The first-use-in-commerce date is actually earlier than the date on the patents. Thus, the patent would not be expired, but could no longer be enforced.

Nobody will be able to use this in the ham bands without a ham license, or in the LMR without the appropriate licenses.

I did not mean to imply that anyone should do anything at all that they aren't legally allowed to do. Type-approval is about FCC requirements for the device, rather than the licensee. Land-mobile licenses just take money and ham licenses are easy enough to get that the regularly-abled don't really have an excuse not to get one. And one can also get the FCC Part 5 Experimental license.

Astonishingly, Amateur type-acceptance is only for receivers: that they don't operate as cellular scanners, and external amplifiers: that they don't amplify CB. Not for transmitters! After all, it's supposed to be an experimental service.

We have had softmodems on HF for a long time, so introducing mode and protocol flexibility to VHF/UHF isn't really anything new. The users will work out the interoperability issues among themselves, and if they want to switch to a new mode next year, they can.

The first-use-in-commerce dates on AMBE 1000 would result in the patents becoming un-enforcable about a week after Hamvention.

I'm all for using Morse on the air. Just not on the test. I did specify a paddle input for this device.

I guess you could buy transverters from Down East Microwave. This particular chip can transmit up to 1.3 GHz, but we've not tested the receiver at that frequency yet, and we're off the data sheet once we exceed 1 GHz.

The hardware would do it, you would have to write software and maybe MyHDL code for the gate array.

If we manufacture this in the U.S. and source all of the parts in the U.S. and take a reasonable margin, it will come out to $500. We don't want to go to Asian manufacturing and parts or make a lower-cost edition with some parts removed until the initial version is salable. We figure that it will take a lot of time for us to learn about Asian manufacturing, and we don't want you to have to wait.

I haven't really been thinking about scanners. Yes, I guess you could make some really good Open Source software for scanning with this. We could make a receive-only version. It would just be less parts on the board. Unfortunately it would have cellular-lockout, at least until we can fix that portion of ECPA. It's not like cell phones are unencrypted any longer.

You will be able to do direct-sequence spread spectrum within about 1 MHz. Frequency-hopping spread-spectrum is also possible, but is limited by the speed at which the PLL locks.

This is meant to be an entire FCC type-approved transceiver with spurious emissions low enough to amplify to the full legal limit for the band. You can use it with GNURadio, but you can also run the entire system stand-alone through its on-board computer and gate-array without GNURadio. HackRF has turned out not to be a very good receiver, and is not meant to be a legal transmitter regarding spurious emissions. USRP + some daughter boards might work similarly, and have higher performance in some ways, but cost a lot more and don't have low enough power drain to go handheld.

The first version is marketed as test equipment. Which gets us around the various type-acceptance issues. The second version is focused on end-users rather than developers and will be type-certified for either Amateur or one of the land-mobile bands.

Yes. Probably through down-conversion. But a different architecture might be better. Some of the FlexRadio 6xxx units put the entire HF band of 0 through 30 MHz through a DAC and ADC all at once. They can actually digitize the entire spectrum and play it back later.

My pleasure. We have a lot of fun with this stuff, and I'll continue to try to stretch the envelope for as long as I can. Chris and I have talked about doing an open-bitstream gate-array after this project.

There was a TAPR paper a year ago from guys who did chirp-mode radar on HF and plotted the entire surface of the earth via ionosphere skip. OK, it was low resolution, but very impressive.

Yes. SDRs have been used for NMR, CAT, and radar besides the usual communication stuff. One of the issues is whether they will turn from transmit to receive fast enough. If not, you might need two, or one of those cheap stick receivers and a converter.

Baofeng won't do all of the nice digital codecs and apps we would like you to be able to do. Indeed, it does just about what a Motorola tube taxicab radio could do in 1954. We have a lot of new stuff for you to do.

Yeah, I have a KX3 and a CrankIR. I run FreeDV on them.

It would be possible to use it in a short-range transmit mode or as a receiver without a ham license. That said, I spend several years of my life helping to get rid of the Morse Code test for radio hams, so that smart folks like you could just take technical tests to get the license. They aren't that difficult. It might be worth your time.