Friends,
Im going to take this down in a couple of days due to its off topic nature. I post this here because I know some of you design circuits and tinker with things but might not post them here because its not relevant to synths.
I have been looking into ham radios and Im wondering if anyone here is also in to this? There seems like some very subtle parallels in the physics, though dealing with a very different set of frequencies.
It interesting to me how some of the same methods in sound design (filters and oscillators and other modifiers) are used to accomplish totally different tasks. I was wondering if any engineers here have dabbled with this.
It seems Im getting into another hobby that entails almost infinite expansion.
Ham radios utilizing sideband modulation often use ring modulators to encode/decode the transmission.
Hetrodyning and super-hetrodyning are also terms you might research as they have parallels to theremins.
I’m not a ham operator but I find the hamfests to be a good source of parts for music gear. Best score was a pile of NOS Schnade switches used in Oberheims and P-5/T8s. The good hamfests can be hard to find. There’s a good one within driving distance of me, and the best nationally known one is somewhere in Ohio. Not a place to hunting music gear - most advanced one I saw was a Hammond L-100, no synths or vintage gear. Hamfests are a place for bargains and the people there are no idiots they’re going to sell the vintage stuff on the 'bay.
Ham radio does have its parallels and learning the game does give you a good background for DIY. However keep in mind that the FCC wants to sell off the frequencies reserved for amateur radio, so its future is uncertain.
Who would buy those freqs? Corporations? What would be the point of selling them off, there are so many operators out there that would be screwed over?