VARA & VARA-FM irritate me enough to motivate me to spend hours studying OFDM theory and technology. As a "sound card" mode I know no-one who as managed to get VARA's advertised speed or close to it in my area. Closed-source, Windows-only, fee based... What would really make a difference to amateur radio data communications is I/Q inputs and outputs on the amateur mass-market transceivers. That would free us from the tyranny of baseband sound card modes, wasted bandwidth, and the accompanying pitiful data rates, and open things up for some real experimentation with sound cards, which can easily manage 48kHz bandwidth (what the military uses for HF data communications), and with a bit more money go to 96, 192 and beyond.
I think GNU is good for experimentation, but for a production system there are better choices, I think - even C. It should start with a very focused communications API for efficient protocols that can adapt to the different propagations conditions amateurs encounter.
Chris - Godspeed on your effort and motivations to create a functional equivalent to VARA FM. As I've tried to explain, VARA FM seems to me to be a masterful integration job of multiple modulation modes and methods, but there's no real "magic" there other than "it just works" and it's usable by those not necessarily highly skilled in using data modes. There's ample talent "out there in Amateur Radio", but what I've heard from those with the requisite skills is that they're fully occupied (and paid well) in their day job hours (and then some) and in their personal time they don't want to work on "same thing as day job, only not paid and poorly appreciated". As in "I found a bug / I want a new feature and why haven't you fixed it / added it already?!?!?!". (I don't blame them.)
Don't count on me to compete with VARA anytime soon. I'm spending the time to study OFDM to understand it and maybe experiment a bit, but I doubt I'll ever try to do it myself or lead such a project, but it is a very interesting field for experimentation. Fortunately we have hams like David Rowe and Joe Taylor keeping the spirit alive. I agree with you that the people who know this stuff at professional levels are most often gainfully employed.
VARA & VARA-FM irritate me enough to motivate me to spend hours studying OFDM theory and technology. As a "sound card" mode I know no-one who as managed to get VARA's advertised speed or close to it in my area. Closed-source, Windows-only, fee based... What would really make a difference to amateur radio data communications is I/Q inputs and outputs on the amateur mass-market transceivers. That would free us from the tyranny of baseband sound card modes, wasted bandwidth, and the accompanying pitiful data rates, and open things up for some real experimentation with sound cards, which can easily manage 48kHz bandwidth (what the military uses for HF data communications), and with a bit more money go to 96, 192 and beyond.
I think GNU is good for experimentation, but for a production system there are better choices, I think - even C. It should start with a very focused communications API for efficient protocols that can adapt to the different propagations conditions amateurs encounter.
73,
Chris
73,
CHris
Chris - Godspeed on your effort and motivations to create a functional equivalent to VARA FM. As I've tried to explain, VARA FM seems to me to be a masterful integration job of multiple modulation modes and methods, but there's no real "magic" there other than "it just works" and it's usable by those not necessarily highly skilled in using data modes. There's ample talent "out there in Amateur Radio", but what I've heard from those with the requisite skills is that they're fully occupied (and paid well) in their day job hours (and then some) and in their personal time they don't want to work on "same thing as day job, only not paid and poorly appreciated". As in "I found a bug / I want a new feature and why haven't you fixed it / added it already?!?!?!". (I don't blame them.)
Don't count on me to compete with VARA anytime soon. I'm spending the time to study OFDM to understand it and maybe experiment a bit, but I doubt I'll ever try to do it myself or lead such a project, but it is a very interesting field for experimentation. Fortunately we have hams like David Rowe and Joe Taylor keeping the spirit alive. I agree with you that the people who know this stuff at professional levels are most often gainfully employed.