If the last Radio Marti broadcast eluded your radio antenna, or you were too busy to catch Art Bell's latest AM revelations, a new PC radio device may be right up your alley.
The Winradio is a wide-frequency-coverage communications receiver and spectrum analyzer which runs via a receiver card that plugs into a PC motherboard slot (there are no definite plans for a Mac model yet). The radio kit also includes an antenna and software that allows the computer keyboard and mouse to interface with the receiver.
"Computer-operated radio is the future of radio communications," said Bob Grove, a ham radio enthusiast since 1951, and Winradio's sole US distributor through his company, Grove Enterprises. The Winradio kit can be used to monitor and record multi-channel radio broadcasts, and while standard AM/FM radios cover a limited range of commercial broadcast frequencies, Winradio claims to cover a frequency range over 60 times larger than that of an ordinary car radio.
"I like its convenience and I think it's excellent that it covers a wide band," said Wayne Fowkes from the Motorola service shop in Orlando, Florida, where he works. As the field service manager, Fowkes uses Winradio to make sure that the Orange County public safety communications system is running smoothly. "It actually covers more [of the spectrum] than the service monitor I was using before," he said.
The brainchild of Rosetta Laboratories in Melbourne, Australia, Winradio was originally developed for military use, but it didn't take long to tap into the hobbyist radio market. According to Milan Hudacek, Rosetta's managing director, about 75 percent of worldwide sales are to hobbyists. The other 25 percent are professional users, many with military stripes.
With applications ranging from media monitoring to military, public safety, law enforcement, and surveillance, Grove sees a potentially huge market for Winradio.
"It couldn't have come at a better time. Due to the convergence of various factors, the last two years have been devastating to hobbyist radio," Grove said.
Contributing to this decline was a low ebb in the sunspot cycle, a draconian requirement for learning morse code before getting your amateur radio license (you need a license for a transceiver but not for a receiver), and FCC regulations that have made it a crime to eavesdrop on cellular phone and cordless phone frequencies.
Now there's a pendulum effect occurring. People who had ditched the hobby radio habit and developed a taste for computers and the Internet are being wooed back by this blend of radio and software technology.
So what's all the noise about?
First of all, Winradio is cheap. Priced at US$495, the low-end WR1001i model does some serious monitoring of AM, SSB, and wide and narrow FM bands. It also has a virtually infinite memory retention of bands, a feature sure to be a hit with scanners as disparate as police radio-obsessed Uncle Fred in Tulsa and Coast Guard agents waiting for a big bust off the Florida Keys. As Grove sees it, this model "will remain the introductory-level staple for the foreseeable future."
Winradio's method of graphic tuning, dubbed Visitune, allows the user to drag a mouse across a scanned spectrum, click on a peak, and tune in. And the front-panel functions are more powerful than those of traditional radio because there's not enough space on the front of a traditional receiver for the multiple settings available on Winradio.
Another key selling point is Winradio's spectrum analyzer capability. The cheapest spectrum analyzer on the market is US$2,000 and the WR1001i gives you the same technology for a quarter of the price.
Major US government agencies have taken notice: the NSA, the State Department, and the Coast Guard have gotten in line to buy higher-end models like the top-of-the-line WR8006, priced at US$29,950.
Built into a custom rackmount case, this model contains six linked WR3000i-DSP Winradio modules and software, allowing you to observe the status of all receivers on the screen and control them independently. The built-in hard drive is capable of recording up to a month's transmissions using sophisticated compression algorithms. This high-end model can operate in a stand-alone environment or be controlled remotely over the Internet, making it ideal for surveillance operations.
And if all goes according to plan, some Winradio operators will be listening to more than earthbound transmissions: Grove has been in close contact with SETI and says chances are good that more affordable systems used to monitor signals from Mars and beyond will be built around Winradio in the future. Grove doesn't know for certain whether Jodie Foster owns one yet.
