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Computer Assisted Radio Monitoring Using Virtual Components To Enhance Your Monitoring—Part II by Joe Cooper |
 Photo A. This shows the main interface for SkySweep. The controls that allow you to build and control the virtual device are in the upper left corner. The interface contains four separate windows that are used to display important information. |
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The use of computers and software in radio application is not new, and you can find many examples that stretch back into the earliest days of the personal computer. Even before the IBM PC was introduced in the early 1980s, ham radio operators had been experimenting with various applications using a variety of computers. Back about 30 years ago, in my university days, I belonged to a campus ham radio club. The members were using an obsolete PDP-type of computer that was about as big as a home refrigerator and used paper tape with punch holes to program it to do some experimental work with the radio station. Frankly, many of today’s good programmable pocket calculators could out perform that dinosaur. The fact of the matter is that today we are beginning to see a real convergence of hardware, software, and good ideas that are going to be making some really important changes in the way we use our monitoring radios. It is not just logging stations that will be affected—most likely we’ll see entirely new methods of communication become available, particularly in the digital modes. The bottom line is that the next year’s worth of columns will be devoted to getting you ready for the exciting times ahead. Looking Again At SkySweep Last month, I introduced you to one example of this new phase of computer-assisted radio monitoring: the SkySweep integrated software package. As I mentioned before, there are many good software packages on the market that specialize in an individual task. Some, such as digital signal processing (DSP) can be used to overcome interference by sampling an audio signal and removing the noise. Likewise, there are many packages that will demodulate various digital signals (Morse code, radio teletype, or a variety of new modes).
However, you cannot use these programs
concurrently. So even though they may be very good individually, you can’t
chain them together to achieve an enhanced result. |
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