v81

So extreme communism is bad? And extreme capitalism is good? And we can't pick an inbetween?

I'll start with last point first. Square area is what the OP image referenced (length X width of space taken).

So if it's wrong for me to use it then it's wrong for the op too.

Cars gotta be parked... People have garages and carparks exist. We seen to manage that fine.

And for for done people with disabilities cars are the only way.

I'm short on time so I'll make this quick... As much as you can drag up edge cases where cars are bad, I could do the same about bikes... But the difference between the morons here and I, is that I'm not trying hard to shit on one mode of transport over another.

It might surprise you but for the most part cars and bikes co exist fine.

You'd be surprised just how few search engines the are.

Google and Bing are about all there is.

Most other 'search engines' just offload the hard work onto existing search engines.

Very few people actually know DuckDuckGo sources their results from Bing for example.

The infrastructure Mozilla uses to serve their content is microscopic compared to what they'd need to operate a fully independent and capable modern search engine.

How's your WiFi infrastructure? Assuming you have the area covered with WiFi you could go PoC (PushToTalk Over Cellular). There are dedicated handsets you can use for this for as low as USD$50 ea on Ali Express. Being that it's just WiFi there are no licenses to worry about. Having a 2 way radio type handset makes it pretty familiar, buy you can very much use it with existing mobile handsets. Zello seems to be the de-facto standard for this but i believe other options exist.

All i can see is that as per @[email protected] it just switches between the audio sources for 'DATA MOD' and 'DATA OFF MOD' in the CONNECTORS menu. Seems like a lame missed opportunity to also configure the other parameters of the radio for data. The addition of the 'PRESETS' menu seems like an additional missed opportunity to do the same. They describe it as a way we can save the state of the radio to suit digital modes... but then fail to let us save the sates of the most important things needed to be changed for digital modes. Seems like such a massive oversight, i just can't understand what they were thinking?

s; most are limited to less than 1m. Even with aerial whip antennas

Wavelength varies from 2.7 to 3.4 metres. Just because that is the size of the wave doesn't meant that a good antenna has to be that size. A very good basic antenna is a 1/4 wave vertical, and we see them pretty often as telescopic antennas on radios and cars. A 1/4 wave FM broadcast antenna will perform excellently, and will be 68cm to 85cm in length. More modern cars have antennas printed into a window similar to a demister strip. They are actually NOT smaller, some can be quite larve, but also very stealth. But the point remains is that they are NOT small as you suggest. Much shorter antennas exist, but there is a gain penalty, and that penalty gets more extreme the smaller the antenna gets. I have such a small antenna on my car and it IS an issue. In physics nothing is free, yes, you can make an antenna small and still have it be resonant, but you'll pay a price on effective gain.

This is a problem that technology has not solved. Sure, clever designs have helped a little, but there is always a price to pay if you try to cheat the physics.

A compromised antenna can work in a very very stong signal area, but it will easily be the difference between a clear solid recieve and no recieve at all in a fringe area.

AM Broadcast is an example of this, with antennas sometimes 2 inches / 50mm long or even less and hidden inside the radio. Buy as a ham myself with a HF setup, even my HF setup, which is a poor compromise on MF broadcast gets me stations from all over Australia. That isn't going to happen with a regular AM receiver.

Ultimately, sure you can have a mobile with no external antenna receive FM broadcast... but only in a VERY VERY strong signal area, within a few miles of the transmitter, while a propper antenna will work at 10x the distance.

Given that the proposal requires a minor redesign of the cellphones to incorporate the broadcast receiving radio, adding a small antenna, or simply using the chassis of the phone as an antenna, would not only be possible but it should be fairly trivial to accommodate for. by no means am I saying it would be the worlds greatest FM antenna system, most certainly it would not be, but it should be sufficient to differentiate the signal from the noise

This would work at very short distance only, it really would be that limited. Would it be useful for the people in those short distances? Maybe. Buy while a regular ordinary transistor radio with a telescopic antenna would work 10-30x further away, comparing those 2 really shows how much of a compromise is going on.

The point I’m dancing around is software-defined radios. The big cost of SDRs is mainly regarding transmission, since they don’t put out a very strong signal This is true for any radio type ever, it's not an SDR specific thing. EVERY radio that puts out more than a few dbm needs some level of amplification. This is NOT and SDR specific thing. It might appear that way because fo how many affordable SDRs just come with a low output. This is just a normal Monday for any radio system from a $50 CB to a broadcast station, SDR or not.

