anymore, but I first got interested in radio/ electronics around 1960, a bit more serious around 62-63, and got my amateur novice license when I was a sophmore/ junior in about 65.
I've seen electronics go from vacuum tubes, to barely working germanium transistors, to better and more compact transistor equipment, to ic's, and to tremendous miniaturization, and now, we have radios controlled by software, known as SDR or "Software Defined Radio" and I admit I know not how this is really done. It is for sure a new age so to say, in radio. And of course digitized modulation, which to me (for hobby and amateurs) is a real PITA. This is because you really cannot "build it yourself." The "things" that make the digi work is licensed software, and you really can't just "buy" that and also there are several different, incompatible digital schemes, meaning, a radio with one type of digi modulation cannot talk to another which is different.
I've seen electronics go from vacuum tubes, to barely working germanium transistors, to better and more compact transistor equipment, to ic's, and to tremendous miniaturization, and now, we have radios controlled by software, known as SDR or "Software Defined Radio" and I admit I know not how this is really done. It is for sure a new age so to say, in radio. And of course digitized modulation, which to me (for hobby and amateurs) is a real PITA. This is because you really cannot "build it yourself." The "things" that make the digi work is licensed software, and you really can't just "buy" that and also there are several different, incompatible digital schemes, meaning, a radio with one type of digi modulation cannot talk to another which is different.
