Using Amateur Radio Digital Modes

Thank You!

Thank you to all those who attended the Using Amateur Radio Digital Modes workshop at HOPE XV. I hope the workshop met your expectation. I'm interested in hearing your feedback on what you liked, disliked, wanted to see more or less of, etc via EMAIL, my EMAIL address is noted further down this page.

This page is now an archive of the workshop.

Abstract

You want to play with wireless communications and heard getting an Amateur Radio license expands the spectrum available to you to transmit on? That’s great but experimenting is all you want to do and any communication with another “ham” you would like to keep it “short and sweet” and to the experiment at hand. Playing with the various digital modes of communications used in Amateur Radio can be a good starting point to ease into the hobby both cheaply and at a comfort zone of human interaction desired.

This workshop will introduce various digital mode communications used in Amateur Radio using a simple setup they can build with a laptop, open source software, and around $65 USD in hardware. Note the following:

• The activities being performed during this workshop require a FCC Amateur Radio Operator license.
• Students are expected to have an FCC issued Amateur Radio Operator license and purchase the hardware listed at this Amazon Idea List link prior to the workshop.
• Insure your Baofeng UV-5R is FULLY CHARGED PRIOR to the workshop. It supposedly takes FIVE HOURS to re-charge a dead battery with the standard charger though personal experience has been much shorter.
• We will have a couple of piece of extra radio equipment for use by those without an FCC issued Amateur Radio operator license under the supervision of an FCC issued Amateur Radio operator serving as control operator per FCC regulations.

Presentation

Here is the lecture material that will be referenced in the workshop. Feel free to familiarize yourself with it prior to the workshop.

Lab Exercises

While the software used in the workshop is cross-platform, all lab exercises have been documented and tested with Windows and Linux (Debian variant) platforms only. Mac OSX testing was performed but not documented. Any OS specifics and/or exceptions are called out in the labs. Lab material details will be posted on day of workshop.

• Lab 1: Setting up the Radio
• Lab 2: Setting up the USB Audio
• Lab 3: Set up Digital Mode Software
• Lab 4: First Contact
• Lab 5: Experimentation

Want to host your own workshop?

I've created an archive of all the source documents used to create the workshop. You are welcome to use it as source for your own workshop.

Questions

Any questions can be directed to joe AT cupano DOT com

73,

- Joe, NE2Z