Radio and rails...

I've had a couple of JT9 attempts these past two days on 20m where I've answered a CQ and received a signal report back, and sent mine but then received the same -nn signal report again. And again. Presumably the remote station has not been able to decode my reply. So I never get to the 73. I'm guessing the band just fades away from underneath me... If I remember right it was the same remote station each time. I've had successful JT9 QSOs so I am putting these down to bad luck and I hope the other guy isn't getting frustrated!

Well another first for me tonight, a JT9 QSO, and on my second attempts at answering a CQ. This was with a USA station apparently over a 5,600km path. But again the replies come in the Band Activity window on a different frequency. Not sure what I am doing wrong there, but this was a complete QSO 'by the book'. Edit: I never did follow up on this post. This is, of course perfectly normal operation, for example where someone sits on a quiet part of the segment but listens across the whole.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday with WSJT-X trying to make some contacts by answering CQs and getting nowhere. After a lot of fiddling with settings (I spotted the ALC on the FT450D was going haywire - who'd have though it had a display!) I now have much better settings of sound system output and Tx control on the SignaLink. The Tx is now set to just below to 9 o'clock position, so almost to the third tick mark, and the sound system output is set to 29% via the Pulseaudio volume control. The power setting in WSJT-X is set to -0.9db at which level the signal still triggers the PTT relay in the SignaLink but at 100% (-0db) the ALC triggers. But no luck with answering CQs. Actually the Pulseaudio setting threw me at first because WSJT-X uses ALSA, but the ALSAmixer shows the same 29% as set by Pulseaudio so I'm not fussing. Also, it still gives the expected power output on the PS modes and a test call on BPSK31 worked fine, so it's all be written down. And today I got a reply to my reply to a CQ. But it was confusing. WSJT-X has two…

One thing I've noticed is the screen required for these digital modes. I have a 22" 16:9 screen and I had a secondary 19" 4:3 one attached when I was writing my Ph.D. but it generated a load of RF hash. So now I just have the 22" and it's not big enough! Many shack photos show dual screens or even dual PCs and multiple screens and I can see why. Ok I have the MacBook for logging and other things, but the shack PC desperately needs more screen size and/or more screens. Something else to work on. Unfortunately the PC is a scrapper that has no HDMI output so I am limited to a DVI and a VGA screen. Hmmm... so I need a better PC too... I am just beginning to experiment with JT65 having set up WSJT-X recently and the screen is full.

So far I have totted up 19 countries - finally including the UK. I managed a BPSK63 QSO with a station just a few miles away, on 20m again as this is still my only HF antenna. I'm guessing this was ground wave. Funny, I've been interested in, and fiddling with radio for 40+ years and yet I am only now learning about propagation, helped in a large part to the two pieces in TX Factor. See http://www.txfilms.co.uk/txfactor/ - these are really good programmes.