Very neat! I’m consistently surprised with how the last 20 years of software and hardware improvement has only barely made it to amateur/cb radio.
8kb firmware limits. Noise reduction circuits that still do the same amount of nothing they did when implemented in the 70s. Flaky serial interfaces that need various cables and custom drivers for every make and model. CBs using the same 70s form factor and still costing $150-300 for the cheapest with SSB, which is currently the only modulation worth using unless you want to listen to a bunch of old guys in Atlanta yelling gibberish sunrise to sunset.
You can argue there’s no market, but put even a crappy CB into an enclosure that would fit most phone mounts, package it with a decent magnet antenna, and not price it as if you have no competition (because you won’t)… and the sales would be incredible. The UVK8 has non-hams buying a bunch because they’re cheap and only barely customizable, just to receive and not transmit.
Cobra, Uniden et al haven’t innovated since the 90s, but people are still buying them.
Most modern amateur rigs are now SDR based.
The big brands (YAESU, ICOM etc) seem to lean into SDR as QOL improvements (large bandwidth real time spectrum analysers to see what's going on across the whole band, Digital Noise Réduction that really works, etc), while preserving the heavily appreciated look and feel of a classic rig.
The Chinese SDR-based rigs have more unique interfaces, and there are many to choose from.
It's worth bearing in mind that most "Classic" desktop rigs output 100W, across 1MHz - 50MHz for HF - this needs to be supported by components that take up place.
Devices that operate at 10W are much smaller (and are typically chained with a larger indépendant amp..)
They have but few people want to buy it. There are some nice SDR rugs but no one wants to spend the $1000+ for it. I am finding my now that tech people with more disposable income coming into the hobby is helping
I was looking at the KV4P project, and that feels like the future to me.
You're already carrying a device with a big touchscreen and a big enough CPU to run a very flexible and customizable UI. Let the software people handle this, and turn the RF stuff into a dongle.
I suspect the existing radio firms wouldn't like that. Even if the Icom or Yaesu dongle performs better than the Baofeng one, it would be difficult to gatekeep expensive products by user interface design and capabilities anymore. The $30 radio is no longer limited by having to cram everything into a 2-line, 12-character display and having to scroll through 40 menus.
UV-K5 does cost 1/10 to 1/20 as much as the handhelds did 20years ago.
CB's seem niche and to this day the handhelds don't seem to go much below 100usd in price. Just not enough volume I guess.
The vast majority of the world's electronics run on 1960s and 70s technology, it's not just ham radio.
Bloody nobody cares about bleeding silicon from Intel (or TSMC for that matter), everyone cares whether Analog Devices is still making that one chip they released to market 50 years ago (or if they have a drop-in replacement if not).
And just so people don't get the wrong idea: It's not that improvements are shunned. It's that recertifying with new and improved advancements costs time and money that nobody wants to justify.
The new shiny hasn't be properly battle tested. When latest silicon from Intel/TSMC has been around for 50-60 years, we can talk. It's also much easier to repair analog equipment in the field with whatever you've got laying around than digital equipment. That's part of the charm/allure of steam punk
It's also much easier to repair analog equipment in the field with whatever you've got laying around than digital equipment.
That... depends. Analog equipment tends to have much, much higher component counts than digital equipment, making it much more difficult to troubleshoot defective components (try measuring a capacitor with a resistor in parallel), and the skillset needed to troubleshoot analog vs digital is also massively different.
On the other hand obtaining spare parts for analog circuits is going to be easier in a few decades than it will be for FPGAs and other semiconductors, and completely forget about ASICs.
I'm a one-dude-in-the-basement freelancer and about 5 years ago I was asked to build a device that would measure a slowly changing signal and use it to modulate a 5kHz input, and generate a differential, bipolar output. Basically, read the position feedback on a machine tool and generate output that looked like a resolver.
I did it half in code, half in hardware. The hardware was pricy, but it was the easiest way to get it done in low quantity.
Fast forward a couple years and it's now cheap enough to do 90% of all of that in code. I could probably cut my BOM by 60%, but at low production volumes there's no compelling reason to redesign the system. So, for as long as my customer wants these, I'll build them exactly the same way.
The one that annoys me is handsets using proprietary batteries and charging. I want them to have USB-C port for charging. This came up for me with disasters where it would be easier to use USB power banks than AC chargers or converting 12V.
Some of the Chinese radios are starting to include USB-C port but all the mainstream manufacturers haven't changed. They should could out with new handsets, redesign old ones, or come out with batteries with USB-C ports.
The one that annoys me is handsets using proprietary batteries and charging.
You can squarely blame Japan for that hellscape of a mess.
Nowadays we like egging Apple for their proprietary shenanigans, but they are actually nothing compared to how much hate Japanese companies have for universal, intercompatible standards and how much that mindset has affected electronics at-large to this day from Japan's outsized influence in electronics during the 70s through 90s.
