Trials and Errors Issue #53: Near-term Innovation Wish List

This is the forum discussion for the newest Trials and Errors -- Ham Life with an Amateur column on QRZ. Read the column at this link.

If you have comments concerning the topic of innovation in today's radios, or on any of the topics addressed in the article, please put them here. Complaints accepted! We'll have the guest authors contribute as well to the discussion. Thank you, Dave Jensen W7DGJ

 

I find it....interesting....to see "innovation" being defined as "what new things can Amateur Radio manufacturers provide for us". IOW, "top down" rather than "bottom up".

For most of Amateur Radio history, innovations came from amateurs themselves trying new things, and only later did manufacturers follow along.

The move to the short waves wasn't driven by manufacturers. Nor was the replacement of spark by CW.

The first hams on SSB were using equipment they built themselves. The first Amateur FM repeaters used converted land-mobile gear. Lots of other examples.

73 de Jim N2EY

 

Hi Jim, I think you'll draw a few agreements from the "anti-plug 'n play crowd," but it really wasn't stated that way in the article. Innovations come from innovators. Innovators may be different from inventors, as we've discussed before. Yes, ham operators can be inventors. They can be programmers as well, which is mentioned in the article. They can innovate on their idea (or someone else's) into their own working model but then it's the big companies who need to get these new things spread around the marketplace -- reaching more than the few who will do it themselves. Today's ham market needs to expand rapidly to fill the blank space left by departing older hams. We need more "cool technology" to roll out in radios from the majors. Dave, W7DGJ

 

The article is a very good read. Many of the things described in it have been talked about in different places at different times in years past. In some cases the high level concepts for enabling technologies were being bandied about over 20 years ago already. Namely the role that Ethernet can play in our radios, and how we interact with them. While the best way to use Ethernet has certainly evolved since this circa 2003 discussion thread, the idea to use it though in an very integral way within our radios is not new at all.

https://www.eham.net/article/5923

And some architectural concepts for how to expand beyond a radio being just a box with some knobs and buttons was presented at the 2007 TAPR DCC conference. This paper by Frank, AB2KT outlines some concepts for what can be done, including references to "cognitive radio", which in essence embodies aspects of the concepts around "Artificial Intelligence" of today. Frank also does go pretty deep into the weeds in his paper for an approach for how it could be implemented.

https://files.tapr.org/meetings/DCC_2007/DCC2007-FSM-VR-Kernel-AB2KT.pdf

And it also needs to be noted that an amateur radio manufacturer that is producing radios today did indeed incorporate back around 2012 many of the concepts described in Frank's paper. But do to marketplace realities, they have had to "mask" so much of what their radio models can actually do. Basically they have been putting so much energy and effort into reducing them to operationally be more like everyone else. Though those user interface aspects of what they did for wider market sales however does not preclude the radio hardware from still doing the other things it is actually capable of.

The concepts in that paper were formulated to a large extent from discussions that started on the Flex Radio email reflector list of just "regular", but forward looking radio amateurs. And then Frank built up his ideas presented in that paper from those email list discussions, plus his previous experiences in the digital instrument space, and programming experiences.

Bottom line so much of what people may be looking for in the near term in their gear has already been possible and available from some vendors for well over a decade already. If not directly available now, the hardware has good chance of supporting it with some additional software development effort.

But that can or will only happen if more become able to remove their brand loyalty blinders. And non JA brand antipathy.

 

Now that SDR radios are widely available, I think the biggest improvements will come from software rather than hardware. It would be nice to see better noise reduction. Especially for those of us in the suburbs with solar panels, and car battery rechargers coming soon.

 

While what you have described is materially correct, at least up to 60 ish years ago. The question still does need to be asked though why don't amateurs today, or even over at least the last 25 years now, not actually want to pursue newer radio technology like they did "back then", and specifically in the case of SDR, MUCH more of it's true capabilities?

Seems like the only thing that so many want from SDR is to just recreate radios that are pretty much still just the same same thing functionally as all previous radios have been for over that same 25 years now?

Where is the interest in adopting "innovation" within the radio masses, never mind diving into it hands-on? Is anything more advanced than tubes, and maybe transistors, or operating in different than traditional ways "just too hard" for the majority?

