{"id":235,"date":"2022-01-26T10:56:52","date_gmt":"2022-01-26T10:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/?p=235"},"modified":"2022-01-29T13:20:07","modified_gmt":"2022-01-29T13:20:07","slug":"fun-evening-on-30m-ft8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/?p=235","title":{"rendered":"Fun evening on 30m FT8"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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WSJT-X in FT8 mode running on my MacBook Pro<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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30m FT8 Early Evening view<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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30m FT8 19:00GMT<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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30m FT8 all stations heard (Screenshot taken next day)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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RUMlogNG List of stations worked on 30m FT8 mode<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It was nice to get into Lebanon and Israel, two countries that have always been difficult to get into from my U.K. QTH. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also listened on 80m and 160m, both were very active with mainly European stations on FT8 and SSB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More soon …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Fun evening on 30m FT8”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,6,20,16,11,4,18,19,9,17,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-30m-band","category-antenna","category-digitalmodes","category-ft8","category-ftdx10","category-ham-radio","category-macbook","category-pskreporter","category-qrp","category-weak-signals","category-yaesu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":320,"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions\/320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m0aws.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}