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Hyderabad: Amateur Radio enthusiasts attend LARC-4 convention

Over 400 Ham operators from across the country to attend LARC-4 convention

By Telangana Today

Updated On - 11 December 2021, 10:36 PM

Hyderabad: Amateur Radio enthusiasts attend LARC-4 convention

Hyderabad: The fourth edition of Lamakaan Annual Radio Convention (LARC-4) is being organized at the Muffakham Jah College of Engineering and Technology (MJCET). The two-day most sought-after annual event is expected to see over 400 Ham operators (amateur radio operators) from across the country, who have carved a niche for themselves in the field of radio communication.

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 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.

Interestingly, most people who attend LARC conventions are not academically trained in the field.

“There are several doctors, farmers and people from other walks of life, who are interested in radio communication. These people have developed their knowledge over a period of time by experimentation with wireless communication,” said Thomas George, a member of LARC.

The biggest attraction of the two-day event will be the unveiling of the indigenously developed up-converter for radio communication using the QO-100 satellite. The low cost transceiver is conceived and developed by five Hyderabad-based Ham operators.

“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 will interact virtually with the participants. The event will also see the unveiling of the latest version of uBitx v.6, a high-frequency transceiver that was developed by Hyderabad-based HFSignals.