[hpsdr] Thoughts about the list

[David B. Toth]

Perhaps what has happened over time is that some individuals have 
declared an interest in a niche area of HPSDR and these birds of a 
feather tend to congregate together and exchange ideas amongst 
themselves. I believe that what has driven this is a desire to get 
the most projects done in the shortest period of time while still 
obtaining an exceptional result.

I would hope that once we get Alex, LPU (and other PS options) and a 
case done, then we can get back to a more leisurely and spread out community.

TAPR has done everything we can to make these designs available to 
the community at affordable prices, based on careful cost analyses 
and parts procurement. When you look at the price of fully assembled 
and tested boards, you (the generic you) will see that the final 
price is at or cheaper than what you could buy a bare board and 
procure the parts for. That is why we warrant the boards only to be 
working when we ship them -- where we would have the resources, we 
might try to help with rehabilitating a failed board, but we cannot 
promise to do that as we have a limited number of spare parts and all 
work is done by volunteers. After all, this is still an experimental 
type of hobby. I think most people here understand that. If you want 
or need more than we (the HPSDR community and TAPR) can provide you 
with, then you will need to wait for the commercial world to catch up 
and pay the appropriate cost dividend. Or, you can buy a FLEX-5000, 
which is also a fine piece of gear.

As TAPR president, I have personally been gratified that the HPSDR 
community has entrusted us with their collective intellectual 
property. The lurkers here (and in fact I am one of the lurkers) 
should be thrilled to have access to all of this brain trust material 
and sweat equity. And the TAPR community has in turn put in a 
phenomenal performance in getting these boards out to you all, while 
providing seed money, when asked, for alpha and beta boards. AMSAT 
has supplied design tools to this effort and also provided initial 
funds to get things started, which we have been able to repay thanks 
to the support of the HPSDR community.

I just wanted to get all of that said so that my final comments get 
taken in perspective.

It is very easy to take ourselves too seriously. What can be even 
worse is if OTHERS take us too seriously. This is a very large 
volunteer community, with very generous players in it. Before any of 
us comments on the work of others, I would encourage all of us to 
carefully reread what we are about to post. Some comments/critiques 
can seem excessively harsh when sent in this medium. We need the 
whole community to make this work. Some of us are great visionaries, 
some are great engineers and designers, while others are great 
implementers of the technology. Still others have skills that involve 
production. A smaller number of us can plant our feet in several 
areas at the same time. But for most people it is still a hobby, and 
if annoyed or insulted, they can choose to spend their free-time 
elsewhere, and that could be a great loss to all of us.

Remember that all we really need to know in life, we could have 
learned from watching Star Trek - "Set phasers on stun!"

Regards,
Dave VE3GYQ/W8


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