MARS

Amateur Radio Society

Technical Presentation - "SDR"

2024 Mar 16 OM Rajesh VU2OW

The monthly members’ meeting of MARS Amateur Radio Society for the month of Mar'24 was held on Saturday, 16th Mar, 2024 at 6.00 pm IST (1800hrs) in “The Hall of 1960”, Department of Chemistry, College of Engineering, Guindy campus (CEG), Anna University, Chennai. The meeting began solemnly as a 'One minute silence' was observed as a mark of respect to OM Dr.Venkatachalapathy - VU2PQ who became silent key on 11th Feb'24.

Then the President OM P.Thyagarajan - VU2PTR presided over the meeting and welcomed the gathering. In his welcome address he mentioned about the forthcoming events in the pipeline. A visit to the Air Traffic Control Tower of the Meenambakkam Airport and witnessing the live operations going on in there figured in his speech. OM Vijaya Rangan - VU2AIR shall be coordinating the programme and the exact date of visit shall be announced later. Another visit to a PCB manufacturing unit also figured in his address wherein members of MARS Amateur Radio Society will have an opportunity to witness the complete processing from cutting the PCB sheet to the shaping of a finished PCB right from its raw stage.

This was followed by a formal self introduction by the newbie HAMs/SWLs. The event of the day was a talk on 'Software Defined Radio'. OM Dr Shanmugham - VU2CSM called upon OM Rajesh Kannan - VU2OW who presented it. Contrary to the conventional power point presentations that are normally staged in a gathering, this was an extempore by Rajesh, though a few slides too found their place.

Tracing down the evolution of the SDR first, Rajesh then moved on to the application of SDR with special reference to QO-100 satellite and very elaborately explained their technical nuances. The rich experience he has gained in its operations reflected in his delivery. The format adopted might have triggered the minds of the audience and therefore many questions came up and Rajesh very convincingly answered all of them. At the end of the presentation, the Joint Secretary, OM Balashanmugham alias Anand - VU3UBS handed over a memento to Rajesh. As an addendum, the participant cup for the Fox hunt event was presented to OM Lakshmanan - VU2LF, as he could not collect it earlier. OM Vivek - VU3CDV handed over the cup to Lakshmanan on behalf of his team with OM Ravi - VU2ETO. Finally, vote of thanks was delivered by the Secretary, OM Deepan - VU2DPN.