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Okay, very good John. Yeah, well this is a special firmware and you can look it up. It's called the IJV firmware. India Victor Juliet. And that's the suffix of the Italian guy who wrote it. And unlike many of the people who messed with these firmwares, he didn't just choose a particular set of features. He actually got in, I think, into the DSP of the radio and messed around with it. And somehow he has managed to create, you can receive AM but you can't transmit it, but you can transmit and receive DSP, suppressed carrier, and CW. And nobody's quite sure how he did it and he's not telling. I looked at the signal with a tidy S.A. and I couldn't make hide nor hair of it. But I do know that when you listen to it on the air, you can tune it in and it does sound like single sideband with a bit of a carrier. So, and of course there's two sidebands because somehow I'm sure it's a digital equivalent of the old-fashioned phasing rigs that's somehow happening. Now the good news is that this firmware also allows you to set your arrow keys to a whole slew of step rates, all the way from, you know, multiple kilohertz and multiple tens of kilohertz for even up to broadcast FM, and all the way down to ten measly little hertz. Ten hertz. And that's good enough. That's good enough for either CW or sideband. You might want a little bit more resolution than that, but hey, in a tiny little radio that's good enough. So I was just very, very pleased with that. So you got these radios, they're cheap, they're cheerful, they're Chinese, and hams can mess around with the firmware. Me likey. 87MW. Well, that's the best part. You know, that, you know, back in the day there were electronics kits, and the whole point of the kits is you could try all these different things, you could follow the instructions to make this or that or the other thing. But once you found your way around in them, you could like, well what happens if I do this? You know, and I made all kinds of cool things happen. And having something inexpensive to take apart, it's okay if you don't get it back together again, it's not the end of the world if you break it when they cost $30 to buy. So I'm glad that people are experimenting and finding ways to repurpose, you know, lowly VHF handhelds. And yes, 10Hz tuning resolution is considered good enough for doing amateur radio and normal communications. Although, as a CW operator, I am almost always switching my radios into one cycle per second tuning resolution, tuning steps. And Peter, it's fun talking with you. I'm going to go to bed now, or do something. But I enjoyed this conversation. We should meet up and have a conversation in real life, you know, over a coffee or an ice cream social this weekend, a Sunday in Greenwood. And I'll bring my Star Trek tricorder. But anyway, I'm going to sign with you, I'm going to listen out to your final transmission and turn everything off and crawl into my cocoon. Take care, Peter. I enjoy our conversations. This is Joan, KX2 CW, and I will be clear on your final transmission. Okay, very good, Joan. I figured you'd want to know about this, especially judging from your expression when you came back to my report. I figured this is something that's going to interest Joan. So yeah, it's great. I was saying that I think the ratio of dollars to fun on this little thing has been one of the best things I ever bought in amateur radio. So anyway, that's the story. Nice to talk to you. Take care. And hopefully I will feel better in time for the social next weekend. I actually spaced out and missed the picnic. Unfortunately, I have reached the stage of vulnerability, shall we say, where I used to be able to remember everything. Now I got to write everything down when I hear it, or it goes in one brain, selling out the other. Okay, take care, Joan, and we'll talk to you soon. KX2 CW, KV7, Mike Whiskey, I'm out.
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