Death to FM

It's no secret that I feel it's out lived it's usefulness. We are at a point where the commerical two way is near non-existant. That has mosly all moved to cellular. In the past we have had a lot of repurposed equipment from public safety and commerical markets. We've also seen "cycles" in the hobby. It started with spark and CW, then AM voice, then SSB, then the 70's and FM. In the 90's there was quite a fuss about spread spectrum, but sadly it never really look off in the hobby.

How we have the VHF/UHF bands carved up and regulated and adminstered by overbearing repeater coordination bodies plays a part on moving from FM to something more useful. If you have been reading my ramblings you know that I feel we could likely so with less repeater coordination. I feel more shared non protected pairs should exist for any system less than 100 watts and 100 feet etc, should just use those.

You've also likely noticed how I feel about mode disparity. Data has significantly more stringent regulations than other modes.. and well Spread Spectum... it's just unclear if this even exists as a mode, since we classify our transmissions by the content they carry, which is also just stupid.

I'd like to see the tables turned to promote advancements in the hobby. Make FM ugly and over regulated. Make voice also the ugly red headed step child.

It's time for QAM and other types of modern modulation.

But there are no radio's you say? Well that is where changing regulation will force a manufacturing change. An example of this is when PL became required for repeaters in the late 80's and early 90's. This mandate was from coordinaton bodies and in a few years user end radios began to have PL encoders in them as a standard. (Prior to that you had to wire in your own PL deck.)

Then there is the M17 labs that we don't hear really anything about. And for that matter in 2015 TAPR mentioned they's like to see the OFDM work of John, KD6OZH advanced...

In short FM is 40 year old technology. And most of the current Digital Voice modes are not using modulation that is a whole different than conventional analog FM. The only way to achieve better data rates is move to modulation that is significanly different than FM.

Some times I think the ARDC ought to post bounty grants to help move certain things forward.