Issue #42: Traits of Our Radio Innovators

Please join us for a discussion about amateur radio innovation, where it has come from in the past and where it might be going in the future. Are there certain traits or mindsets that are present in those who have revolutionized the ARS? This issue features both historical and current radio hero's and how they've managed to get past stumbling blocks or build on their concepts into viable products. Click here to read the story, or post your commentary below. Thanks, Dave W7DGJ

 

I believe that hams by and large are resistant to innovation unless it's backwards compatible with what they already do. But unexplored are much of our VHF/UHF spectrum. Satellite comms also have a lot of potential, including high earth orbit (HEO) and geostationary (GEO) birds. Some of EMEA and a few parts of the Americas enjoy using a GEO bird, and I had a chance to try it out last year. There are rumors of a second one, possibly with coverage of parts of the Americas.

What will be the next big thing? Possibly mirroring the non-ham world. Something that can use satellites easily without any aiming or doppler correction, for text based messaging, voice or video. I'd like to see something like that.

 

Thanks for the comment Ria. Some interesting ideas there that I hope to see developed.

While on one hand I agree with what you say about the resistance to change (innovation), I think that's true only for a portion of the amateur radio community. It is witnessed daily by grumbling and complaining about digital modes and so on. It's almost like they think it's going to destroy their hobby. Of course, that's not true. It may change their radio interests, but it won't destroy anything. It will only add new users to the mix and enliven the ARS.

But there's also a portion of the ham community that loves innovation. In any interest, there are always people who will rush to get the new stuff and be the first on the block with it. That, you'd expect. But I also see a large number of people who just love to play with radio and they have ideas and they have workbenches and you just don't know when, but something can come from that.
Dave, W7DGJ

 

Several things are in play here.

Examples -
FT-8 would not exist without inexpensive PCs in the home of ARS operators.
Innovation follows a need, either a demonstrated need or an 'artificial' need (ie marketing) a good example of this would be the microwave cooker.
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Additionally, "State-of-the-Art" drives a lot of the 'innovation' seen to date.
The transistor existed, on paper, in 1938 (Schokley) - but the device wasn't built until 1947, and that effort was funded/managed by Bell Labs.
The need? The telephone company needed something better than vacuum tubes for amplifiers used in long distance line repeaters.
Read the linked article, Schockly was a horror as a manager and the people he put together for his company left and started Fairchild Semiconductors, and this effort was wildly successful. SONY licensed the technology and cleaned everyone's clock by relentless chasing of price point in manufacture.

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Your example of SSB radio is another - first developed in 1915, the technology was nurtured by - yup, Bell Labs. The need? Cram more voices on a telephone line - this via multiplexing. See also Single-sideband modulation - Wikipedia.
Hams won on this one because Art Collins was buddies with Curt LeMay. The USAF poured money into Collins's company - we got Collins mechanical filters - still the gold standard today. The filter was made possible by advances in both ferrous materials and in mass machining of small parts. Here, price was a major driver.
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What's ahead?
Hard to say. Quantum entanglement transceivers? Gravity wave comms via wobbulator driven pico-singularities? Real SciFi stuff.
Whatever tech shows up it will have to meet a demonstrated need (anyone's) and be inexpensive enough to be available to what remains of the middle-class hobbyist.

I hope I'm around to work ops on Mars or Titan via some yet to be discovered / developed technology...









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You can't have the What's Ahead conversation without including AI. AI gets a bad rap because of the OpenAI, conversational AI that gets all the press.

However, there are many forms of AI and Machine Learning that have the potential to enhance our hobby. One can envision applications in the areas of improved noise canceling/filtering, weak signals enhancement, automatic logging, and more.

I know AI is controversial, but it is inevitable that it will become part of the hobby and in fact some basic AI noise canceling is already embedded in our SDR transceivers.

 

We can expect that the future will mirror the past in that there will always be innovators who come along with new ideas as well as different methods of approaching current ideas.

I believe that innovation comes from brilliant minds unshackled by social agendas and/or government intervention. Reflect back on some of the great innovators like Bell, Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and realize how little government regulation interfered with their ability to pursue the objectives that produced new technology. They were not propelled by some government program with fancy acronyms in the title.

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Hi Dan,

Yes, removing barriers and regulations improves the odds for innovators. But its usually money that moves the scales of innovation. Here, we don't get much of that. The Amateur Radio Services doesn't get a lot of big government investments. In one case we did, but it was inadvertent. Joe Taylor got to study his pulsars and weak signals in a government funded grants program I'm sure, as Princeton and other top-tier institutions don't use their own money for research . . . the professors know how to go after grant money. And it benefitted us, because K1JT used that knowledge gained from public investments and applied it to an amateur radio use.

