For the past five or so years, I’ve done almost no amateur radio activity. I’ve let my memberships to organizations lapse, I’ve failled to renew my call sign domain name (N3VAR.com) website + email address, and I’ve only turned on my radios a handful of times. The gear has been sitting in closets, waiting for the time that my interest drifted back.
Looking back on this lapse, I think the primary reason was the state of the hobby. I wanted the hobby to be more software and less hardware, but with SDR being fairly new and the hobby having deep roots in electrical engineering, this is a slow change. Amateur radio is always going to have a hardware component to it, and that’s fine. I just want to focus on the software aspects. Had it not been for my interest in FT8, I likely would have lapsed earlier.
We’re seeing a lot of developments with SDR radios over the past few years and it was a chance YouTube video I stumbled upon and watched the other day about the Xiegu X6200 that renewed my interest. Since then, I’ve researched this radio and familiarized myself with the current state of the hobby. This radio represents the type of device that interests me – essentially a computer (it runs Linux) with radio software “apps” in a QRP-sized form factor. Ideally, with regular firmware updates, although I’m getting the impression that my dream radio is still a few years out. I want an open platform SDR radio that’s akin to a computer operating system where third parties can develop and distribute their own radio apps. We’re approaching what I want in a radio.
The Xiegu X6200 (low cost and software-driven) is a big step in that direction, when compared with the Elecraft KX3 (high cost and with interaction paradigms more akin to an oscilliscope or a calculator), for instance. No offense meant to Elecraft – they make great radios, but they aren’t the radios for me in their curent state.
Today, I purchased the Xiegu X6200, renewed my call sign domain name + email address, and have migrated all my N3VAR.com amateur radio content to a relaunched personal website as a sub-section. N3VAR.com is now redirecting here. It doesn’t make sense for me to manage multiple websites for my various personal hobbies.
The next step is to do an inventory of all my gear and figure out what I should sell. There’s no reason to keep anything that I don’t plan to use. This likely means parting ways with my Elecraft KX3 and all the accessories I purchased for it. I’ll probably keep my Kenwood handhelds because I don’t have a good SDR handheld option, including full duplex satellte operation. That, too, will come someday.
I’ll get back to blogging about amateur radio as soon as my Xiegu X6200 arrives. My focus right now is getting familar with the Xiegu X6200 and figuring out which of my existing antennae can be repurposed for this radio. After that, I’ll see if I can do everything I want to do from a Mac instead of having a PC laptop for specialized radio software. Then, of course, there’s learning morse code, which I’ve been putting off and need to do soon.