How's this for a complete fantasy???

Roy Laufer

We all know that eventually SSDR 2.0 will allow us to operate a Flex 6000 series Radio on a WAN, allowing for remote use as well as "borrowing" some friendly fellow 6000 series owner' radio somewhere else in the world...

Wouldn't it be nice if SSDR 3.x (or 4.x, or 5.x) allows separate slices to be "borrowed" from other 6000 Series owners? Imagine one panadapter which is local, and one not so local, each a click away from a QSO, or the second panadapter could be a radio on the east coast and the third panadapter be a radio on the west coast????

Wouldn't it be nice? (Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink!)

73,
Roy AC2GS

Mark_WS7M

I like that idea! It would be cool to have the option to publish a slice in either rx only or rx/tx on a private or even public basis. Imagine that lots of flex radios sit idle during the day and some one u approve could connect in to a slice and in effect remote your station. Very cool idea indeed. I have not the best antenna so i could totally see a split type thing where i connect to a receive slice that hears better than me but use my tx. This would make the flex system almost unbeatable. Imagine: Connect to entire radio. (Planned) Connect to an RX slice Connect to an RX/TX slice

Roy Laufer

A Ham can dream, can't he!

Roy Laufer

...and with the 6000 Series' incredible time accuracy, you could do diversity receiving, time corrected, from both ends of the continent.

Ya gotta love bleeding edge technology!

Roy AC2GS

AA0KM

I have used remotehams for this kind of idea.

But built in to flexradio would be way cool!

^5 when multiple scu's for each band becomes real it would be possible I am sure.

Ken - WA8JXM

While technologically it sounds neat, I think it breaks the little remaining spirit of ham radio.   When I was young, it was magic to  hear and talk to people hundreds or thousands of miles away.   Where is the magic of communicating with someone in Australia when you use the Internet to borrow a station a few miles away in Perth and work him?   Where is the DX challenge in working a rare South Pacific island when you can "borrow" a slice and do it from the next island?  

Oh I'm sure it will happen (it already has) but we sit here and wonder why ham radio loses it's appeal.   YMMV, of course.

Roy Laufer

Anyone is free to try to DX with a crystal radio set connected to an unfolded wire hanger, held aloft with one arm. Some challenges are worth the effort, others are not.

Some people wear "Life's to short for QRP!", while some others love QRP - most people don't have the faintest idea what our T-shirts mean and what we could possibly be doing spending so much time in our basements...

It's all good.

I am less concerned, personally, with making challenges less challenging, rather than extending and expanding our technology to do things never dreamed of by Hiram Maxwell and the rest of those SK OM of the past.

If we don't dream of the future, we **** out hobby to a pleasant nostalgic romp from our adolescence, and we doom its future when we "shuffle off this mortal coil" (in my humble opinion)...

73,
Roy AC2GS

Steve K9ZW

Was pondering about this three years ago:

https://k9zw.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/flex-6700-fantasies-dreaming-what-might-be-series-diversity-re...

https://k9zw.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/flex-6700-fantasies-dreaming-what-might-be-series-slices-impac...

Among the predictions from 2012 are:

• Slices will be traded – you want to hear something off my Flex?  Well I’ll trade you a Slice from my station for a Slice from yours.
• There will be a market for open Slices.  You only need two and have Eight?  Why not rent them out to those who want to use them?
• A Stack of Slices from the GPSDO equipped Flex-6700 versions could be combined for wide-area diversity reception. Using the timing stamps several remote Slices would be processed together.
• Slice Trading will further challenge the DXCC/IOTA/SOTA type programs.  Where was the receive antenna and was it the same one used to transmit when you worked that rare DX?  Is it a DX QSO if you listen from Europe while transmitting from The States?

and

• Internally Time-Stamped signals will allow intensive diversity reception processing for surveillance-grade diversity reception capability in an amateur radio device.

• Signals from several GPSDO equipped Flex-6700R/6700 units could be combined for wide-area diversity reception. Using the timing stamps several remote Slices would be processed together for a wide spaced diversity effect.

I made a lot more predictions in the series three years ago, and it is neat to see some of them happen!

73

Steve K9ZW

Blog:  http://k9zw.wordpress.com

EA4GLI

This [wide area reception] could be great to triangulate bad operators that purposely produce qrm on dxepeditions, nets, etc...

Roy Laufer

So, do you have the numbers for this week's Lottery, Nostradamus <grin>???

Roy Laufer

The possibilities are almost boundless!

Steve K9ZW

My 2012 Prediction was:

• Stacks of Slices will change OO (Official Observer) programs, perhaps even allowing massive recording projects documenting issues that otherwise were hard to prove?  (Like sure you were really running 100 watts when you tilt the meter when recorded by Slices around the world all part of an OO project.)

Which is pretty much along the lines you have suggested.

It will change the games some people play for sure.

73

Steve K9ZW

Steve K9ZW

No "Great Karnak" here...  the thoughts put down in 2012 were simply following the logic the technology offered. 

Thank you though - if I could do the numbers......!

