'The end is near' post talks about how our RC frequency band is becoming saturated. This got my wheels turning. :spinnyeye

Is there a reason why our TX/RX could not be made digital? The current FM standard is fine as long as your TX/RX has a frequency dedicated. With digital encoding and frequency shift circuitry you could stuff many more radios on the same channel. Taking this even further, channels would be pretty much obsolete if the entire frequency band was opened up.

The technology to go digital has been around for a while. Look at cellphones. The cellphone company rents a frequency band. Depending on the width of the band, you get a number of 'channels'. With frequency shifting there really are no distinct channels. But for the sake of argument lets say you have 100 channels on your band. Now how do you get say 10000 customers on these 100 channels? Digital signal encoding and frequency shifting is the only way this can work.

Could this be used for RC? I think so. The FCC would get involved and some R&D would be required from the radio manufacturers. And of course the first batch of radios would cost an arm and a leg. That R&D cost would most certainly be passed on to us. But would it be worth it in the long run? What do you think???

Tom