In tech or in medicine, many of the advancements come from private investments by venture capital. It's hard to imagine VC's being interested in anything that must sell through the amateur radio market. It's just so small. So, once again, we are back to the backyard or basement innovator with his or her workbench.

Dave, W7DGJ

 

There has been a fairly steady stream of innovation, and a good amount of it is not just a repackaging of existing commercial concepts. I.e taking a widely used existing commercially deployed technology, and then jamming some amateur radio callsigns into it.

Or grafting radios into commercially available communications infrastructure where that non-amateur infrastructure is a required core component of the system in order to communicate to some other point. Sure there are good uses for that, such as facilitating remote operations, but there really isn't all that much radio innovation there.

The bigger issue has always been, and continues to be, the lack of the broader amateur radio masses actually adopting various newer technologies. Look at how woefully underexploited SDR technology has been. There is so much more that could be routinely done with the level of SDR technology that has already been around for 20+ years already. Things to fully 'process' more of the radio spectrum that is coming down the feedlines, and which were hugely expensive and hard to do just 30 years ago, not so anymore. So cost was not, and still is not a limitation for its wider adoption in those more advanced ways. It's the inability for the average amateur fully grasp what that specific technology now enables - and to actually want it. The common dismissiveness and ridicule of those more advanced uses of SDR technology are generally encapsulated by comments like: "but it doesn't look like a 'real' radio".

I'll even go so far as to say that the average amateur radio licensee isn't innovative in the least. There are definitely some who are, but they are a minority.

 

Hi Duane, thanks for being here.

We've always had a problem with adoption. Remember the gnashing of teeth and the arguments that went on when SSB first started to come onto the airwaves? People were revolting. They were offended that their AM signals were no longer welcome and when nets started changing over to the new mode they went nuts. The same thing is happening now as you can tell by QRZ forum discussions about digital modes.

I think that's the nature of our community, as many of us are older and more resistant to change. Would Flex or Anan or any other black box supplier of SDR radios sell more if they produced the product that "looks like" a radio? Probably -- and both are doing so.

Where I disagree with you is where you say that the bulk of amateur licensees are not innovative or interested in further development of the art. I think that's wrong. Yes, there are many "plug and play" casual operators (and I've been among that crowd in the past, not so much any longer) but there are just as many hams who take the definition of the Amateur Radio Services to heart. From that part of our community we will see future innovations come forward. Dave, W7DGJ

 

The AM to SSB transition was 15 or so years before my time, though I have certainly read and heard a lot about it over the years. And yes, it is an example of my point about the broad lack of adoption. But you do have to ponder why there is that lack of (desire for) adoption? And then also recognize that lack of motivation is probably simply an inability to innovate, or at least try to take advantage of new innovations. It is pervasive, and always has been. I really do believe much of that 'why' is rooted in constantly looking back in time and being overly sentimental of the 'old days' AND while also insisting that things must stay that way, it is broadly harmful to amateur radio. It certainly doesn't square with the 'advancement of the radio art'.

There is definitely wisdom in recognizing that what we have today is built on the shoulders of giants, there's no question about that. But it takes an even greater level of wisdom to recognize when certain norms, traditions, and rituals attached to the time of those early innovators (giants) are now in reality shackles and chains on our ankles that hold us back. Far too few people have reached that second level of wisdom, they are perpetually hung up on the first..

And yes, them doing so is completely understandable for sales volume reasons - they have to. The unfortunate side effect is that catering to those overly restrictive and limiting customer base demands takes resources and efforts away from pushing the upper limits of what SDR has to offer, thus cutting SDR 'innovation' off at its knees. Not good.

I have tried to show people for years now that once you are able to divorce yourself from the notion that your radio must have knobs and buttons, and that it look more less like radios have for 80+ years now, that truly understanding and taking full advantage of SDR technology actually becomes much easier. As part of that, getting people to think less about the physically touchy-feely aspects and experiences of driving the radio BOX, but instead focus more on the radio SPECTRUM itself, the radio box, whatever it is, is just a tool and nothing more. That insistence on (always) having knobs and buttons for SDRs is like putting Model T wheels and tires on a current model year Mustang. You will have unnecessarily limited the actual capabilities of the current model Mustang dramatically.

By the way, a properly architected SDRs having knobs/buttons, or none at all, are NOT mutually exclusive - they readily accommodate both. But an SDR radio based on legacy radio user interaction paradigms first, is inherently precluded from ever being able to take greater advantage of what SDR tech has to offer - because they simply can't. I'll leave it to the readers to figure which radio manufacturers are doing which.