But yet many of those same folks are more than happy to use non radio technology to do things that can now be done from within the radio itself thanks to SDR, and do so with no Internet dependency. But they can only do so if they are willing to use more advanced SDR technology than what the "big 3" currently offer.

 

Innovation is happening rapidly in ham radio, but, as the piece points out, not in the radios themselves.

Perhaps one should point out that FLEX is a step ahead of the game, especially since the box can essentially do all kinds of stuff IF the customers wants it.

In the past, innovation happened with the software and hardware gadgets that transitioned from breadboard to external add-on boxes (think MFJ) to incorporation inside the radios. Things like VOX, keyers, sidetones, voice recorders, digital frequency display, FT variants, filtering, compression, and so on--these were all out-of-radio devices at first.

Since the Japanese brands still dominate here, they actually take greater credit than we allow them. It was, anyway, very typical for the Japanese brands to come out with SEVERAL radio versions with a variety of innovations, while only a very small fraction of versions caught on on the US.

IOW, the great bulk of US hams are VERY slow to accept innovation, even though the ham on the other side of town may be responsible for that very innovation!

FT* is a huge exception--it happened to catch on rapidly in 2017,2018, purely because it was free and a fairly easy install on equipment already in hand.

The elephant in the room is AI. Most ham radio propagation will be real time TOOL assisted via AI in the future, in fact its happening now.

There will be an AI Forum at Hamvention.

73
Chip W1YW

 

Wouldn't hardware and interface standardization amongst equipment manufacturers be nice?

While adding innovations to ham gear, nobody standardized such simple things as I/O interfaces in this tiny industry. Even "key jacks" for CW use aren't all the same.

Meanwhile, USB which led to the Lightning interface: Standard among all brands and models. OBD2 interface for automotive diagnostics: Standard among all brands and models. Etc, etc.

But don't try plugging a Yaesu microphone into an Icom, or the amp key line output connection for a Kenwood into a Yaesu...

 

Notice that Clay Christensen's work came up again....

Disruptive innovation has been around for many decades. What Clay and Joe Bauer did was articulate it as a mechanism of 'entry' for new technologies, that start at niche markets with modest sales, and then SOME transition up to other markets, including amnd esepcially very large ones.

Having a disruptive technology is a pain in the butt, but it is a way of getting a market to start sales.

In fact, MOST disruptive innovations do NOT topple the kings of the hill, at least not on time scales concurrent with patent lifetimes.

Kodak is a great example of how they came up with the disruptive technology of digital cameras, thought they could control the 'transition' over many decades, and then got creamed on patent expirations by competitors who nailed them against the wall with cheaper better,products compared to chemical based analog photography. They sat on their own innovation in order to control it.

Well, there's a fantasy for you. You never control the markets. The customers control the markets...

 

Hi Chip,

Thanks for mentioning Kodak. At one time, when I first started my career in biotechnology, Kodak had developed a really great skunkworks program in areas that were completely away from anything in the company's core interests. They gave some brilliant scientists carte blanche to come up with new product categories and they were really looking to the future. Too bad companies don't do this any longer. in Kodak's case, they were one of the first large scale operations in the world for fermentation of microbes and modified bacteria/yeast/cells to grow products of interest. They came up with a product called SnoMax, which was an artificial snow that could be sprayed on mountain tops to help ski slopes keep a solid base. It was just a little microbial "seed" that allowed water to form around it and create a snowflake. Anyway, sorry to take away from the topic but wanted to mention that the days of large companies doing random and interesting invention is apparently long gone. What an era that was. Dave W7DGJ

 

So true.

While I doubt that they will ever do it for a variety of reasons. The 6 and 8K series hardware itself could be loaded with firmware to support doing all of the demodulation (AI work too) for wide swaths of spectrum on an external computer. So the processing power in those boxes themselves isn't truly the limiting factor for what they could actually allow you do either. So IF you are willing to make the trade-offs that come with moving more of the signal processing to external computer(s), they could be the basis for almost everything listed in the article. The existing IKY competition radios simply can't do that in a meaningful way, their hardware architecture limitations preclude it..

This phenomenon has totally baffled me for over 20 years now. I just don't get it.

