2024-06-14 — The Innovator’s Dilemma Applied to Amateur Radio Industry, Commentary on What Stalls Amateur Radio Development?, Ashhar Farhan VU2ESE Joins ARDC Board, FreeDV Running Natively on sBitx
Farhan is truly a gem and his wife is so kind. His greatest talent is being able to understand hardware R&D which should be our greatest area of development at ARDC. There is only so much that funding emcomm trailers can do for ham radio… we need new things for hams to tinker with, experiment on, build and hack. Farhan has this down to an art form.
Ria - I could not agree more strongly that ARDC's priority should be funding the Non Recurring Engineering necessary for new Amateur Radio projects and products. R&D for HF seems to be a solved problem, seemingly easy to design and manufacture for frequencies below 50 MHz. But Amateur Radio designers really seem to struggle to develop projects and products for > 50 MHz, requiring professional expertise and better tools, and fewer available components. I remember talking to a vendor that makes 222-225 MHz gear and it took them a year of lead time to get a particular radio back into production. So yes, I hope that the ARDC Board as a whole will feel the same way and put out RFPs for such projects and earmark some grant funds for that; similar to the way that DARPA and NSF put out RFPs for targeted development like agile radio systems, self-navigating vehicles and robots that can handle the same kind of terrain challenges (stairs) as humans do. With ARDCs requirement of public access for such work, I think that would pay huge dividends into Amateur Radio.
Semi-Official Gathering: The possibilities are limited, especially for "physical" gatherings. There might be chances for a part of the audience at large events. For June next year I could try to get a room during Ham Radio, here in Germany.
Video conferencing has severe limitations: No personal contact, only one should talk at a time.
Farhan is truly a gem and his wife is so kind. His greatest talent is being able to understand hardware R&D which should be our greatest area of development at ARDC. There is only so much that funding emcomm trailers can do for ham radio… we need new things for hams to tinker with, experiment on, build and hack. Farhan has this down to an art form.
Ria - I could not agree more strongly that ARDC's priority should be funding the Non Recurring Engineering necessary for new Amateur Radio projects and products. R&D for HF seems to be a solved problem, seemingly easy to design and manufacture for frequencies below 50 MHz. But Amateur Radio designers really seem to struggle to develop projects and products for > 50 MHz, requiring professional expertise and better tools, and fewer available components. I remember talking to a vendor that makes 222-225 MHz gear and it took them a year of lead time to get a particular radio back into production. So yes, I hope that the ARDC Board as a whole will feel the same way and put out RFPs for such projects and earmark some grant funds for that; similar to the way that DARPA and NSF put out RFPs for targeted development like agile radio systems, self-navigating vehicles and robots that can handle the same kind of terrain challenges (stairs) as humans do. With ARDCs requirement of public access for such work, I think that would pay huge dividends into Amateur Radio.
Semi-Official Gathering: The possibilities are limited, especially for "physical" gatherings. There might be chances for a part of the audience at large events. For June next year I could try to get a room during Ham Radio, here in Germany.
Video conferencing has severe limitations: No personal contact, only one should talk at a time.