For example, if you have a ham radio transceiver from ICOM you absolutely require ICOM handsets, microphones, speakers, and other accessories for it. Equivalents from another brand like Yaesu or Kenwood will not work, even if the physical connectors are the same because the individual wiring is proprietary.
Some people here might recall Sony only supporting MemoryStick and telling SD cards and CompactFlash to fuck off, ham radio is that but exponentially worse.
The vast majority of the world's electronics run on 1960s and 70s technology, it's not just ham radio.
Yeah it's crazy how little modern tech has made it to different niches. I was looking into metal detecting a few years ago, and there is basically no technology to any of them, even the expensive ones. You'd assume they'd have fancy android powered devices with gps and stuff, but no it's the same basic circuitry they've had for decades.
The base circuitry for detecting metal probably hasn't changed much (at least not for amateur prices), but there are apparently modern metal detectors with app integration and gps and the like: https://apps.apple.com/be/app/go-terrain/id1419674707
Huh. Now you are making me picture a metal detector design with an array of overlapping current loops and a fancy deconvolution software on top that gives you an image (probably very fuzzy but still an image) of what magnetic source its detecting. Could be pretty cool!
I just acquired a Baofeng UV9R-PRO as my first semi-tweakable radio. Seems like a pretty good piece of kit one step up from fixed channel GMRS units. I've been able to learn some basics so far and managed to listen to some local repeater chatter. Also got a kick out of listening to one of our fixed channel GMRS units by looking up the channel frequencies. I haven't (deliberately) pressed the PTT once yet. Seems like just about anything outbound is technically illegal.
Pay $4, install HamStudy on iOS or Android, and/or use the excellent HamStudy.org site for free, run through all the questions until you've been through them all and are consistently scoring 90% on the practice exams, then pay the $35 FCC registration fee plus $15 exam fee to take the exam online, supervised on camera by three already-licensed amateur radio volunteers who are looking forward to cheering your success.
Take the Technician exam to be legal for most of the stuff you can do with your handheld, or if you're feeling ambitious, hit the General one right after that (you can keep going in the same session at no extra charge, but you're just wasting everyone's time if you've not studied at all for the level you're attempting) which will also get you into most of HF (1.8 MHz - 30 MHz).
I eventually did all three (Amateur Extra) so that I could convert it into a full German license (even the German national radio club advised me, a non-German citizen, to do it that way)
Comments
Very neat! I’m consistently surprised with how the last 20 years of software and hardware improvement has only barely made it to amateur/cb radio.
8kb firmware limits. Noise reduction circuits that still do the same amount of nothing they did when implemented in the 70s. Flaky serial interfaces that need various cables and custom drivers for every make and model. CBs using the same 70s form factor and still costing $150-300 for the cheapest with SSB, which is currently the only modulation worth using unless you want to listen to a bunch of old guys in Atlanta yelling gibberish sunrise to sunset.
You can argue there’s no market, but put even a crappy CB into an enclosure that would fit most phone mounts, package it with a decent magnet antenna, and not price it as if you have no competition (because you won’t)… and the sales would be incredible. The UVK8 has non-hams buying a bunch because they’re cheap and only barely customizable, just to receive and not transmit.
Cobra, Uniden et al haven’t innovated since the 90s, but people are still buying them.
Most modern amateur rigs are now SDR based. The big brands (YAESU, ICOM etc) seem to lean into SDR as QOL improvements (large bandwidth real time spectrum analysers to see what's going on across the whole band, Digital Noise Réduction that really works, etc), while preserving the heavily appreciated look and feel of a classic rig.
The Chinese SDR-based rigs have more unique interfaces, and there are many to choose from.
It's worth bearing in mind that most "Classic" desktop rigs output 100W, across 1MHz - 50MHz for HF - this needs to be supported by components that take up place.
Devices that operate at 10W are much smaller (and are typically chained with a larger indépendant amp..)
They have but few people want to buy it. There are some nice SDR rugs but no one wants to spend the $1000+ for it. I am finding my now that tech people with more disposable income coming into the hobby is helping
I was looking at the KV4P project, and that feels like the future to me.
You're already carrying a device with a big touchscreen and a big enough CPU to run a very flexible and customizable UI. Let the software people handle this, and turn the RF stuff into a dongle.
I suspect the existing radio firms wouldn't like that. Even if the Icom or Yaesu dongle performs better than the Baofeng one, it would be difficult to gatekeep expensive products by user interface design and capabilities anymore. The $30 radio is no longer limited by having to cram everything into a 2-line, 12-character display and having to scroll through 40 menus.
UV-K5 does cost 1/10 to 1/20 as much as the handhelds did 20years ago. CB's seem niche and to this day the handhelds don't seem to go much below 100usd in price. Just not enough volume I guess.
Please don't conflate "CB" with amateur radio
When the only difference is regulatory there’s nothing I said that’s not true for both.
