I’ve been very busy at work and home and haven’t spent a lot of time on the air lately. This weekend I couldn’t even make it up to the site where my club was operating the VHF contest though I did make 3 contacts with them on the bands I have. In total I made 14 contacts in a few mins of working them and whoever else I could hear at that time. Hopefully I will be able to participate fully in the RTTY contest in 2 weeks.

With the title of this post, the forums and mailing lists were abuzz with news that Simon Brown HB9DRV has made a deal to sell his popular and free Ham Radio Deluxe software. The group making the purchase is http://www.w4pcsoftware.com/ – Mike Carper WA9PIE, Randy Gawtry, K0CBH and Rick Ruhl W4PC.

A lot of the posts I saw were reactions and assumptions around the program likely moving from free (though you could donate) to a paid product. Reactions were pretty upbeat from what I saw with hopes being reasonably priced and continued support/enhancements, where enhancements have been slow to come lately with Simon focusing on a SDR program. When I last looked there wasn’t any official response from the team making the purchase.

I imagine that those where price might be a factor will look elsewhere and those comfortable with the program and seeing a decent value in a modest cost (if it will be a paid program) will likely stay and see how things progress. Of course, the current version would likely continue to work for quite a while and folks can remain on the version they have and wait things out.

A link to a QRZ thread on the topic – http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?312536-Development-to-continue-on-HRD...

Simon produced a fine program for many years and though I tried many others, I kept coming back to HRD. We’ll just have to see what happens in the future.

73,
K2DSL