If that further development is confined to only maximizing utility of the radio box? Then that is not innovation, that is catching up. But what do people then do once they have mastered their current radio box? Do they stop there, or do they look beyond what the box is capable of?

 

Duane, great post. Lots of wisdom there. With regards to your final question, or "looking beyond the box" I still think that there are innovators out there who will come from our own ranks, and who will make dramatic strides in the Amateur Radio Services. That kind of mentality, whether it was Loomis, Marconi, Sarnoff, etc. has always existed in radio and hasn't gone away away. In our rush to "find newcomers" we may have allowed the field of operators to tip a bit one-sided to the other side of the spectrum, but those innovators are still out there. Check out my interview with Sean Lynch, as one example. He founded a major Internet business and is now innovating in the ham radio space. Kevin Hester is another. These guys are out there, maybe with a completely different mentality than our radio operators of yesteryear. They come from computer clubs, "maker" clubs and so on . . . radio is one interest and they have others. The innovations will come when they combine their interests, as Joe Taylor did in developing FT-8. Dave, W7DGJ

 

One thing hams are very good at is taking things that are readily available (and often inexpensive) and making them work for our purposes. Sometimes even better than the original. Things like the ARC-5, the Commodore 64, DMR radios, etc. While this isn't like inventing the light bulb or the PC, it is innovative. We ought to get some credit for this.

As for "innovators," they are often ruthless businessmen who are living hell to work for, and who sometimes steal both the credit and the fruits of their inventions from the inventors. David Sarnoff is a case in point. Ask Edwin Armstrong. Or, how many people believe that Steve Jobs singlehandedly invented the Apple computer. The "other" Steve (Wozniak) observed in an interview that the money men get all the credit. At least Woz made a good living. Armstrong committed suicide, deep in a financial hole after years of defending his patents.

 

Agree Peter. Thanks for posting. Some of those innovators were not good bosses, that's for sure. I credit Sarnoff for a gigantic innovation when he and his company moved radio from one-on-one communications to radio-to-the-masses. But the guy was a giant ego for sure, and had a management style to match. I think I could have worked for Steve Jobs and enjoyed it, but not Sarnoff. Dave, W7DGJ

 

A handful of radio amateurs used SSB on the amateur bands in the 1930s, but the mode didn't start to be popular until the late 1940s and didn't really replace AM until the early 1960s. That's a time span of nearly 30 years - back when hams were supposedly so "technically knowledgeable", "innovative", "cutting edge" and such.

It took so long for several reason: Cost, complexity, technical/theoretical understanding, the Great Depression, WW2, difficulty of operation, and existing equipment.

What turned the tide for SSB on the amateur bands was the introduction of HF SSB transceivers and matched-pair seperates, plus desktop grounded-grid linear amplifiers, about 1960. These innovations made high power HF SSB less expensive, smaller and lighter than AM, and were easier to operate.

There was also a demographic factor. Amateur Radio in the USA was growing rapidly in the 1950s and early 1960s, and the middle class was expanding. This meant lots of newer hams with money to spend on Radio gear - and after 1960 or so their first big purchase of new gear was likely to be an SSB transceiver.

73 de Jim N2EY

 

Invention, Innovation, and it's role in Amateur Radio... Interesting subject.

The article seems to assume that ALL Amateur Radio Operators are curious about the technology they use, or that they innovate.
Some simply buy it off the shelf and use it. And if they are 'Curious" about the best antenna to use, their next inclination will be where to buy it from.
There is nothing wrong with that, and it keeps the wheels of industry well greased, but it is not ""Innovation"".

To me, Invention is taking an original idea from nothing to something. This is a tough hurdle as most good ideas have already been invented, and either the original source of that idea were lost, or the time wasn't right for that idea to become useful.

Innovation is the task of taking an existing idea and varying it to apply to different conditions.
A dipole that is folded to fit specific space constraints is innovation, adding a loading coil to shorten the electrical length is innovation.
Writing a variation of code based on the base code of others is called development (IT term for Innovation).
Cars and internal combustion engines were around a long time before Henry Ford, so he didn't invent the car or the engine, but he made developed his own engines and car models based on innovation and entrepreneurial spirt. His creation revolutionized travel in the US, but he wasn't an ""Inventor"".

Like wise, Amateur Radio operators have been using FSK (and it's variants) for decades for sending all sorts of information.
The advent of the PC, and built in sound cards allowed all audio signal processing to be done inside the PC.
Because of this, there was an explosion in the 90's of "Sound Card Modes", where the signal processing was done in the PC and input/output from the PC as audio. Each mode is/was built on both commercially/non-commercially available schemes adapted to new use with the idea of improving communications. I see the development of digital modes to be a a continuously innovative process. However, I do believe it should remain backwards compatible.