--- Ron Notarius WN3VAW <wn3vaw@fyi.net> wrote:
> Interesting notion. CW is alive and well, and still
> a significant portion
> of HF activity. Yet most (overseas) manufacturers
> would assume that most
> amateurs have little or no interest in it?
>
> IF that assertion is more-or-less true, it really
> makes you wonder about
> many of the marketing decisions being made overseas
> on behalf of amateurs
> worldwide. After all, one would think that before
> marketing to amateurs,
> one would try and research what they would buy...
> wouldn't one?
That is precisely one of the reasons why I would like
to see a more open architecture to radio design. No
one group of engineers anywhere in the world can
possibly know what everyone of us out here in ham
radio land could possibly want to do with our radios.
No matter what they decide to do functionally it will
be a compromise for somebody. Then it is up to their
marketing departments to try and convince us why their
design decisions are the right ones for what we want
to do with our radios, frankly that is backwards.
So in reality they should be less concerned with
trying to design the 'be all end all' radio but rather
be designing for maximum end user flexibility along
with the best possible analog/RF performance. Once the
high performance analog/RF pieces are built then the
rest of the radio is more or less just software, -
with or without traditional knobs and buttons panels.
If the RF hardware is designed correctly it will be
able to handle the rapid RX/TX transitions that QSK CW
requires. If the software pieces are open source, at
least partially, then the manufacturer themselves do
not need to be concerned with writing all of it. Or
more importantly having to "guess" what the end users
really want. Let small groups of purpose focussed
software developers create the required variations to
fill those niche interests.
That is also why I am so keen on heavy computer (as
PC) integration, - along with that whole Ethernet
discussion from a few days ago.
Duane
N9DG
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