Sunday, May 10, 2020

Very very busy day on FT8

This is 20m FT8 on Saturday it sure is very hard to belly up to the bar and find a spot for your signal cursor! I would chance to say that FT8 is seeming to have caught on. I did manage to contact many U.S stations are well as Russia, France and the Netherlands. 

6 comments:

VA3ZC said...

Hi Mike,
Nice work on those DX QSOs. I've been finding 20m. too crowded these days and am spending more time on 17m. I was happy to work St. Helena Island yesterday and New Zealand the day before with the magloop on the balcony. Something to consider.
73,
Paul VA3ZC

VE9KK said...

Good evening Paul very nice to hear from you, that is great work with a mag loop on the balcony! I had the same setup when I was in Toronto I never did hit New Zealand BUT I was spotted there this morning on 20m. I will give 17m a go as I was on 20m again today and it is still very busy there.
73,
Mike
VE9KK

MadDogMcQ said...

Hey Mike, I worked a special callsign GB0VED this weekend and was assigned 30M FT8 by the club. I was originally disappointed that I didn't get 20M but it turned out that 30M did me a favour. There weren't too many people on, but I got a steady stream over two days and managed 150 unique contacts and 33 different countries, so I was quite pleased at the end.

73, Tom, M7MCQ.
www.m7mcq.com

VE9KK said...

Good evening Tom, I was looking on the waterfall for the call but could not see it. I did see the Netherlands operating PE75FREE and I know Bas was one of the op's for this event. I did contact them but not sure if it was Bas or not. I will email him later this week to find out. Seems you had a blast doing the special event!
73 and you and your better half stay well Tom.
Mike
VE9KK

PE4BAS, Bas said...

Hello Mike, I'm PE75FREE but can't find you in my log. Didn't you work PF75FREE may be? I hate operating 20m FT8 as it is too crowded. You should see it here in Europe....you really can't find an empty spot in the waterfall from 0-3000Hz all the time. Multiple layers of signals are on. I have been active on 20m with the SES call but not much. 73, Bas

VE9KK said...

Good evening Bas sorry for taking so long to get back to you but I have been very busy with reno's around the house. I looked up the contact on my PC logger and the details I have are as follows:
The contact was on May 10th at 18:06 UTC
20m FT8
Report was RST sent -01 RST received -11
Frequency was 14.07436
Time of completion was 18:08
I do remember your contacts were hard and fast and then I did get the call from you and I returned my report a few times, and I was not getting a confirmation. I then moved my transmit icon away from your receive frequency as I thought you may have lots of signals trying to contact you and wiping me out. Once I moved my transmit to an open spot on the waterfall the confirmation came.
These are the details at this end let me know and if you don't have me I can delete the contact......and to think I was hoping we finally made an on air contact.
73 Bas and have a great week
Mike
VE9KK