Tag Archives: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen

Ham Radio Friedrichshafen 2020 has been cancelled

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Harald Kuhl, who shares the following announcement from Ham Radio Friedrichshafen:

Radio silence due to coronavirus COVID-19: Ham Radio not taking place as planned
15.04.2020

Friedrichshafen – Due to current developments in regard to the spread of coronavirus COVID-19, Messe Friedrichshafen has been forced to make a very difficult decision: the international amateur radio exhibition Ham Radio will not be taking place in the planned period of June 26 to 28, 2020, but instead from June 25 to 27, 2021. The Federal Government and the Minister-Presidents of the Länder decided yesterday, April 15 that no major events shall take place until August 31, 2020.

“Due to current developments relating to the coronavirus, we have the unfortunate duty of announcing that we cannot hold the 45th edition of Ham Radio as planned,” explains Klaus Wellmann, Managing Director of Messe Friedrichshafen. In recent weeks, it was already necessary to make the same decision in regard to other events (Aqua-Fisch, IBO, AERO, Tuning World Bodensee, and Motorworld Classics Bodensee). Project Manager Petra Rathgeber also expressed her sadness about this turn of events: “We very much regret that this event cannot take place as planned. However, the health of all exhibitors and visitors is of utmost importance to us. Unfortunately, our trade fair calendar and the dates of other industry events leave no room for postponing this fair to another date this year.” Christian Entsfellner, Chair of the German Amateur Radio Club (DARC), adds: “Our members, domestic and foreign guests, and we ourselves have been hit hard by this decision, which now became necessary to make on short notice. Until we get together again in Friedrichshafen, we as amateur radio operators are looking forward to keeping in contact with one another using amateur radio.” However, radio amateurs do not have to do without everything the Ham Radio fair normally has to offer: On the Ham Radio website, exhibitors will be presenting product innovations in the form of a virtual trade fair. DARC will also be offering presentations there.

The exhibitors, visitors, and partners involved are currently being informed about this opportunity.

Thank you for sharing this, Harald! Not a surprising development, but sad nonetheless. I assume Covid-19 might also lead to the closure of Ham Fair 2020 in Tokyo.

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SDR Academy presentation videos

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alexander (DL4NO), who writes:

Parallel to the Hamradio fair in Friedrichshafen, Germany, there are talks and whole conferences. Over the last years, the “Software-Definded Radio Academy” (SDRA) was one of them.

You find the presentations on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6D0CPBQoIVpMflpSZFqbkmr2Xt_10D_Z

At least most of them are in English.

Thank you for the tip, Alexander! These videos are amazing! Wow–now I just need to find the time to watch them all.

I’ve embedded the videos and links below, for your convenience:

Markus Heller, DL8RDS: SDR-Academy @ HAM-Radio 2019 – A Summary

 

Dr. Carles Fernandez: An Open Source Global Navigation Satellite Systems Software-Defined Receiver

Mario Lorenz, DL5MLO: The AMSAT-DL/QARS Ground Stations for Qatar-Oscar 100

Mack McCormick, W4AX: FlexRadio: SDR Technology that Will Change How you Operate HF

Christoph Mayer, DL1CH: KiwiSDR as a new GNURadio Source

Manolis Surligas, SV9SFC: SDR Makerspace, Exploid SDR technology for space communications

Michael Hartje, DK5HH: Digital signal processing for the detection of noise disturbances

Prof Dr Joe Taylor, K1JT: Welcome Address and Questions & Answers

DL1FY, DC9OE, DG8MG, DL8GM: Charly25 SDR Transceiver

Alex Csete, OZ9AEC: SDR-Makerspace: Evaluation of SDR boards and toolchains

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ELAD introduces the new DUO-X SDR Transceiver

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Paul Jones, who shares an image of the new ELAD DUO-X transceiver:

A prototype of the DUO-X will be on display this weekend at Ham Radio Friedrichshafen this weekend.

I don’t have a lot of details about the DUO-X yet, but here is what I can confirm:

  • There will be two 2 versions 120 watt and a 220 watt
  • 4 independent receivers
  • 10.2 inch touchscreen
  • 4x 1″ OLED screens above four programmable multifunction knobs
  • Built-in ATU
  • Stand-alone or connect to your PC

More details to follow! Bookmark the tag ELAD DUO-X for updates.

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Alexander’s report from Ham Radio Friedrichshafen

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The Friedrichshafen exhibition grounds. (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Alexander (DL4NO), who shared a few notes with me from his visit at the Friedrichshafen Ham Radio convention. Alexander has kindly allowed me to post his notes here on the SWLing Post. Alexander writes:

The first booth I visited was of Dokufunk (http://www.dokufunk.org/). They collect QSLs and other information about wireless history for scientific evaluation. Its head Wolf, OE1WHC, was a moderator for the Austrian shortwave service which does not exist anymore. But ORF still supports Dokufunk. They have a large archive and even the equipment to digitize large quantities if information. I brought them a package of ham radio periodicals, mostly issues of DL-QTC, the predecessor of cqDL, and got some QSPs (magazine of OEVSV) back. I collect those periodicals to gain and provide access. Seehttp://www.dl4no.de/thema/amateurfunk-zeitschriftenarchiv.htm, catalog at the bottom.

