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ABOUT US
THE DREAM
Any experienced DF Operator
knows the feeling when there are plenty of RDF instruments on a Mission Truck
to look at the same time, and there is very little time to lose during the job.
At a DF Mission there is usually more information available from the instruments
than what a human being can efficiently process in real time.
We, at HuntMaster's R&D Labs, wanted to take profit from all that data!
The dream was born! To create a 'thinking software' that knows exacly what the
DF Operator's goal is. A SIGINT (Signal Intelligence) sofware that grabs all the information
available and process it in real time to help us locate the unknown spot where
the signal comes from! Helping us to get next to the transmitter as efficiently as
possible, with great accurancy, and in no time.
The path we have already walked to achieve this 'Holy Grail' of any DF Operator is
called HuntMaster. This system has all of our experience, knowledge and efforts in the field for more than 20 years.
THE HISTORY
In the early 90's a
group of radio enthusiasts at the 'Delta Radio Society' started exploring
more efficient ways of fighting against local radio interference in ham &
marine bands. During those years, several apparatus have been developed
to increase the speed and performance of this just-for-fun RDF Missions. In 1993
this group of hams came up with the design of the first Digital DF unit for
mobile operations. Paving the way for what was going to come!
A small group of persons that
participated in those weekly RDF meetings belived that it was time to comercially
develop this new technologies. They decided to work hard on a new project called...
HuntMaster. Investing all their time, money and talent,
new ideas started emerging quickly. Ideas that where radical innovative in a
field where not much had been done since World War II. Lots of basic operation
aspects where retought from scrach. Why trinagulation had to be done on a map
on paper, if it could be done on a digital georeferentiated chart?
Time showed up that they were correct. Concepts like the mathematicall model
that predicts in seconds the location of the transmission with a 95% probability
where developed. The first full Digital Direction Finding Processor was designed.
The use of a GPS Receiver to locate the DF Vehicle's position in real-time on a
georeferenced map seemed to be at least theoretically plausible ideas.
Since then, a lot of time went by, lost of test went wrong, and a lot of experience
was earned. The importance here is that all those revolutionary ideas have proven to
be the norm in the RDF Business now a days. Of course, at that time, a lot of hard
work was necessary to make HuntMaster a reality. Having the goal of
transforming those ideas and concepts into working gear.
HuntMaster, as it name stands for, is an expert system that is a step
ahead of even the highest priced Commercial RDF Mapping Applications. It even compares
favorably with very advanced Military RDF Software. HuntMaster was designed to
be very easily operated while on a DF Mission, an issue most Software Developers don't
pay much attention, but which is crucial for a succesfull RDF Operation. Thanks to a
lot of automated and software assisted functions HuntMaster simplifies
and speeds up all the information gathering processes needed during this
kind of time restricted DF Missions.
When a DF Operator used to traditional RDF equipment has the opportunity to test
HuntMaster on a Mission, it's love at first sight! HuntMaster is a software built
by DF Operators for DF Operations. With several years of intense software programming
and analytical research on its behalf, HuntMaster may be nowadays the more sophisticate
DF Mapping Tool available on the market.
THE STAFF
Through all this years of work the main staff at the R&D Labs of HuntMaster
remained the same. These individuals who shared a common dream, worked hard
in diverse theoretical and practical aspects to give life to HuntMaster software. Each of them has
specialized in different fields of knowledge to make HuntMaster
possible: mapping technology, DSP processing, high speed visual
programming, econometric mathematics, and so on.
Arena, Juan Martin - LU6DX: Devoted his work to mapping technologies and
interface level control. He has been also a hard to convince man!
Believing in an idea just when he saw a good software implementation of
it. Don't get us wrong, he is always thinking in new ways in which to
improve each and every part of this software.
Bonello, Alexander - LW2EET: Worked on all DSP processing routines, helped
develop the econometric MLPR statistical model, developed much of the service
routines of the application. Maybe too theoretical to be a DF Operator, but with an admirable
love for perfection.
Corino, Juan Manuel - LW9DHU: Software coded most of the mapping routines found
in HuntMaster. Staying too late working till dawn, getting to the point
where he was not able to figure out what a line of code was! An incredible
intuitive man who came up with very clever solutions throughout different
stages of this project.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There have been also a great deal colleagues, customers and friends who help us in getting this
project running from scratch. But there has been a person in particular
that made possible the conception of the MLPR algorithm. We would like to
thank Osvaldo Bacchino from Sussex University who opened our minds in
regards some analytical models that we where trying to materialize.
We wish to thanks also to all those beta testers that gave us all their
impressions of HuntMaster. Thanks for their feedback about our software.
From our beta testing team we have to thank in particular to Mr. David Shmueli
for testing with such an incredible degree of detail dozens
of releases of the product.
And of course, we would like to be very thankful to Mr. Alexander Burwasser,
Proprietor of 'RDF Products', Vancouver, USA who pushed us to make this software
international available to the Global RDF Markets. It is in our hope that you like
our software as much as we liked to develop it!
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