Welcome to the 2nd edition of Radio

Mar 20 18:48 UTC 1998

    Welcome to the 2nd edition of the radio conference. This conference is
about radio, all aspects of it: hardware or theory or procedures; amateur
or professional; tube or transistor; audio or video or data; microwave or
megawave; AM, FM or other modes. If it is transmitted and received as
electromagnetic waves, we discuss it here.

    Your Fairwitnesses are Jim Reuter (omni), AA8IJ, and Rane Curl
(rcurl), N8REG. We are both licensed ratio amateurs, who enjoy the hobby
and derive from it both personal enjoyment and the pleasure of serving the
community with public service and emergency communications. 

    We dedicate this conference to the pioneers of radio: James Clerk
Maxwell, who derived the theory of radio propagation; Heinrich Hertz, who
demonstrated "Maxwell's Equations"; Nikola Tesla, who envisioned radio
broadcasting;  Guglielmo Marconi, for the first transoceanic radio
telegraphy; Sir Alexander Fleming and Lee deForest, for their inventions
leading to the vacuum tube; Reginald Fessinden, for the first broadcast of
voice and music; the genius of radio reception, Edwin Howard Armstrong,
who invented practical radio receiver circuits and also FM transmission
and reception; and to Philo T. Farnsworth, for his basic inventions for
television. 

    Please, come in and introduce yourself, and tell us what aspect of
radio you enjoy. Is it being a "ham" (radio amateur), a radio listener
interested in the technology or content, or perhaps making your living in
a radio field? By meeting here we will all further one another's knowledge
and interests. 

response 2 of 123:

Mar 23 00:17 UTC 1998

I just had  nice chat last night, with a student from Bulgaria, studying in
England, who mentioned that he was hoping to put together a 2 hour Internet
radio show, all the students there had that opportunity.  I told him to check
out grex radio item 203.  Could we link it, since it has some useful info on
web sites and hardware needs, or would Rane or someone like to summarize the
useful stuff at the beginning of a new Internet Radio item?  (The chat was
in Bulgarian, that was a real challenge!)

response 4 of 123:

Mar 23 17:53 UTC 1998

Please link it.  The reason I asked for help in summarizing is that I do not
understand much of the vocabulary and hardware involved.  Thanks.
Oh, and that's a nice intro to this new conference.  I will go back and read
it again and try to understand it.

response 6 of 123:

Mar 24 06:25 UTC 1998

video is a subset of radio - radio is communication by electromagnetic
signals. It doesn't matter what is communicated. "Megawave" is a coinage:
but since "microwave" means very short waves - down to millimeters -
megawave would imply very long waves, and radio is used at wave lengths
into tens of kilometers (for communication with submarines, in
particular). 

"Modes" refer to the type of modulation. AM and FM are well known, but
there are also phase, continuous wave (CW - usually code), frequency-shift
keying (FSK), minimum FSK (MFSK), single side-band (SSB), teletype (RTTY),
many forms of spread-spectrum, digital modes (e.g.  packet), and others.
They all have advantages for different applications. At this point....I
should really refer you to the ARRL Handbook for general expositions on
each - or watch these pages when hams start digging into the topics. 

response 8 of 123:

Mar 25 06:20 UTC 1998

You are speaking of commercial TV. Amateur TV (ATV) is popular, and ARROW
has an ATV repeater (though I'm not sure how its being used now - I don't
have the equipment to use it). Amateurs use radio to talk to each other...
and ATV to look at each other :>. 

response 10 of 123:

Mar 26 05:30 UTC 1998

I haven't done it...so here is an appeal to any hams working with ATV
to enter an item called Amateur Television, and tell us what they do.