Network radio – can we afford to ignore it?
“Network radio expands our hobby”, Wythall Radio Club members were told at a talk by Chris G7DDN.
This growing network of handheld and mobile radios has global coverage, via WiFI and the cellular 2-4G network.
And the International Radio Network (IRN) allows licensed radio amateurs to use their mobile phones, tablets, computers or network radios to transmit RF from the many repeaters, hubs and nodes around the world.
“It’s easy to dismiss the whole network radio phenomenon as ‘not real Ham Radio'”, says Chris, “But there are plenty of folk enjoying radio-like experiences without the necessity of transmitting on certain specific bands.”
Members of the Wythall Radio Club tried out network radio after the talk, using the free Zello app.
“As we go further into the 21st Century,” says Chris, “I think we will see the lines between ‘naturally propagated’ signals and ‘artificially propagated’ signals blurring further.”
Read more at Chris’s blog and on Duarte, CT1EIZ’s, web-site.