The flea market filled three exhibit halls. If you needed a tube heating for your shack you had a wide choice, from radios to ham equipment to scopes. On the newer side you could get Windows XP packages with the appropriate hardware.

Flea Market Photos Courtesy of Ham Radio Friedrichshafen

A3: Stand mit historischem Radiogeräten (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

A3: Stand mit historischem Radiogeräten

A3: Stand mit Empfängern und Messgeräten

A3: Stand mit Empfängern und Messgeräten (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

A3: Stand mit Empfängern und Messgeräten, hier zwei Schweizer an einer historischen Feld-Telefonzentrale

A3: Stand mit Empfängern und Messgeräten, hier zwei Schweizer an einer historischen Feld-Telefonzentrale (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

A3: Koffer mit Ham-Radio-Aufklebern aus mehreren Jahrzehnten

A3: Koffer mit Ham-Radio-Aufklebern aus mehreren Jahrzehnten (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

A3: Alte Radiogeräte

A3: Alte Radiogeräte (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

A3: Alte Empfänger und Radios

A3: Alte Empfänger und Radios (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

A3: Stand mit Empfängern und Messgeräten

A3: Stand mit Empfängern und Messgeräten (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

Yaesu, Icom & Co where there, of course. A large part of Hall 1 had booths for most of the European ham radio societies and other entities. Several attractions for the youths were there: A fox hunt around the hall, possibilities to solder simple circuits and more. The exhibit center even provides a kindergarden.

A1: Hilberling PT 8000A

A1: Hilberling PT 8000A (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

A1: ICOM

A1: ICOM (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

A1: Wimo, BABY Loop

A1: Wimo, BABY Loop (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

A1: YAESU Funkgeräte

A1: YAESU Funkgeräte (Photo: Ham Radio Friedrichshafen)

Hamradio had lots of presentations. The “SDR Academy” run all over Saturday – completely in English. See http://www.sdra-2016.de. Last year’s presentations are on Youtube. Search for “SDRA-2015”.

My presentation was titled “HAMNET On 70 cm – Possibilities and Limitations”. I should explain that HAMNET is our way to use the 44.0.0.0/8 TCP address space reserved for Ham Radio use. Starting in Germany and especially Austria we use more or less standard WLAN equipment to build a ham radio intranet. User access is mostly on 2.3 GHz and links on 5 GHz. Where we have gaps in the wireless coverage we use Internet wormholes. This way you can access for example packet radio sites in Canada. See http://hamnetdb.net.

2,3 GHz and up means exclusively line-of sight connections. Quite some OMs cannot reach access points this way. The only alternative up to now has been VPN connections through the Internet. I think we could provide relatively fast access on 70 cm. Here in Germany we have two 200-kHz channels for such uses. They were defined in the 1980s for packet radio access up to 76 kbps. This technology is next to dead.

Theoretical calculations show that we could provide up to 1 Mbps and cover up to 50 km if we use modern modulation schemes. You could even improve throughput by making TCP/IP less gossipy. I proposed to use SDR blocks like HackRF or LimeSDR and combine them with a RF frontend (filter, preamp, PA, fast switching). The hardware is more or less readily available, but this is mostly a software topic. While HAMNET relies on standard WLAN equipment with all its limitations for ham radio usage, this system could be completely open. We could it adapt to all our needs and ideas. In the end we could port it back to the microwave bands.

Even if we only work on the lowest protocol levels this will pose quite some challenges. We would need programmers with quite varied expertise from TCP/IP protocols to SDR technology. My presentation was to attract such people. Personally I will not program anything. As a technical writer with a quite wide expertise I might be a bracket for the project and write documentation for it.

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A “Peltier Lamp”: The candle heats one side of the Peltier element while the other is cooled by the heat sink. This produces enough electricity to light a LED. (Photo: Alexander DL4NO)

At the opposite end of the exhibit center another fair went on, called Maker Faire. In former times you would have called it “make it yourself”. The exhibits there went from computer modding to 3D printing, knitting and also ham radio. For this I modified my presentation a bit: “WLAN Below 1 GHz – Do You Want To Program For It?” The technology I talked about is near hot topics like Internet of Things or traffic telematics.

Booth of a high school showing the robots they built. (Photo: Alexander DL4NO)

Booth of a high school showing the robots they built. (Photo: Alexander DL4NO)

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Booth of a high school showing the robots they built. (Photo: Alexander DL4NO)

vy 73
Alexander
DL4NO

Thanks so much for sharing your notes from Friedrichshafen, Alexander. I look forward to attending one year myself!  I’m fascinated with the fact that the bulk of the event is indoors–what an incredible venue.

Any other Post readers attend Ham Radio Friedrichshafen? Please comment!

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