ARDC Grant Funds FreeDV Project

/

To advance the state of the art in HF digital voice and to promote its use, Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) has awarded $420,000 to the FreeDV Project.

FreeDV is a low-bit-rate digital voice mode for HF radio. Initially developed by David Rowe, VK5DGR, an international team of radio amateurs are now working together on the project. FreeDV is open-source software, released under the GNU Lesser Public License (LPGL) version 2.1. The modems and Codec 2 speech codec used in FreeDV are also open source.

Hardware and software developers can integrate FreeDV into their projects using the FreeDV API. To operate FreeDV, radio amateurs either run the FreeDV GUI application on Windows, Linux and OSX machines or use the SM1000 FreeDV adaptor. Either method allows hams to use a single-sideband HF radio to send and receive FreeDV signals. To learn more about FreeDV, go to https://www.freedv.org.

Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is a California-based foundation with roots in amateur radio and the technology of internet communication. The organization got its start by managing the AMPRNet address space, which is reserved for licensed amateur radio operators worldwide.

Additionally, ARDC makes grants to projects and organizations that follow amateur radio’s practice and tradition of technical experimentation in both amateur radio and digital communication science. Such experimentation has led to advances that benefit the general public, including the mobile phone and wireless internet technology. ARDC envisions a world where all such technology is available through open source hardware and software, and where anyone has the ability to innovate upon it.

ARDC - https://www.ardc.net

Auto Industry Non-Committal to Keeping AM in New Cars

/
Auto Industry Non-Committal to Keeping AM in New Cars

Automakers have replied to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey’s letter urging them to maintain broadcast AM radio as a feature in electric vehicles and other future vehicles. But the auto industry’s response by no means offers any guarantees that the senior band will remain in the dashboard going forward.

Markey wrote in December to all the big automakers: Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, BMW and Kia among them. He asked for a thorough accounting of where AM radio receivers stand in the view of automakers and to inform him of any plans to discontinue access to AM in new cars.

The auto industry response comes from the Alliance for Automotive Innovation and appears to be a resounding non-endorsement of AM radio. In fact, the letter makes no mention of the industry’s intentions of keeping AM radio intact in the dashboard.

Read More

Hackers Disrupt Russian Radio

/

Radio stations in several Russian cities were disrupted on 22nd February 2023 by the sound of air raid sirens and a warning of imminent missile strikes.

The broadcasts were reportedly heard in Belgorod, Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Magnitogorsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novouralsk, Pyatigorsk, Stary Oskol, Syktyvkar, Tyumen, Ufa, and Voronezh, among other cities. Recordings of the broadcast were shared on the social media network Telegram and reported on by Meduza.

Meduza, an independent news agency now based in Latvia, was forced to move its operations out of Russia during the media crackdown that followed Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

EMERCOM, the Russian Ministry for Civil Defense, Emergency Situations and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters, confirmed the broadcasts in a statement on its Telegram channel, blaming an unspecified “hacker attack on servers of a number of commercial radio stations in some regions of the country.” Voronezh regional authorities reportedly blamed “collaborators of the Kyiv regime” for the hack.

Stations reportedly compromised in the hack include Relax FM, Comedy Radio, Humor FM, and AvtoRadio, all of which are owned by GPM Radio, the largest radio holding company in Russia. According to a Telegram post by AvtoRadio, the hack was focused on the satellite signals used by the network to distribute its programming.