[mikewarot]

Radio - Get an RTL-SDR dongle kit, and install GNU radio. Being able to get signals from the real world, and manipulate them via a flowgraph lets you do far more hands on than years of labs used to.

I've implemented all the standard things, AM, FM, SSB radios, etc.. I had a lot of fun figuring out how to decode and display the local VOR beacon near my house.

You can also play with audio frequencies, and your microphone and speakers... it's fairly easy to get an intuitive idea of what a negative frequency really means if you have an IQ channel.

[rramadass]

Neat idea. I have been wanting to do something like this for a long time to really understand Wireless RF.

But i find Gnu Radio somewhat intimidating (not having a Signals/DSP background). Are there any books/articles/videos etc. which will ease my learning curve? Note that i already know of Michael Ossmann's course with HackRF (https://greatscottgadgets.com/sdr/)

[mikewarot]

Everything in GNU radio is a flowgraph (a fancy flowchart, actually a directed acyclic graph).

The thing is you can take an existing flowgraph, modify it, and see what happens in about 30 seconds.

This video seems to be a good starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufxBX_uNCa0