Friday, July 14, 2017

Reading PC4T's blog and then WOW!!

Digi signals.
 I was out for breakfast this morning looking over the blogs I follow on my Ipad when I came to Paul PC4T's blog it was an very interesting read about the new mode FT8. Once I finished reading his piece and went back to his main page I had a WOW moment!! I saw my blog listed under his favorites and notice it has been over a month since I last posted on my blog!! I knew the summers were very busy for me but I never thought I was that busy. I have the day off today and wanted to set some time aside for the radio, it has been long overdue for a ham radio sit down session. I started out on 20m CW this morning around 10:00 local time and I was surprised at the CW traffic. As the morning wore on the band died down around noon local time. I was not able to make any CW Elecraft P3 monitor that the digi end of 20m was very busy. I made my way up to 14.076.00 and tried some JT-65  and my CQ was answered by K8GNZ, KE0ABA and WA6GXQ but when I responded my reply was not heard. I at least new my signal was getting out anyway. As I began to write this post and having JT-65 running in the background my luck changed. I had a complete QSO's  with K0LOV and KB9EWG not many contacts but it was fun none the less.

4 comments:

Barry said...

Mike,

One of my favourite blogs to read. Glad you took some time to post.

73 de VE3LBL

Paul Stam PAØK said...

Hi Mike, good to see you back with a post. ;-) Yes, I think when the solar minimum is here, digi modes could be very interesting. Now I tried for several days FT8 and I really liked it. This is my first solar minimum with e lot digi modes at hand. Have a nice weekend. 73 Paul PC4T

VE9KK said...

Good afternoon Barry, thanks very much for the kind words and it nice to be getting back into the groove again. The summer is a busy time for me both at work and home.
73 Barry
Mike

VE9KK said...

Good Saturday afternoon Paul, yes it was sure busy on the digi modes and I was up at 12 watts which is as high as the K3 can go. I do have 15 watts available on the KX3 but have not used that this year on the digi modes. I am going to do some reading on FT8 and download the latest version of WSJT and give it a go soon.
Have a great weekend Paul and thanks for taking the time to post.
73,
Mike