Amateur Radio Takes Its Place at SDR2026 in Adelaide
Date :
30 /
09 /
2026
Author :
WIA & SDR2026
Amateur radio will be well represented in Adelaide over the next few days as SDR2026, the Software Defined Radio Conference, brings together people from academia, industry, defence and the amateur radio community to explore developments in software defined radio, RF engineering, spectrum, signal processing and related technologies. The conference runs from 29 September to 2 October 2026 at Festival Tower on North Terrace in Adelaide.
Importantly, amateur radio isn't simply appearing at the edge of the program. Radio amateurs are among the presenters contributing their own experience in SDR, experimentation, spectrum and citizen science. Among those presenting over the coming days are WIA Director Justin Giles-Clark VK7TW, Chair of the WIA Technical Advisory Committee Grant Willis VK5GR, Matt Cook VK5ZM, Gerard Rankin and Karl Fazon, along with other members of the amateur radio community.
Justin VK7TW will explore the role of the WIA as a bridge between amateur radio, SDR, STEM and citizen science, highlighting how a national amateur radio organisation can help connect experimenters, researchers, educators and community-based science.
Grant VK5GR brings extensive amateur radio, technical and spectrum experience to the conference, while Mat VK5ZM is also contributing to a program that demonstrates just how much common ground exists between professional RF engineering and the experimental culture of amateur radio.
That intersection is particularly significant. One description of SDR2026 notes that SDR now sits at the meeting point between advanced research and grass-roots experimentation, with amateur radio and citizen science continuing to contribute to the tools, techniques and open infrastructure used by the wider SDR community.
For radio amateurs, SDR has transformed what can be achieved in the shack. Functions that once required racks of specialised hardware can increasingly be implemented, modified and experimented with in software. It opens opportunities in everything from weak-signal reception and digital modes to satellite operation, spectrum monitoring, propagation research, radio astronomy and citizen science.
Having Australian radio amateurs presenting alongside researchers, engineers and industry specialists at SDR2026 is also a useful reminder of one of amateur radio's enduring strengths: it provides an accessible environment where people can experiment, build, modify, measure, write software and occasionally discover that the thing they were told shouldn't work actually does.
SDR2026 provides an opportunity to showcase that experimental community and to build stronger connections between amateur radio and the professional, research and educational communities working in SDR and RF technology.
STOP PRESS - 23 conference attendees sat their Foundation licence and passed during one of the tutorial sessions. A huge congratulations to Paul Hoffman VK5PH and the team.
SDR2026 Conference website - Link
SDR2026 Conference timetable - Link
Page Last Updated: Wednesday, 30 Sep 2026 at 07:58 hours by Justin Giles-clark
Click Here To Return To Previous Page
|
