Ham Radio as an Extreme Sport, Ozone Mapper

Ham Radio as an Extreme Sport, Ozone Mapper | EDN #ham #radio

FlexRadio Systems, based in Austin, Texas, in some ways has gone where no other ham radio company has gone before. When CEO Gerald Youngblood (K5SDR) sat down at his kitchen table a decade ago, he wanted to control his ham rig from his computer. Instead he turned his PC into a radio and helped put software-defined radio (SDR) on the map. In 2002, FlexRadio Systems produced the world’s first SDR experimenter’s kit for amateurs. Today, advances in analog technology make it possible to offer amateurs a new class of radio once affordable only to commercial, government, and military users. What that means is more people can hammer their signal through at the same time just like a social network. Hurricane Katrina: In an emergency, when traditional computer networks go down, amateur radio operators step in to create ad-hoc social networks. In times of disaster, ham radio is ofte...

Full article: http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4401016/Ham-...