Topband: Remote SDR Receive only setup

[Rick Karlquist]

I have run a remote base (not just receiving) for many years and
prefer a very boring, non-state-of-the-art approach of
simply controlling a radio remotely and feeding the audio back
over landline telephone (Plain Old Telephone Service or POTS), not VOIP.
I have found that this limits latency to something like 50 ms
and the audio is relatively high fidelity because the standard
56k codex is quite good, compared to any kind of VOIP, which is
optimized for, guess what, voice, not weak signal CW.  In general,
you cannot get this kind of latency over the internet, and if
you could, it would require BOTH the remote internet and the control
point internet to have low latency.  That is only going to work
if you always use the same control point.   The truly remote
sites are less likely to have internet, but might still have
phone service.  If necessary, you can use a dialup modem on a second
phone line to control the radio and antenna switches.  (I remotely
select beverages, etc.).  The impact of latency will depend on
the situation.  In contests and big pileups, long latency can be
really limiting.  For me, POTS is the optimum approach, superior
to newer methods. (Unless you have line of sight for a UHF link,
then you could consider the remote SDR idea, but it will take a
lot more work to set it up).

Rick N6RK