73

Steve K9ZW

Jay -- N0FB

It seems like the logical extension to the stated vision by Flex Radio.   Paraphrasing:  "Imagine a time while working a National HF Net and no longer need fills from individuals.  You could connect to multiple  6000 series radios across the country and here the stations in hard to hear areas on radios that have the appropriate propogation."
It seems almost implicit.

KM6CQ - Dan

NV to NY to Europe on 160 meters. Does that still count as a single hop?

Dan

Norm - W7CK

While it seems like it would be lots of fun, I'm also wondering if it wouldn't be easier and much less noisy just to use the internet and skip the radio all together?  Shoot, HOA proof, no rfi, very low power and all you need is a computer or a phone.  We could have the National HF Net on the web and everyone would have 5/9 signals!    Just joking - after all, we can do that now.

It really would be nice to be able to use a slice on a remote 6000, or share one of mine.  The 6000's have a great receiver and it would be nice to be able to share it.  Security is a pretty big issue.  Currently I use Remote Hams and occasionally share my 6700 and or my IC-7100.  No panadapter, but the receiver is top notch. Remote hams handles all of the security quite nicely too.  I just got back from a 2 week stay in Alaska and used my remote almost every day.  Worked great and it also gave me full control of my KPA500 and KAT500.  Turns everything on and off remotely as well.

You can also connect to a number of websdr radios. There is one in Sedona, Arizona that is pretty active and works fairly well.  I've seen around 15 people connected to it on a single band.  Each user can control his/her slice.  Its pretty nice being able to see your signal on the panadapter of the remote radio.  A friend of mine uses it when he has a high noise level and can't hear me.  He just fires up his browser, goes to one of the websdr pages and tunes me in.  He loves it.  You can find it here: http://w7rna.dyndns-remote.com:18901/

Lots of fun folks!  Its going to be really interesting to see what new developments there are over the next few years.

EA4GLI

Now I want to read the other predictions

Kevin Va3KGS

I like the thought of doing a Transmit Audio Set-up from the other side of the country,  Test-Test, Oooone Twooooooo.....

Cheers

EA4GLI

You can already do that with http://websdr.org/

WA6FXT Mike

One of the reasons I bought my 6700 was to play with wide area diversity. (GPSDO) with multiple slices and / or multiple radios.

Mark_WS7M

I actually have used websdr to listen to my own transmit signal.  Unfortunately I don't think WebSDR is that well supported in the US.  I only see a few stations scattered about.  

I thought about setting one up to kind of cover the plains to the east of the rockies but didn't get too much help from the guy that seems to manage it.   He was very hands off and even though I requested the code to get going he sort of refused to send it.  I guess I have to yell louder or something.

Also I've found that many WebSDRs use less than optimal antennas.

I think the need concept of this shared slice thing is that you could like remotehamradio get a slice from someone that has it connected to a phenomenal antenna.

I don't know much about diversity but I get the general idea from radio astronomy and using multiple receive points and software algorithms to recompose the signal into a better signal.   

I just think it is a cool idea.  Now I'm sure this will bring up lots of ethics concerns as I'm sure remotehamradio does.   IE with an account on remotehamradio (which is kind of expensive) I can look like a BIG GUN.  1 KW on a 150 foot beam pointed right at the target will certainly do better than my little station.

It is up to me to realize this is sort of cheating if I was to try and go for an award.  But frankly my station doesn't hear everything.  Sometimes I check the dx spots and see somebody saying so-and-so is S9 in Georgia.  I go to the frequency and hear nothing.  I then go to remotehamradio and there it is big as day.

So I think the shared slice thing while it will create some problems and ethics things I think it will also allow the hams with less than optimal stations to experiment with other peoples setups.

For example if I could connect to another persons slide and see it displayed in my panadapter I could compare noise and signals to my setup and it might help me to isolate areas I need to improve.

Steve-N5AC

Roy, this is definitely a place we can envision going.  The original intent of the GPS in the FLEX-6700 is to allow you to timestamp data pulled from the air so it can be compared against other receivers in other locations.  Yes, you could just show the other receivers, but you can also combine them to get the best signal from all receivers in use.  We've built the architecture to do these things and, like you guys, we are full of ideas.  When we get 2.0 and Maestro crossed off our list, we will be talking about all the things we can do and which will bring our customers "the most **** for the buck" with the buck being an investment on our part.

In the last year someone asked me what we were going to do when we ran out of ideas for what we can do on the SmartSDR platform and I just laughed.  You guys know -- there's a million things we can do and the worry is not running out; it's deciding what to do next!

Also relevant is a question I heard in driving school a long time ago: What is the single biggest factor in the time that you arrive at your destination?  Most would say it is how fast you go, but the answer is "the time you start your trip."  As is typical with technology, there is always a period after one company suggests where the market will eventually go that many other companies question the viability of the destination.  I'd like to think that we (1) selected the correct destination, (2) started early and we are (3) also driving fast ;-)  Those companies that don't get on board soon may not finish the trip.