SDR's are not magic. In fact they actually have some drawbacks compared to conventional designs with regards dynamic rage, over loading etc.. Pulling the 'SDR' card and not knowing this i think shows your lack of understanding of the topic (not trying to diss, just an observation). SDR's are a great tool, i have 4 of them in front of me as i type this, so I'm no stranger. Icom IC-705, Icom IC-7300, HackRF and an RTL-SDR. You could also maybe count the University of Twente webSDR i have open in another tab, and an MMDVM at a stretch to make it 6. http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

This is all exciting stuff... but none of it has revolutionised RF physics for human portable commodity radios, nor even come close to an adjacent technology that could be adopted / adapted.

My ~ AUD$1900 IC-705 can go from picking up stations all over the state of Victoria, Australia with it's non optimal antenna tuned for 146MHz, to picking up literally nothing if i hook up a few hundred mm of wire to it's antenna socket on the bench here. And I can engage pass band filtering, up to 2 pre-amp stages, and a variety of Digital Signal Processing features and sill get... nothing.

I appreciate your passiona nd interest, but.... physics.

We can look at other technologies that are great... WiFi.. it's great, but the transmitter location is in your home and still struggles to cover some larger homes... from inside your home itself. Cellular.. again, great, but again, as the name implies it;s made up of 'cells', physics is a massive issue with cellular, each individual cell tower consists of tens or sometimes hundreds of transceivers, each connected to phased arrays of hundreds to thousands of antenna elements... and that's just a single site, many towns will need multiple of these for coverage. Cell is not immune to the limitations of physics, and it has to brute force the situation from the tower end so as we can have small devices in out pockets... and even with all that i get no coverage int he middle of my local supermarket. Do an image search for 'cell panel antenna inside' and see if you can find a picture fo the actual antenna elements, my results mostly got the rear so you might have to scroll a bit.

A lot of the modernisation you refer to is just that given the value we place on connectivity while remaining portable the effort has shifted to needing to bring the signals closer to the user. Looking at that broadly, while some gains have been made what's really happened is that the signal has been bought closer to you, making you think magic has happened.

Yes, antennas are important, but not nearly as important as they were even 10-15 years ago. I couldn't disagree more. The antenna is the single most significant component of any system. I think the best demonstration of this is modern cellular as it shows what has been needed to be done to bring connectivity top the masses and proves there is no way around.

I think FM Broadcast is great, but with regard to phones aren't we missing something here? For a phone to even receive FM broadcast headphones have to be plugged in, it's been a requirement for any FM RX capable phone I've ever had, for antenna purposes. So with regard to the argument for mobiles to have FMrx if such functionality were to become common place we'd need to see the return of headphone jacks and people would need to be carrying corded headphones for it to function.

I think this capability is a great idea, but the limitations forced on us by losing the headphones socket as well as societys fascination with making everything wireless at any cost is a little concerning.

I've always considered average to good quality wired buds to be great, but it seems they really are on their way out.

I still disagree. There are far more significant factors than the frequency.

Longer wavelength isn't an instant blanket solution to better propogation.

Factors like typical transmitter and receiver configurations matter, location matters, object density matters, reflections etc.. etc..

Hence why UHF is preferred in some cases by emergency services and so on.

Ultimately anything above 60MHz is going to be line of sight or a reflection when assuming the receiving station is mobile or portable, and in that case if the user is indoors higher frequencies might reflect better.

Also narrow FM has more power density than wide FM for the same power level, hence why broadcast transmitters need to be so incredibly powerful to get anywhere.

Is actually agree with that, but given how careless scooter riders are in my area in laying the blame almost 100% on them.

From what I've witnessed they're often arrogant and pay little attention to their surroundings, often having close calls simply by shooting off a path to cross a road without paying attention.

I'm neutral on cars vs other modes of transport, so I'm not trying to favour one side or another, but each user or group has to take responsibility for their shortcomings, and the number of bad acting scooters is cyclists as a percentage of their respective groups is far too high.

I'd trust a car driver to be attentive more than I'd ever trust a scooter rider or cyclist.

Simply from my own observations.

Better build the house in a barn then.

That will solve everything!

Only one of these is often ridden on footpaths and walking areas.

The limit makes sense.

Another bullshit cars are evil post that just ignore facts and reality.

Cars can somewhat be evil but if you want to capture the attention of people you've go to post well considered arguments.

Not crap like this.