About Bonito

The Bonito brand defines over 38 years of reliable software in the field of worldwide weather data reception on board and of course Hamradio. Bonito is one of the leading software manufacturer for receiving weather information via shortwave radio, such as WeatherFax, Navtex, RTTY, CW and Synop as well as Satellite Fax Images from NOAA, Goes, ESA / EUMETSAT Meteosat. As well in Hamradio Software, SDR-Receiver and active Antennas and many more hamradio and DXer products.

History
Peter Walter founded the company in 1976 Celle Bonito and revolutionized the amateur radio world in 1980 with software and hardware for the Commodore VC20 and C64 of course. RTTY, Morse, Weather, AMTOR etc. was now affordable for the amateur radio operator this time. In 1983 he developed with two gentlemen from England the DigiCom, the current Packet Radio. Since Bonito already dealt with color transmissions, the implementation of SSTV in color was absolutely no problem . The former software SuperCom (later RadioCom) was probably the first commercial program on the globe that has held this standard.

In the early 90s, computers become portable and Bonito expanded the line of business in the Marine Market. MeteoCom was born and in 1992 was first exhibited on the Hanseboot with great success. Even back then had the program window technology, which the magazine Yacht in contrast to the standard MS-DOS felt surface as “to use unfamiliar”.

1994 Peter Walter handed the fortunes of the company to his son Dennis Walter and focused more on the shipping. Because MS DOS  slowly departed it’s life, we began 1994-95 with the development of FFT software for Windows 95. This technique was extremely superior with the know-how of Bonito developer Peter Walter and Joachim Koopmann the former hardware decoders. As a result, was brought in 1997 with BordTerminal`98 probably the world’s most successful weather information program ever in the market. This software still runs on many professional Vessles and sailing boats on all over the seas world wide.

For about the same time the amateur radio market shines not very bright. The reason: There were many devices with computer connection, but no decoder software for Windows’ 95/98. The customers turned away slowly and is dedicated to the Internet. Thus Bonito was just right and once again revolutionized the market with RadioCom 3.0. You could now decode not only all common modes of operation, but also control many devices. RadioCom 3.0 had beautiful spectrum displays and software-based DSP-filter! An absolute novelty! RadioCom 3.0 worked initially only the receiving side, a few months later, with RadioCom 3.5 also on the transmission side.

1999 RadioCom 4.0 was released. This version had a better GUI, vector spectrum, even better filter and already the latest Mode AFU-scene, called PSK31.

In the summer of 2000 RadioCom 5 was launched. It was the first fully integrated hamradio software in the market. A novelty was the FFT DSP filter. This allowed several notch filters be placed in a band filter or to realize a filter curve with desired waviness and variable slope with a 2-Hz resolution. You just drew a curve with the most complicated characteristics.

The year 2006 brought with Windows Vista a lot of changes. In addition to the optics, the audio interface and the right system were suddenly completely different. RadioCom had to be renewed from the ground up and thus created the new RadioCom 6. You could now use 2 Radios simultaneously, the use of sound card interfaces was possible,  multi-display function was enabled, all decoders were new, etc. Due to its modern structure, RadioCom6 could be extended with useful functions and operating modes.  Thus, in 2007 held the complete SDR integration with the Bonito BandWatch, (later acquired by other companies such as Winradio etc.) as “Virtual Receiver”.

In 2010 we started the development of our own SDR receiver, as the market in this area always reduced and new receiver now always needs faster “super” computers  to display huge spectrum displays.  Although the unit were only showed at trade shows or on the Internet, the reactions and pre-orders were immense. With issue 8/2011 of the Magazine Funkamateur, RadioJet 1102S even made it on the cover. In December 2011, the first RadioJet 1102S were delivered to end user. The success exceeded all expectations and we had great initial supply problems, because we could not produce enough devices.

At the end of 2012, was the “Bonito RadioJet” from the WRTH, just behind the “WiNRADiO Excalibur Pro”, voted the second best receiver in the world. The RadioJet is due to its constantly improved software, currently one of the most successful SDR in the market. A new revision of the RadioJet software will be realease in July 2014.

Since the Hamradio 2014, the new RadioJet 1305 Plus is in the market.