…and their computers, of course.
HP in Real Life – Ham Radio Story is an article on their website that describes how two hams—only know as Andy and Irwin—purportedly use HP computer in their ham radio operations. It’s not very detailed, but at least it doesn’t depict ham radio operators as doddering old folks using antiquated technologies. They point to the following applications:
- Database logging of radio contacts and calculation of scores when on radio contest expeditions
- Controlling radios with automatic data exchange between the radio and the Internet to other stations in a worldwide “spotting” network to share contact opportunities and information.
- Digital signal processing and spectrum analysis using software-defined radios, special software and additional hardware.
AD7MI says
HP was born from ham radio – it is good to see them recognize their roots.
Excerpted from The HP Way by David Packard (9DRV)
Back at Stanford, it was ham radio that helped set my future course. The university had an amateur radio station in a small building just off the engineering corner of the Quad. It was near the laboratory of a new young professor named Fred Terman. I didn’t know much about him at the time, not even that his father was a famous educator and inventor of the well-known Stanford-Binet intelligence test. I would occasionally spend time at the radio station, and Professor Terman would stop by from time to time to visit with me. Finally, on a spring day in 1933, he invited me into his office and suggested I take his graduate course in radio engineering during my senior year. That was the beginning of a series of events that resulted in the establishment of the Hewlett-Packard Company.
73 Scott AD7MI
Ken says
Irwin KD3TB and Andy KD3RF