Hi,
Chirp contains a standard concept of channels and generally what an old analog radio looks like: frequency, shift, tones etc. And indeed this is what most radios look like more or less, so it's good that it's standardized.
There are two other things that are very often present in modern radios: broadcast fm receiver and flashlight. We often make fun of that, but it's everywhere and it turns out people actually use that (yes, i was surprised too).
So what do you think about a standardized fm broadcast radio concept in chirp? (not sure about the flashlight :)
This is just an idea (initially wanted to post this on april 1st). I'm expecting an answer of no.
VY 73
Jacek / SQ5BPF
So what do you think about a standardized fm broadcast radio concept in chirp? (not sure about the flashlight :)
Well, I'm not sure what benefit that would really have, and if it would be peer to and distinct from memories and settings, it would mean more laborious UI work for really minimal gain, IMHO. There are also some radios with other values tied to just the frequencies, I think, like "enabled/disabled" flags if I recall correctly. Further, the "good" (by my definition) radios allow you to store those frequencies alongside the regular ones in WFM mode in any channel. Just like AM (and DV, and others) the tone/offset/etc don't mean anything and are disabled, but I think that's fine.
So I guess I'd argue that it would make most sense to expose those channels as "special" memories with everything but frequency marked as immutable, the mode forced to WFM and make the driver refuse to set any frequency not in range/aligned as appropriate. Then they will be exposed and editable using the spreadsheet, copy/paste'able, etc.
Honestly, the drivers that expose the VFO settings as broken out settings should do the same with those (although I still argue there is basically zero benefit to exposing the current VFO state anyway). TBH, I feel pretty much the same about the broadcast channels. I know I'm not the norm, but I think there's a serious cost/benefit equation when it comes to "is it worth exposing this setting in chirp" versus "is this trivial to just set on the radio itself if you care". FM broadcast is just a frequency, no complex settings, tones, etc, so it's hardly even worth having in CHIRP, IMHO.
--Dan
On 18/6/24 15:07, Jacek Lipkowski via Developers wrote:
There are two other things that are very often present in modern radios: broadcast fm receiver and flashlight. We often make fun of that, but it's everywhere and it turns out people actually use that (yes, i was surprised too).
So what do you think about a standardized fm broadcast radio concept in chirp? (not sure about the flashlight 🙂
I wouldn't restrict ourselves to broadcast FM either.
I've owned several radios by Alinco, Kenwood and Yaesu that featured general-coverage MW/SW receivers and used to listen to both MW and SW stations on them.
My old Kenwood TH-F7E + whip antenna was quite good for picking up shortwave… and both the Alinco DJ-G7T¹ and Yaesu FT5-DR I have now both have quite decent ferrite bar antennas for MW reception.
All of these have quite reasonable wideband FM reception too. The old VX8-DR I had would even do it in stereo, as does the FTM-350AR I have.
¹ Gotcha being that the DJ-G7T is hard-coded to 10kHz frequency steps on MW, so you're at the mercy of the PLL tolerating being tuned 3kHz off. The EU version is 9kHz, but only does 144-146MHz and most FM 2m activity in VK is 146-148MHz.
I wouldn't restrict ourselves to broadcast FM either.
I've owned several radios by Alinco, Kenwood and Yaesu that featured general-coverage MW/SW receivers and used to listen to both MW and SW stations on them.
My old Kenwood TH-F7E + whip antenna was quite good for picking up shortwave… and both the Alinco DJ-G7T¹ and Yaesu FT5-DR I have now both have quite decent ferrite bar antennas for MW reception.
All of these have quite reasonable wideband FM reception too. The old VX8-DR I had would even do it in stereo, as does the FTM-350AR I have.
Well, right, that's kind of my point. The "good" radios store all those channels together and we represent it as such. The D74 driver literally declares its valid bands as 100kHz-470MHz and the modes include CW, L/USB, FM, NFM etc. Any channel can be used. Even the 20-year-old Icom V/UHF radios have WFM as a mode (range unrestricted) and if you want to program in broadcast FM channels, you do it wherever in the list you want. CHIRP supports all that for those radios no problem. Obviously radios like the Yaesu 817/857/897 have a very wide range of stuff you can program into any channel, being all-mode all-band models.
If a radio can only do WFM in the broadcast range in ten specialized memories, then expose those as specials, restrict them (and the regular ones) accordingly, but they might as well be represented on the sheet like the rest. That's MHO.
--Dan
participants (3)
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Dan Smith -
Jacek Lipkowski -
Stuart Longland VK4MSL