eHam.net Reviews - AOR ARD9800

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M0NKD	Rating: 5/5	Mar 12, 2004 16:19	Send this review to a friend!
Prepare yourselves			Time owned: 0 to 3 months
It’s not often that a new device entering the amateur radio marketplace represents a giant leap in the future of the hobby. The AOR ARD9800 Fast Radio Modem is such a device. Take a reasonable transceiver and aerial, tune-it to a data portion on, say, 20 metres USB, establish a normal analogue conversation with another station having the same unit and then click the digital switch of the ARD9800’s transmitting station. A word of warning is required here to the receiving station… do ensure the operator is securely strapped-down in their shack chair, because if they are not, they will get literally completely blown off-it. Put simply this is jaw-dropping, mind bogglingly, absolutely amazing! That’s a lot of adjectives for a small, very expensive box, but what exactly does it do? It’s sold as a high speed radio modem, but effectively it’s a way of getting digital voice transmission over sideband HF using the standard 2.3khz voice bandwidth. The unit compresses and gives the equivalent of a 3khz voice bandwidth. The results are staggering. All the standard frequency shifted HF sideband voice qualities with fading simply vanish and are replaced with a near VHF FM quality. If you have regular HF contacts with the same folks, grit your collective teeth, dust off those credit cards and each purchase one of these babies. HF telephony will never be the same again.

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