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.

Working some JT-65 this afternoon

A decent showing on 20m JT-65

I had the day off today as I was called in last evening and worked through the night so I thought some radio time was in order! I wanted to try some digital using WSJT-X's program and JT-65 seemed as good as any mode. At first I attempted to just run JT-65 on it's own as I have done many times in the past. This time for some reason most times when the rig went into transmit my Elecraft K3 stopped transmitting and gave me an error message of ERR PTT. I did post this issue on the Elecraft reflector and got some great feedback BUT I wanted to get some JT-65 in! Next was to try the "back door"

My spots on Hamspots

approach by using Win4k3 suite rig control software as I also have WSJT-X set up under 3rd party AUX/CAT port. Using WSJT-X this way worked like a charm as most of the feedback on the Elecraft reflector site pointed toward software issues and not rig troubles. There was a nice amount of DX on the waterfall that I was decoding but when I checked on Hamspots to see who and where was receiving my 5 watt JT-65 signal it was all U.S so that was the spots I attempted to contact. I also threw my CQ out there as well to see if any local or DX heard me. KG5ICI came back to me from Texas Chris gave me a signal report of -16. I was not on the radio too long but it sure was nice and relaxing.

Afternoon contact

JT-65 signal reports

On Sunday I decided to move from CW to digital and see how my small antenna setup preformed using JT-65.  I first made sure the software and the rig would "talk" with each other. The software I use is WSJT-X by K1JT along with Win4K3 suite for rig control. I find K1JT's software very easy to use, it has been some time since I used it but I had no issues getting it up and running. I then went to PSK reporter to see which bands were preforming well. I ended up choosing 20m, I did bounce around to 15m, 17m and 30m but ended up staying with 20m. My power was set to 5 watts and the antenna was my trusty MFJ 1788 loop antenna. I am in a condo on the 6th floor which seems to be a good hight for the antenna. The only issue I have is other tall condo's to the left and right of me and one right dead centre. I had called CQ for about 4 hours off and on and the PSK reporter did show my signal was getting out. I was pleased with the results as with CW the Reverse Beacon network at the best of times only gave me between 3 to 10 hits that were all state side and fairly local to me as well. I was very pleased to be heard in the Netherlands and European Russia! Below is a screen shot of the results using PSK reporter.
 I also wanted to mention that on Saturday I tried to run WSPR and I say "tried" as I had ZERO spots reported and that was after having it up and running for several hours. I was not sure if something was wrong with my setup. I again was using WSJT's program and it showed no issues. My power was set to 1 watt and I ended up raising that to 4 watts but still no one heard my signal. I was pleased to see a decent response to my JT-65 effort and I then knew my signal was getting out.

Slow time on the bands.

I took an extra few days off over the Easter weekend with the intention of getting some solid radio time in. As it turned out the only day I had was yesterday afternoon most likely because I knew my vacation was coming to an end and the plan was to get on the rig! I was planning on doing some JT-65 as with the solar conditions not so great and my 5 watts signal to boot it seemed to be the logical move. Before getting on the radio I looked up a website called Band conditions. This is a very nice site that gives you up to date band conditions via nice easy to read bar type graphs. Each HF band is displayed and is update automatically every 30 seconds. There is an arrow for each band graph that is either in the Red, Yellow or green portion of the bar graph……you can guess what color means what. Seeing that 20m and 30m seemed to be the go to bands I booted up WSJT-X and ended up finding 30m not so great but 20m was booming with lots of European stations.  Unfortunately my calling CQ was not being answered. I did check with PSK reporter and my signal was being spotted all over the U.S as well as some places in Europe.  I then closed down WSJT-X and opened Fldigi and now the plan was to give PSK 31 a whirl on 20m. I was not disappointed as there was lots of signals in the waterfall. After spending about 45 min’s on the band I only was able to get the attention of one Spanish station to hear my QRP signal……BUT conditions seemed to change and we never completed the QSO. One thing I took away from the time on the radio is that I have to review what PSK-31 macro’s and simplify some and rename some of the buttons to make them more user friendly to me. 

Multi tasking at the rig.

Reading blogs and operating JT65-HF

I flipped the switch on the radio this afternoon to 20m CW and it was dead! There were some very faint stations basically at the noise level and to hear them I had to engage the Audio Peak Filter. Thinking it was DX calling CQ I was very surprised to hear both calls were from the States! That kinda gave me an idea of the band conditions for CW and I then moved onto JT65 HF on 20m and it was nice to hear many op's. Most of the calls on the waterfall were from the U.S and that's just fine considering the propagation, I did see one station from Spain being decoded. I did make contact with KB0PPQ in Kansas City and while waiting to make another contact I was reading PE4BAS Bas's blog.  Have radio and multi tasking!