I've yet to use FT8, but it's wonderful seeing the ham community invest in newer protocols that incorporate things like forward error correction! Many of the p

I've yet to use FT8, but it's wonderful seeing the ham community invest in newer protocols that incorporate things like forward error correction! Many of the popular protocols, like PSK31 and AX.25 are getting long in the tooth. There's a beauty to their simplicity, but it leaves much to be desired. Though SDR is a bit of a misnomer, extracting data out of an audio signal with DSP on commodity hardware is becoming the new way to do radio. It certainly will never replace analog voice in terms of simplicity and availability, but it's definitely breathing life into the hobby!