PR: HRD Press Release

Three Hams Purchase HRD Suite Source and Rights

Tampa FL, St. Paul MN, Pittsburgh PA - September 19, 2011 - Mike Carper (WA9PIE), Randy Gawtry (K0CBH) and Rick Ruhl (W4PC) have acquired the source and rights to the Ham Radio Deluxe suite of software. The trio plans to continue the improving the best ham radio package available.

“Simon has done a fantastic job with this software. His vision for integrating rig control, rotor control, logging, digital modes, and satellite operations into a single integrated feature-rich software suite has captivated the ham radio community. We’d like to see this product continue in a way that respects the hard work put into this package by Simon and others,” said Mike Carper. “Maintaining that vision, while delivering timely fixes and feature enhancements in the future, will be the number one priority.”

“After many years writing the HRD software it’s necessary to take a break and hand the whole project over to another team,” said Simon Brown (HB9DRV). “The support effort required has become more than I can realistically manage – with many thousands of users, new radios and other hardware appearing all the time and unexpected changes to the infrastructure used by HRD such as QRZ.com I no longer have any time at all for other projects. As some of you will know I have formed a company SDR-RADIO.com GmbH and am now working in the Software Defined Radio arena with RFspace. This is the technology of the future; a future which I want a part of. In 2012 I plan to return to England and get back on the air, something I haven’t done much during the last 25 years.”

The trio is in the process of building a development environment for HRD and plans to begin by addressing some of the bugs in the existing “To Do List” for an upcoming 5.1 release. The 5.1 release will be made available at no charge to registered users when completed.

All three principals have more than 25 years of experience with radio data communications. Rick Ruhl is the president of W4PC Software, Inc. whose products include the PakRatt, PKTerm and Radio Operations Center software suites. Randy Gawtry is the president of Timewave Technology Inc. whose products include the PK and DSP families of data controllers and other commercial data products. Mike Carper is an experienced Fortune 500 technology executive, educator, and featured speaker in the areas of wireless technologies and IT Service Management.

WA9PIE is on the web at http://www.wa9pie.net/hamradio

Timewave Technology is on the web at http://www.timewave.com

W4PC Software is on the web at http://www.w4pcsoftware.com

 

Hopefully they will support new equipment.
It would be nice if they made it open source software (but unfortunately unlikely) which would rapidly cause improvements and additional support.

 

The end of an era. HRD will now cost an arm and a leg. Time to find a new package or stop using data modes

 

The Hand Writing is on the Wall.

 

What does this mean? I don't recall having to register in the past.

 

You didn't have to register in the past, it was optional. Now, not so optional. To register, in the HRD (radio control program), click on Help > Registration > Register Now. Fill in the info (be sure to select your country in the drop-down as many geographically challenged folks take the defalt of Afghanistan), take the defalt for Connection, and click on the Register button.

This automagically registers you for all the modules in the HRD Suite and is Totally FREE....at the moment.


For the record, I'm not involved in any way w/the new owner group.

 

Mine shows as being registered in 2008. Whenever I used it I got a popup checking to see if there was an update. Click HELP and look for REGISTRATION. It just asks for Callsign and Country but I don't know if the update server will still work now as it shows Simons webpage as the server.

73 Phil. VK6ADF

 

I guess "respect" in this case means lotta dollars I would be surprised if it is released with anything much new if it is just same old program warmed up then I do not think it would be worth it,maybe the "registration"is to prevent users from updating or getting the program while it is still free that is if they didnt already change it to regstration required to download it now . I mean they would sure lose a lot of money if they permitted users to continue free wouldnt they?
I suspect acess to downloads will be tightly controlled, mustn let a penny get away,I guess repackaging an old product can be considered a new release but if it is I for one AIN'T buying it I will continue to use my copy of it either way, that reminds me, don't buy certain products if this goes sour,cant encourage this kind of opportunism can we? I wonder how many who donated and gave time to this formerly free program will maybe want thier investment back I would feel had if I were to donate money to soemthign that turned out to be very much for profit then all of those who gave time or money might just begin to try and get some of it back since this was not kept free as was said when the donations came in.
Either way it makes a person want to return to the good old days of just paper, pencil and rig , doesnt it? 73 Michelle, just my two cents worth not concerned if it is taken out of context

 

While it would certainly be nice to see HRD remain free, reality suggests otherwise. But, I have no problem paying a reasonable price if we see routine updates. A *BIG* problem with HRD over the past couple of years or so was the lack of updates. Simon clearly felt the future was in SDR and naturally pursued that. We *ALL* have to make a living! I can't even begin to think about all the time and effort it took to code HRD and Simon still provided it for free. At some point, reality kicks in!

There are a number of minor issues with V5.0 that need fixing. To think those fixes should come without a price is dreaming. This is a great piece of software and I'll happily pay a bit to get those fixes. The idea we somehow deserve those fixes for free is hardly justifiable.

In fact, if they simply allow email/SMS notification of DX Spots while logged into ANY cluster node other than Simon's - I'd pay for that RIGHT NOW!! NOTHING worse than being constantly notified of spots by Europeans when NA isn't hearing anything.

But, that's the start of another forum! HRD Fixes!!

..............Bob

 

FLDIGI is the original of the open source that Simon borrowed to create DM780. Its better anyway. DM780 was just an attempt at a pretty wrapper around the FLDigi decoder.
http://www.w1hkj.com/

http://www.dxwatch.com/ does that and more BETTER than HRD did.

 

Well, hopefully they can fix the program. It hasn't worked right since the last update(March) for me. Also maybe they could work on the remote operation portion of HRD. Could be made much more simple.

 

Deja vu from September 12th. How many times does this "infomercial" need to run as "headline news"?

 

The fact it was freeware was the main reason people were attracted to it......It will be a crying shame to see it go into payware as this software was written by hams for hams to enjoy the hobby further...My thanks go out to Simon and the team for all their efforts

 

Wait... It is going to go pay? There is something wrong with that.
If a program is pay for the start, its not as bad as a free program becoming pay.

 

You may think your going to get away with using an older version but I would bet my Left Nutt that after 3-6 months the whole logging and cluster module will stop working again because of a QRZ change and that will force many to pony up the bucks. So sad, I see a future of HRD becoming pay as you go! Buy a key for the Main prg then anty up more for DM-780, then more for logging key. First code laid down will be software security. I already donated $30, I am not happy. He should have made it open source considering all the donations that were given.