Documentation Amateur Radio Beat

What's new for amateur radio operators

Fedora 11 includes a number of applications and libraries that are of interest to amateur radio operators and electronic hobbyists. Many of these applications are included in the Fedora Electronic Lab spin. Fedora also includes a number of VLSI and IC design tools which are not outlined here.

Sound card applications

fldigi

Fedora 11 includes version 3.10 of fldigi. Changes from Fedora 10 include many enhancements to the waterfall and logging, along with dozens of minor changes to the user interface and bug fixes. For a complete list of changes see the upstream project's site at http://www.w1hkj.com/fldigi-distro/.

xfhell

Version 1.9 of xfhell includes some improvements in handling the PTT line and additional flexibility in adjusting window sizes, as well as some bug fixes. The project's site is at http://5b4az.chronos.org.uk/pages/digital.html.

Software Defined Radio

gnuradio

gnuradio has been updated to version 3.1.3. This is largely a bugfix update.

Circuit Design and Simulation

The gEDA suite has been updated to 20081231. This includes the packages geda-docs, geda-examples, geda-gattrib, geda-gnetlist, geda-gschem, geda-gsymcheck, geda-symbols and geda-utils. These are all bugfix releases. In addition, gerbv, pcb, and ngspice are released as part of the gEDA suite, but released separately.

gerbv

gerbv 2.1.0 includes improvements to object selection, improved exporting, and more flexibility in dealing with drill files. The complete release notes for this package can be found at http://gerbv.sourceforge.net/ANNOUNCEMENT-2.1.0.

pcb

pcb has been updated to 20081128. Included among the improvements is a new 'Ben mode' that exports a 'photograph' of the board as a .png file. There are also some minor improvements in drill handling and a number of bug fixes. The complete release notes for this version are available at http://pcb.sourceforge.net/news.html#20081128.

ngspice

ngspice has been updated to version 18. Changes include:

• Tclspice simulator library has been merged with ngspice. Now you can compile ngapice or tclspice by asserting a configure switch. See README.tcl
• New options have been introduced: brief, listing, autostop and scale
• Support for .lib file has been introduced. This allows the use of third party model libraries in ngspice.
• .measure statements: avg, integ, rms, max, min, delay, param
• .global statements t support for global nodes whose name is not expanded when flattening the netlist.
• .func macros for inlining functions into netlists.
• Improved the numparam library to support fully parametrized netlists.
• BSIM model binning.
• new multi-input gate VCVS using XSPICE extensions.

iverilog

iverliog has been updated to 0.9.20081118. This is largely a bugfix update.