Virtualization comes to Ham Radio

A few years ago the tech media was awash with talk of Second Life, a virtual existence in Cyberspace where players could choose just about any lifestyle they’d care to imagine performing virtual commerce including dealing in property and goods, in some instances actually converting newly acquired cyber wonga in to real world dosh.

For years Radio Hams often sat in dark little rooms (affectionately known as radio shacks) communicating with fellow hams across the world thanks to the magic of radio propagation.

In keeping with Second Life there is now a virtual radio environment in cyberspace called Hamsphere where the ionosphere and other factors are synthesised in a very realistic way to emulate many of the atmospheric conditions you might expect to find over a real  HF radio circuit.  Amazingly us hams can communicate to other each in real time over this virtual radio circuit with many of the associated pops, crackles and fading scenarios we’re used to in the real world.

You don’t have to be a Ham to use Hamsphere as there is a receive only option, requirements are a Windows PC with an up-to-date Java installation.