Crawley Amateur Radio Club

KADRAD is a new program, written over the past three weeks by Mike G0KAD, that puts a realistic radio front panel on a computer screen and drives a real transceiver, in the shack or across the internet. It already runs the club's FLEX-6400 from home, and on 12 October it worked Poland and Belgium on 6 m FT8 that way. This article explains what it does, how it works, how it was built, and how you can try it with your own radio. What it does KADRAD looks and behaves like a radio rather than a computer program. There is a big glowing frequency display, a meter with a moving needle, a tuning knob you spin with the mouse, and proper buttons for mode, filters, noise blanker, AGC and the rest. Mike's aim was a panel you could operate without reading a manual. Real radios, honestly shown. KADRAD asks the radio what it can do and only shows controls that work. A button that does nothing never appears. Skins. The default "Classic '80s" panel can be recoloured, and there a...