Well, went to dayton friday and saturday  Didn't pick up the backpack, so forgot the radio.

These were the highlights for me.

1. took a look at the ken wood ts990 What an impressive looking rig.
Liked the speech.
Didn't like the price tag.  But may be saving my pennies.

2. stopped at the alinco booth.  Looked at the r8t.  Seemed like a cute little basic hf rig.  no speech, but seems simple enough that it could be usable.  I intend to do some more research here.

3.  stopped bye the tokyo hy-power booth.  They had a mock up of a proposed 40 through  6 meter ht.
Talked with the factory guy there.  We had some language difficulties, but once he got the idea, he took nearly a half page of notes on accessibility suggestions.  I hope that bares fruit.

4. Saw Ed griffin's booth.  Got hands on the x1m qrp transceiver.  Ed is looking into adding strategic beeps for navigation, and I have written John Hansen about what the qsyer expects in terms of voltage levels and such.
Seems that if the rig uses vi-v, then the qsyer is our best hope for it.

Finally, sat in on a forum on microcontrolers and small one-board computers in the ham shack.  There is a device called the beagle bone.  The new model is the beagle bone black.  This is an arm 1 ghz processor with 512 mb ram usb, ethernet, hdmi video, audio in and out, and a large number of controllable i/o pins and dacs.
A remote station controller made from one of these was shown.  using this plus a pic, the device controlled the rig, roter, a power strip switch, and other functions.  All via tcp/ip.

The beagle bone is $45.00.  Think I'll get one to tinker with.

More as I figure things out.
   




[log in to unmask]