Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Fun with FT-8.

Those hearing me on 20m FT-8
This evening I gave FT-8 a go on 20m and 30m and I was shocked by the contacts I was able to make. I was calling CQ on 20m FT-8 and JI3MJK from Japan came back to me! The contact was made and then JA3ADW came back to my CQ call. I was not able to make contact with him as there was about 4 other station also calling me, he may had given up. My evening contacts both on 20m and 30m were from Italy, U.S, Japan, Denmark, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic and the U.S.
Those hearing me on 30m FT-8

On 20m I was being heard in Japan, South America, Central America, Europe(including Iceland) and all over the U.S. On 30m FT-8 the flood gates opened to Europe and all over the U.S but Japan closed down. Overall I am very pleased with how my Endfed antenna performed this evening. 

2 comments:

PE4BAS, Bas said...

A great result Mike. I'm shure a QSO is possible for us on 30m. However we are not allowed officially to do digital modes below 10.140 MHz in the Netherlands. But FT8 and other modes are not limited to that freq. of course. I'm shure we will make a contact one of these days. Otherwise we could make a sked. Did you know DXpeditions do use other frequencies? You have to take a look on the cluster for those or on their websites. It's great your range is much wider compared to what you had the last decade. Enjoy and have fun! 73, Bas

VE9KK said...

Good morning Bas, it's good that FT-8 is well above the 10.140 cut off. With how the propagation was working for me yesterday I imagine it is only going to be a matter of time before we have a contact. I was heard in Denmark yesterday and that is very close to the Netherlands. As for the DXpeditions I am going to have to do some reading regarding how that is setup on WSJT-X. I also have JTDX on my PC and have used it now and then but I hear good things about it so I may switch to that but again have to do some reading regarding it. Funny thing last evening on FT-8 using WSJT-X I had it set to Auto (or whatever it's called) and many times it did not work I had to manually preform the QSO. Thats fine as it feels like I am making the contact myself and it's not all the PC just doing it.
Last evening I was on just around sunset so I am assuming the Japan contacts were grey line but later on after the grey line effect I had no issues getting into Europe.
73 Bas and have a great week and thanks for stopping by.
Mike
VE9KK