I spent yesterday evening on the 30m band running WSJT-X in FT8 mode whilst getting to know the new radio. I must say I am impressed with the Yaesu FTDX10, the receiver really is extremely good at pulling out the weakest of stations.
I have a very simple setup at the moment, just the one antenna for 30m currently so I don’t have a lot of bands available. Hopefully this will change in the coming months as I work on building a new multi band antenna for the station.
I’m still getting to know WSJT-X and FT8, it’s a new mode for me and quite different to how things were 15 years ago when I was last active.
With a little perseverance I soon got the hang of it and was working stations with ease. I’m very much a wait and pounce type DXer, so my QSO turn over is low but, I get the stations I want to work rather than just a multitude of European stations who are all on my doorstep.
It was interesting to watch the band conditions change as the grey line moved across the Atlantic. One by one countries further west started popping up on the band.
At 18:00GMT PSKReporter was showing mainly the multitude of European stations running FT8 on 30m with the Azore and Canary Islands starting to appear along with a couple of stations from the East Coast USA.
As the grey line continued west more and more DX stations started to appear including a station in South Africa. I worked a bunch of stations in the Ukraine and Russia and then started picking off the stations in the USA one by one.
By the end of the evening there were stations from South America and the Caribbean coming through. I spent over an hour trying to work CO8LY in Cuba, he was coming in at -10dB at my end but, sadly he never heard my 15w signal. I did try splitting the RX and TX frequency in WSJT-X so that my signal was to the side of the pileup but alas I never got through. Later in the evening I found CO8LY calling CQ over and over but, once again he never heard my replies. A real shame as it’s rare to hear Cuba over here on the East Coast of the U.K.
At 22:30GMT I closed the station down and headed to bed, I didn’t work a huge number of stations but, I had a lot of fun chasing the ones I wanted to get.
It’s interesting to note that the closest stations worked was 800 miles away, I think that is the first hop for my 30m Delta Loop Antenna. With the antenna being so quiet on receive and the FTDX10 having such a good receiver, it was very easy to pick out the stations 2000 miles or more away from my QTH. Most of the time I was able to exchange signal reports with stations that I called. It’s impressive to be able to exchange reports with stations that are -18dB or more below the noise level.
It was nice to get into Lebanon and Israel, two countries that have always been difficult to get into from my U.K. QTH.
A total of 20 stations worked, not a huge count but, it gave me some time to get used to the radio and it’s settings.
I also had a tune around 40m, the FT8 section was packed with stations from all over the world. I can’t wait to get onto 40m, it’s one of my favourite bands and I’m hoping to be able to work some good DX with QRP power levels.
I also listened on 80m and 160m, both were very active with mainly European stations on FT8 and SSB.
With my roll of coax arriving today I’l spend some time putting together a new coaxial run to the antenna and start working on an LC tuning unit for the new vertical I’m designing.
More soon …