I would add that there is another aspect of FT* that is at play that doesn't get enough consideration for why it is so popular. And that is how it removes the tedium of doing the key things that everyone says that you need to be doing to make QSO's. Namely "tuning" the spectrum "listening", and also calling CQ. It by design listens for everything within a 3 kHz slice of spectrum, and will also let you call CQ repeatedly, and easily for long stretches of time. Analog only ops will simply not do both of those things for very long, they get tired.

And it needs to be noted that "removing tedium" is not the same thing as "making it easy".

 

Good post, Duane. Thanks. I watched a friend of mine, someone with a few more bucks to spend on radios, jump from ICOM into Flex and saw how terribly difficult that change was for him. It's not easy for an older guy to change habits, so I guess I understand a bit about how there's a certain movement AGAINST innovation that exists out there. I remember him having all kinds of difficulty with the radio, and a "digital sound" that was wearing on his ears and more. He had a hell of a time getting rid of the need to tune a dial. Dave, W7DGJ

 

The below may amuse you (in the above context)--- AI is a research team, looking for a research head.

Another key tehnology ,for stopping drones , will be announced next week.

Skunk works? Hmmm. I think OWLS eat SKUNKS;-)

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FRACTAL Launches OWL WORKS for Advanced Electromagnetic Solutions
FEBRUARY 12, 2025
Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc. has announced the creation of FRACTAL OWL WORKS, a special projects team focused on cutting-edge electromagnetic solutions for government and defense applications.

Building on 30 years of leadership in antennas, metamaterials, and electromagnetics, OWL WORKS was formed to address critical technological gaps left by aging expertise and insufficiently trained teams at other firms and labs.

“The U.S. cannot afford to be second-best in electromagnetic solutions,” said CEO Nathan Cohen. “Many firms have lost their innovation edge, hindered by outdated knowledge, inadequate scholarly training, and a historical ‘not invented here’ mentality. OWL WORKS exists to change that.”

Cohen will lead the elite team, leveraging the history of FRACTAL’s world-class innovation while integrating AI as a strategic tool. “AI accelerates progress but lacks critical problem-solving intuition. Experience in lateral thinking is key. OWL WORKS blends both for maximum impact."

The team has already developed its first breakthrough—a wideband miniature drone antenna designed to minimize radar reflections and propeller wash. Cohen clarifies: “This is not for recreational drones or retail use.”

Future OWL WORKS projects include satellite technologies, arrays, cloaking, and more—further solidifying FRACTAL’s role at the forefront of electromagnetics.

 

I have seen this kind of thing play out numerous times myself. And I have written posts about it many times too. In a nutshell, I'd be willing to bet that your friend started using the Flex expecting it to behave very much like the radio they came from - aka "learned habits". Yes M models and Maestro are pretty similar to most other radios, but it is still different. And if you can consciously forget everything that you think you know about how a radio control panel should work (habits again), and then approach it with an understanding how the radio actually does work, then you will have MUCH easier time making the switch. And even more so if you jumping on board with the SmartSDR PC client. Pretty much the same story for most PC SDR software that is out there.

My experience when first getting started with SDR around 2004 was that after just a few minutes with the user interface of PowerSDR I learned that it was so incredibly intuitive to figure out and use. Massively easier to access any of the signals around the band that I could now SEE with great detail. Just point, click, and maybe a mouse wheel roll if missed by a little bit, that's it, signal tuned in. I was finally able to do the kinds of things I always dreamed that I would be able to do someday to drive a radio.

I was able to easily make that leap in part because I was already totally comfortable computer mouse operation AND perhaps more importantly, I had no expectations whatsoever that the "driving the radio" graphic user interface SDR experience should be even remotely the same as any of the knobs and buttons radios that I had prior. I simply approached it from a completely fresh perspective. A lot of people can't do that.

Edit to add: I find the very common menu heavy knobs and buttons radios (that they pretty much all are now) very hard and confusing to figure out and use beyond the basics of VFO tuning and a couple other basic things. Totally cluttered display panels, tiny way too closely spaced buttons with cryptic labeling scattered about etc. No, give me a properly done computer screen user interface any day. And no, "pictures" of a knobs and buttons radio on a computer screen is not a good user interface design, it is a horrible one.

 

FLEX has built in software driven capabilities that are of interest to its government customers, but are un used and unappreciated by our ham brethren. MO anyway