FreeDV – Broadcast Quality Communications on HF? You Bet!
If you’re like me and you’ve been waiting for a digital mode to come along that’s easy to setup with most modern rigs, populated with enough ham stations to actually make contact via digital voice on the HF bands, look no further! FreeDV, while having been around for several years, developed a new method of digital modulation that is easily decoded even with noisy band conditions, weak signals and static crashes. The mode is called RADEV1, and it was released for use last Spring.
But, don’t take my word for it, check out the FreeDV website and after you read their blog, how the technology works and appreciate the fact that FreeDV is OPEN SOURCE code that amateurs are encouraged to work with and improve the program even further!
Anyway, here’s my experience with FreeDV – My brother Mike, KC2XX, invited me to install FreeDV about 3 weeks ago and see if I could contact him on HF Digital voice. So, I did install it. I was immediately struck that the FreeDV Reporter that comes with the software package shows every Amateur station that has its software setup to report correctly… And what frequency they are currently using. When a station is transmitting, it reports that to the software which then broadcasts that to everyone viewing “Reporter” – and that stations entry turns red. Every stati0n which is able to decode that station turns blue. See the screenshot I posted above.
Now, that does bring up an intriguing situation. Suppose two stations want to converse in digital HF without another station monitoring where they are operating? They would simply not let FreeDV Reporter report anything on those station’s location, operating frequency, and so on. I’ll let your imagination consider under what conditions that sort of operating might be desirable. Totally legal, mind you, but sort of incognito.
In short, I love FreeDV’s RADEV1 digital codec. It works better than advertised, and I couldn’t be happier that there’s no license or royalty payments required to use it. I encourage you to download this and try it!