BayCon 2022: Mark introduces SOAR (Satellite Optimized Amateur Radio)

If you’ve been listening to the Ham Radio Workbench Podcast, you’ve no doubt heard Mark Smith (N6MTS) talk about his “secret squirrel” project. At BayCon 2022 this past weekend, Mark revealed that the “secret squirrel” is a new product he’s designed called SOAR (Satellite Optimized Amateur Radio).

Mark announced that SOAR is basically a radio that’s “optimized for operating FM satellites.”

That’s a very modest description for a radio that can not only handle full duplex FM satellite communications, but also leverage the power of a GPS and CPU to help predict passes, aim an antenna, and adjust for doppler shift on the fly. And, oh yeah, it even records.

SOAR actually does much more than this.

If full duplex satellite work is the sort of thing that interests you, I highly recommend watching Mark’s BayCon presentation:

Click here to view on YouTube.

You can learn more about SOAR at:

The Halibut Electronics website has only recently been launched, so there’s not a lot of info there at time of posting. For the latest news, I suggest you follow Mark on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/SmittyHalibut

Of course, I’ll post updates here on QRPer.com.

Note this presentation was originally given at BayCon 2022: https://www.bay-net.org/baycon.html

8 thoughts on “BayCon 2022: Mark introduces SOAR (Satellite Optimized Amateur Radio)”

  1. I stopped doing satellite work because of the hassle of my setup(s). This would be so easy to use. What a great idea and I hope it comes to market soon.

  2. For weather satellites it would sure be nice to have a complete setup, rather than tying up my radio AND PC.
    This has the potential to become a self contained weather satellite system.

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