Tag Archives: On The Air

Digital, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air, Station Equipment

FT8 Mode on the 6m Band

Anita and I have been operating using the FT8 Mode on the 6m band using our remote operating gateway quite a bit this summer. The SDR-based remote operating gateway in our station allows us to operate…

Source: Operating FT8 Remote on the 6m Band

FT8 Mode on 6m
FT8 Mode on 6m

Our next Tech Night will be about the FT8 Mode. I’ve been using FT8 to work quite a few contacts on the 6m Band this summer using the remote operating gateway in our station. The link to the post above shows how we use the WSJT-X software and other tools to operate using the FT8 digital mode at our station. It also provides links to much of the software that we use to do FT8 and other weak signal digital modes.

Fred, AB1OC

Digital, Featured, General, Newsletter, On The Air

2018 13 Colonies Special Event Results

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The 2018 13 Colonies Special Event took place from July 1-7 this year and Nashua Area Radio Society members operated as K2K, the New Hampshire station.

Charlie, W1CBD operating the pileups from AB1OC station
Charlie, W1CBD operating the pileups from AB1OC station

Several members operated from AB1OC and AB1QB’s QTH.  We were operating from 2 stations.  The SSB station was in our shack and used the stacked SteppIR DB36 beams.

Fred, AB1OC operating FT8 as K2K
Fred, AB1OC operating FT8 as K2K

We also had an FT8 station set up in our kitchen.  It used the Flex 6700 in our shack remotely and the SteppIR BigIR vertical antenna, which is in the woods next to our house, far enough from the tower to avoid interference.

We live-streamed much of the operation on our Facebook page – here is one of Brian, AB1ZO operating as K2K.

In addition to the operators at AB1OC and AB1QB’s QTH, several members operated as K2K from their own stations.

13 Colonies Certificate
13 Colonies Certificate

With 13,622 QSOs, the Nashua Area Radio Society won the top club and New Hampshire was the 2nd state behind K2J, North Carolina.

Congratulations to all of the 13 Colonies operators:

Digital, Featured, Field Day, General, Newsletter

Significant Changes in Store for FT8 and MSK144 with WSJT-X 2.0

WSJT-X co-developer Joe Taylor, K1JT, has announced that major changes are coming to the FT8 and MSK144 digital protocols when WSJT-X 2.0 arrives in a few months. Taylor said version 2.0 should be ready for prime time by January.

“Much of the necessary programming is finished,” Taylor said in a post to the Packrats reflector. “Many of the new features have been tested on the air, and we find them to work well.”

Source: Significant Changes in Store for FT8 and MSK144 with WSJT-X Version 2.0

Some of the more interesting additions planned include:

  • Support for Field Day Exchanges
  • Support for the ARRL RTTY Roundup
  • Support for user-defined telemetry messages

Support for Telemetry messages (could be useful for a future long-range HF HAB radio system). See Joe’s whitepaper here for more details.

Looks like we’ll see a beta in October…

Fred, AB1OC

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