AmateurRadio.com

Last night was club night. Its a good chance to catch up in person with the local hams and exchange bits of useful information. Normally how to fix the things I have broken, which seems to be quite a few things at present including 3 bikes, but that’s another story.

Kevin, M0KHZ came along with the view of giving us an understanding of where the Hermes High Performance Software Defined Radio (HPSDR) is. He started with a brief history which explained for us lesser mortals how the project got started and how the project team got to where they are today.

The prototype that was on display at Dayton and Friedrichshafen was fired up and Kevin showed us how the rig could be controlled over wifi and the potential of Hermes to take SDR to the next level and then further. Even though Kevin was tight lipped I got the impression that this was not the end of development

The detail is way over my head and the likelihood of me understanding these concepts fully is fairly slim but it doesn’t stop me wanting to get my paws on one. Needless to say I have approached the local financier / XYL who was less than interested so there’s more ground work needed there. The impression I got was that although there is a fairly full ‘expression of interest’ list at HamSDR (you’ll need to log in to add your name to the list) the commit to buy list isn’t yet up and orders are not likely to be taken until September. Plenty of time to save up.

SDR doesn’t fill everyone with the same excitement as it does me but its fair to say that whatever your stance you can’t fault this small project team for their dedication and know how as well as doing this not for commercial gain.