[Elecraft] Digital Voice, was: New KX3 up & running.

[Bill Frantz]

The real problem is which codec and transmission protocol do you 
use. Icom has D-Star, and Yaesu, instead of supporting D-Star 
which might have improved digital voice uptake due to larger 
critical mass, decided to push out its own protocol. (I think 
they were listening to their commercial division which wants to 
lock customers into using only their gear. IMHO, that's not ham radio.)

Note that with D-Star, the only proprietary part of the protocol 
is the codec. If you use the chip which supports the codec, you 
are covered on the intellectual property issues. For me, the 
supreme irony is that both Icom and Yaesu use the same chip, but 
can't talk to each other.

The other issue is that under weak signal conditions, FM is 
likely to be better for getting the message through than either 
of these digital voice protocols.

There is a open source protocol which is used on HF, but I don't 
see much activity using it.

As far as Elecraft is concerned, there just isn't usage to 
justify the engineering time. We didn't see PSK63 support until 
after the Europeans were running PSK63 contests.

73 Bill AE6JV

On 5/4/16 at 8:05 PM, elecraft at mailman.qth.net (Michael Heit via 
Elecraft) wrote:

>I have to wonder if a firmware upgrade in the future may allow 
>digital voice from the KX3?

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