United States Air Force Military Affiliate Radio System "Providing the reins of command in emergencies"

This forum is dedicated to new (and not so new) technology that is now available or will be available in the not so distant future. Members interested in any or all of the technologies are invited to contribute to this forum by sending me an Email or posting their information on the 1S1 Members Only bulletin board.

If you have been associated with the amateur radio world for any length of time you probably recall the “old days” when AM was king and tubes ruled. Power was the way to go if you wanted DX and the ability to drown out interference. That “KLUNK” sound when someone keyed up their rig was so cool. Then along came suppressed carrier, DSB and SSB and everything started to change. When relatively inexpensive computers became available the experimenters went to work and it wasn’t long before we were hearing a multitude of new words and acronym’s representing communications modes that had only .existed in the comic strips.

FNpsk, DIGTRX, ALE, Mil-STD 188, DQFSK, DVHF. These are only a small number of acronym’s and abbreviations that are heard these days. What in the world does DQFSK or FNpsk mean? Very generally we are moving away from analog communications on the ham bands to digital modes. Why? In layman’s terms, one word: reliability. In the analog world, which we are used to, we tolerate noise, interference and all of the often aggravating aspects of HF communications. Moving to the digital world means we can eliminate almost all of this aggravation and improve reliability to an unheard of level.

If you have ever experienced some of the HF digital modes available with a computer soundcard and programs like MixW, you know what this means. MT-63, for instance, has proven itself to be much superior to PACKET or PACTOR in almost all aspects. But MT-63 is only a small part of the tip of the digital iceberg. DVHF or Digital Voice on HF is here and commercially available. Almost no ambient noise, FM quality, low power on HF with long haul possible when you don’t even hear signals on the band? It’s being done as I write. Check out WinDrm and DRMDV, for an example; listen to the "phone-like" quality of digital voice. Want to send a pamplhet or small book, several hundred pages, then DigTrx or EasyPal Lite, are examples of raising SSTV software that allow you to send large amounts of data, accurately and extremely fast. ALE, Automatic Link Establishment, is certainly a raising technology and when coupled with digital modes such as MT-63, DVHF, DIGTRX, represents the difference between spark-gap and SSB. If you are interested in ALE contact AFN1AL here.

Have I peaked your interest? I hope so. Below I’ve listed some of the links associated with digital modes, but I think it would be much more interesting to hear from our members that are directly involved with the move to digital communications. Tell us about the good, the bad and technical aspects that you have experienced first hand. Let us in on some of the new technologies that you are aware of.