Ham Radio Deluxe Version 6.4.0.777 Released with Discount

Great, we really need a Linux version as many are leaving the Windows Camp now that Windows 10 is basically spyware. HRD is the only item I run in Windows on my ham radio laptop now as I moved FLdigi-Flamp etc plus Gpredict all to Linux Mint when MS pushed the 2 hour updates to users this summer with no warning, some during field day. I would love to get rid of the dual boot. I even got those to run on a Asus Tinker board running ARM Linux for a $89 brick computer in the upstairs ham shack.

I am going to update my HRD today, thanks !

Art

 

Rather than dual-boot... have you considered using VirtualBox so that you can run your Windows apps while Linux is running? I do this with my daughter's Mac to test things and it works just fine. (Of course, you still need a Windows session running in VirtualBox... but it allows you to run Windows apps on a machine that's running Linux as it's primary OS.)

 

Great work by HRD.
As a customer, it is assuring and even better to see a company OWN the past and go above and beyond to avoid the mistakes made and be attentive of the customers for the future.

Kudos to you WA9IE and the HRD team.

 

Just updated it last night and during the update, a pop-up window came up asking to shut down remote server for the update to continue.

After updating both server and client machines, the remote service still works fine. I think you guy's nailed it.

I know remote operation isn't for everybody but I travel for a living and when I feel like playing radio, I like to use my home station remotely and the remote server works well for this so I have the cluster and logging program available remotely too.

 

As a new ham, it seems to be a pretty good product.

 

WOW, wake up guys. I don't work for HRD and I am not paid to promote them. That said, I am a paying customer.
In the old "Rick's Dictatorship" ways, support was fairly sarcastic to me, and generally not super helpful with what seemed like obvious support requests. And the people you could reach and interact with were the support staff. And there were routine stories of bad things being done to customers, and bad code to help them do that. You could not easily reach a principal of the company (nor would you want to, apparently).

In the new order, since Mike took over in January, you not only get more helpful support, but you can reach Mike directly with questions or requests or even opinions. In the past, Rick never replied to anything. Here is Mike, replying to ALL of you, no matter positive or negative feedback, because he cares, he wants to build (rebuild) a business based on respect, value, and helping customers. He found and hired some technical people, and has
rolled out 7 new fix releases since January. Even though Laurie (JTalert) will not talk to Mike, when HRD learned
that a recent update broke something with JTalert logging a week ago, Mike's team fixed it in 3 days or less.
With Mike jumping directly into forums apologizing and repeatedly offering to work with Laurie.

If you can't see how HUGELY different that makes the current HRD company, I give up. It's night and day different.
Mike is doing all the right things, the things that made many companies succeed in this country.
Build and promote a product. Fix customer complaints/bugs. Listen to customer feedback.
Interact with your customers. Repeatedly try to reach out and patch things up with the JTalert author.
Don't quit trying.

Mike is working so hard at all the above that he deserves nothing but success. Those attributes do make
for good companies.

 

Condescending comments noted. You and other qrz.com denizens might know all the details but lots of us don't read everything there is here including what changed to rescue what was described as a poor customer support system for which HRD was known.

If it is better, that great. But saying something is "completely different" to me or anyone who doesn't follow their daily progress is meaningless unless we know how and why.

 

I agree with everything you said. Rick messed things up pretty bad with Laurie, and I don't know if that relationship is going to be fixed.

I'm going to say something really controversial.

Rick kept saying he was going to build JT65 into DM-780, which is never going to happen, because WSJT-X is GPLv3 and can't use the source code in commercial software - which I never even thought a good idea, because you are always a step behind Joe and company.

Don't throw eggs - because I love JTAlert - but everything that it does is right in HRD Logbook's wheelhouse. It's basically DXCluster functionality, but based based on what call signs get decoded by WSJT-X instead of Cluster Spots. The Worked Status, Award Information, callsign lookup. It's pretty much already there.

I really think HRD Logbook could easily do everything JTAlert does, and would be one less application to keep up with. Heresy, I know, but if I was looking at adding a feature @WA9PIE , with JT65/FT8 being one of the most popular things going right now I would think about it, especially considering the position that JTAlert isn't going to support HRD 6.x going forward.

 

Don, Sorry, no harm intended. I wrongly assumed that people posting here might already be an HRD and/or JTalert user, and might have previously worked with tech support, vs. working with them this year. Good point. I guess I am a heavy user of both HRD and JT-65 and JTalert, so happen to read multiple forums, articles, and post questions in various groups for both products. It was wrong of me to assume all other HRD users do the same.

Cheers,

Neal

 

Couldn't the JT-65 protocol be built from scratch into DM-780? The WSJT-X code itself probably can't be used without open-sourcing DM-780, but that's just the code, not the mode itself.

 

Yes, I'm pretty sure that the JT65 protocol could be written from scratch - but that would be infinitely harder to do. Not to mention the base code in DM-780 (if you look at the help/about) is fldigi. I could be mistaken, but they probably have no experience coding a protocol from scratch.

 

Isn't that already GPL?

 

Tom (and others)... let me fill in a couple blanks here...

Regarding coding the JT-65 protocol (or FT8... or others)... yes, we could certainly do that. The specs are published. We could build it from scratch. But to the point... this area of digital modes is evolving rather rapidly. Can we keep up with creating these new modes? Probably not. How many of them stick? Not sure... impossible to tell. Would we code some that never catch on? Probably.

For what I'm about to say, I could be a semi-uninformed. I'm not a developer... not good at reading code... and I wasn't directly involved in this when it was going on, but... We (HRD Software) never intended to include WSJT-X... or Dr. Taylor's software into DM-780. We were looking at the specs and trying to build a software modem from scratch so that we could include JT65/JT9 in DM-780. We did have Dr. Taylor's code (which is publicly available, and not in C++ as far as I know) to look at as a reference to understand the specs in some cases, but we were building it in C++ from scratch. The GUI was created - from scratch - to mimic the look of WSJT (I think). But when someone <nameless> saw the demo... and because it 'looked' very similar... there was a strong negative reaction (I'm told. I wasn't there at the time.) [I don't think anyone can "license" the way something "looks."]

The reason why I raise this is... the point made regarding GPLv3 is valid. And we're certainly not going to violate any licensing agreements. If we add something like this... we'll build them from scratch.

On your point of heresy... you've heard "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." I suppose the inverse is true. But it's absolutely important to me that our company and our software supports open standards of interconnect with other 3rd party programs. If we weren't talking about JT-Alert... we could be talking about N1MM (where similar bridges were burned). I'm a "bridge-builder"... not a "bridge-burner." [Caveat - yes... I have absolutely flown off-the-handle with someone here on QRZ before. I was wrong... and I deeply regret it. Mea culpa. It was an unusual event driven by unrelated matters. It won't happen again... and I've apologized for it. I know my faults.]

Lastly, N6YFM didn't intend any disrespect. Much of the ground he covered in his post was a reaction to much of this having been covered previously. Covering this over-and-over used to frustrate some folks... but I'm happy to tell our story about how we're reinventing ourselves as often as folks want to hear it. It's otherwise easy to say that "nothing has changed", unless you have enough information to suggest otherwise.

Mike, WA9PIE

 

re: fldigi

Right... that's why we are required to include the source code for DM-780 with our deployments.

 

Theoretically, could something similar be done to allow you to absorb key portions of WSJT-X to support the JT modes?