Friday, November 10, 2023

FreeDV 700e contact with VK3RV

It's been a while since I've fired up FreeDV. For some reason there isn't a pre-made build for Linux so I grabbed the source code and simply followed the instructions to build it (really just a few dependencies and the build script does the rest).

The user interface looks nicer and there's a better initial setup dialog that makes it easier than when I last tried it. Peter, VK3RV, (who incidentally I first met on FreeDV), was kind enough to have a contact with me.



We first talked on 700e, then tried 1200 and finally 2200. Each sounded better although Peter couldn't copy me on 2200 but it looks like he had some local interference which was pretty severe:


Amazing he could hear me at all with that going on! His screen shot reminded me that you can have several of the visualisations showing at once. It's not obvious how to do this but the trick is to drag the additional tabs up and a bit to the left, until you see an area highlighting, then drop.

A terrific innovation is the new FreeDV reporter window which shows who's on and what frequency and mode they're set to:


FreeDV is looking better than ever and I know David, VK5DR, has received some funding to support additional work on the project.

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