Radio and rails...

I've had the FT817 attached to the MacBook of late, just for VHU/UHF use, but the poor old Mac struggles if I dare to use anything other than wsjt-x. I want a Mac Mini... but anyway, that aside I decided to move the radio over to the Windows PC now. wsjt-x installed easily as usual and all works. The only issue I can see is how Windows messes up its USB ports if I switch the FT450D in. Currently I have that configured to switch between the Linux PC and the Windows PC so I can use VARA / VarAC and other such things on HF via the FT450D. I just use a USB switch obtained via Amazon which seems to work ok. The FT450D side of things comes in as COM6 and the FT817 now comes as COM4, no idea how Windows decides to allocate those. Time will tell...

So I finally managed to set up and work /A for a couple of days. The setup failed really as the house we were in had very thick stone walls and no opening windows so the antenna was literally a bit of wire diagonally up from an un-un on the floor, around the back of a sash window cord and across to a picture. But I managed 4 FT8 QSOs, one on 24MHz and three on 21MHz. Better than nothing, and time to learn better about portable compromise antennas. I could have set up in the garden but it was mostly raining and I didn't bring any batteries.

With the impending trip and uncertainty of where / how I can set up an antenna I experimented with about 10 foot of wire from a 9:1 nun up to the window and down to the wardrobe. Far from idea but it's surprising just how far I got with no effort and 2.5W on 40m FT8: There is one 10m hit there too but I did not transmit in earnest. But the 10m reception plot is even more impressive: I can see how this "let's throw a bit of wire up a tree" can become rather fun!

Just making sure the FT817 + Z817 + Signalink + MacBook play well together before a trip where I hope to be /A for the odd 10 minutes here and there... not too bad for 2.5W into a bit of wet string on crowded bands:

I had a go at QRZ.com's 12 Days of QRZ challenge which began in December. QED, all you needed to do was make one acknowledged QSO per day for 12 days. I concentrated just on FT8. But there are endorsements for 12 QSOs over 12 days per each band in the challenge: 160, 80, 60, 40, 30, 20, 17, 15, 10, 6 and 2m. I managed all bands between 80 and 15, can't transmit on 160, 6 was always closed when I tried, and 2m would only yield one or two close contacts anyway. So I ignored those. I had had little success with 10m but later decided to have a go. Overall 10m seemed to come alive most days and all went well until the last couple of days where there were plenty of QSOs but very few acknowledgements in the QRZ logbook, some of which were only as a result of importing form LOTW. A table of this for no particular reason: So I had to work those last two days. I had a go at FT4 as well and one each of the 'Stars' for the 2nd and 3rd February were from FT4 QSOs. There, a little…