The vast majority of the world's electronics run on 1960s and 70s technology, it's not just ham radio.
Bloody nobody cares about bleeding silicon from Intel (or TSMC for that matter), everyone cares whether Analog Devices is still making that one chip they released to market 50 years ago (or if they have a drop-in replacement if not).
And just so people don't get the wrong idea: It's not that improvements are shunned. It's that recertifying with new and improved advancements costs time and money that nobody wants to justify.
The new shiny hasn't be properly battle tested. When latest silicon from Intel/TSMC has been around for 50-60 years, we can talk. It's also much easier to repair analog equipment in the field with whatever you've got laying around than digital equipment. That's part of the charm/allure of steam punk
That... depends. Analog equipment tends to have much, much higher component counts than digital equipment, making it much more difficult to troubleshoot defective components (try measuring a capacitor with a resistor in parallel), and the skillset needed to troubleshoot analog vs digital is also massively different.
On the other hand obtaining spare parts for analog circuits is going to be easier in a few decades than it will be for FPGAs and other semiconductors, and completely forget about ASICs.
It's not even the big guys.
I'm a one-dude-in-the-basement freelancer and about 5 years ago I was asked to build a device that would measure a slowly changing signal and use it to modulate a 5kHz input, and generate a differential, bipolar output. Basically, read the position feedback on a machine tool and generate output that looked like a resolver.
I did it half in code, half in hardware. The hardware was pricy, but it was the easiest way to get it done in low quantity.
Fast forward a couple years and it's now cheap enough to do 90% of all of that in code. I could probably cut my BOM by 60%, but at low production volumes there's no compelling reason to redesign the system. So, for as long as my customer wants these, I'll build them exactly the same way.
The one that annoys me is handsets using proprietary batteries and charging. I want them to have USB-C port for charging. This came up for me with disasters where it would be easier to use USB power banks than AC chargers or converting 12V.
Some of the Chinese radios are starting to include USB-C port but all the mainstream manufacturers haven't changed. They should could out with new handsets, redesign old ones, or come out with batteries with USB-C ports.
You can squarely blame Japan for that hellscape of a mess.
Nowadays we like egging Apple for their proprietary shenanigans, but they are actually nothing compared to how much hate Japanese companies have for universal, intercompatible standards and how much that mindset has affected electronics at-large to this day from Japan's outsized influence in electronics during the 70s through 90s.
For example, if you have a ham radio transceiver from ICOM you absolutely require ICOM handsets, microphones, speakers, and other accessories for it. Equivalents from another brand like Yaesu or Kenwood will not work, even if the physical connectors are the same because the individual wiring is proprietary.
Some people here might recall Sony only supporting MemoryStick and telling SD cards and CompactFlash to fuck off, ham radio is that but exponentially worse.
Yeah it's crazy how little modern tech has made it to different niches. I was looking into metal detecting a few years ago, and there is basically no technology to any of them, even the expensive ones. You'd assume they'd have fancy android powered devices with gps and stuff, but no it's the same basic circuitry they've had for decades.
The base circuitry for detecting metal probably hasn't changed much (at least not for amateur prices), but there are apparently modern metal detectors with app integration and gps and the like: https://apps.apple.com/be/app/go-terrain/id1419674707
Huh. Now you are making me picture a metal detector design with an array of overlapping current loops and a fancy deconvolution software on top that gives you an image (probably very fuzzy but still an image) of what magnetic source its detecting. Could be pretty cool!
I just acquired a Baofeng UV9R-PRO as my first semi-tweakable radio. Seems like a pretty good piece of kit one step up from fixed channel GMRS units. I've been able to learn some basics so far and managed to listen to some local repeater chatter. Also got a kick out of listening to one of our fixed channel GMRS units by looking up the channel frequencies. I haven't (deliberately) pressed the PTT once yet. Seems like just about anything outbound is technically illegal.
Any suggestions as to what I should do next?
Pay $4, install HamStudy on iOS or Android, and/or use the excellent HamStudy.org site for free, run through all the questions until you've been through them all and are consistently scoring 90% on the practice exams, then pay the $35 FCC registration fee plus $15 exam fee to take the exam online, supervised on camera by three already-licensed amateur radio volunteers who are looking forward to cheering your success.
Take the Technician exam to be legal for most of the stuff you can do with your handheld, or if you're feeling ambitious, hit the General one right after that (you can keep going in the same session at no extra charge, but you're just wasting everyone's time if you've not studied at all for the level you're attempting) which will also get you into most of HF (1.8 MHz - 30 MHz).
I eventually did all three (Amateur Extra) so that I could convert it into a full German license (even the German national radio club advised me, a non-German citizen, to do it that way)
Good luck!
If you haven't started studying for your license yet just start it now!
Go ahead and get your tech license :)
Get your tech! You can probably learn from the flash cards in an hour or less.
What're they doing that for?