The fourth edition of the Lamakaan Annual Radio Convention (LARC-4) concluded at the Muffakham Jah College of Engineering and Technology (MJCET). The two-day annual event saw 400 Ham operators (amateur radio operators) from across the country.
Ashhar Farhan, the owner of Lamakaan and co-founder of LARC, shares that the event will provide an opportunity for the ham operators to showcase their experimentations with newer radio techniques and wireless technologies.
The event also saw the unveiling of sBitx, a very hackable SDR transceiver according to Farhan
“The convention is intended to encourage experimenting and sharing of knowledge associated with radio communication. Experimentation is very important for any field of science to develop. Here several amateur radio operators interact with each other about their work and also attend workshops to enhance their knowledge in the subject,” he said.
Ashhar Farhan, the owner of Lamakaan and co-founder of LARC, provided a ground to various ham operators to showcase their amateur experimentations.
ICOM India Dealer radiobrewery.com demonstrated the latest ICOM Transceiver and other equipment at the flea market. Yagi antenna manufacturer – www.hobbytivity.com also demonstrated various 3D printed dual-band yagi antennas during the meet.
“The convention is intended to encourage experimenting and sharing of knowledge associated with radio communication. Experimentation is very important for any field of science to develop. Here several amateur radio operators interact with each other about their work and also attend workshops to enhance their knowledge in the subject,” Farhan said.
“It took us one year to develop the up-converter,” said Amarendra Prasad, one of the team members who worked on the projects. Explaining about the up-converter, he said, “Normally, one needs to use the Software Defined Radio (SDR) receiver just to listen to the conversations happening on the satellite or use a transceiver to communicate, which could cost more than a lakh. For the indigenously developed converters, we sourced locally available 95 cm dish (costing about Rs 1500) and LNB (Rs 150) to receive QO-100 signals. The real success was in designing the circuit board which could receive signals from the dish (10 GHz) and convert them into 740 MegaHertz.”
Three renowned radio designers from abroad, Pete Juliano, N6QW and Bill Meara, N2CQR and Jerry Buxton N0JY also interact virtually with the participants.
Day 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LY_YNxi5yBs
Day 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8zNZQWfUA8&t
