Radio and rails...

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.

I've seen several BPSK125 calls about 20m but missed them all - they are so fast that by the time I settle on one QSB has knobbled it. But tonight I managed a short QSO with the Falkland Islands no less!

Nice sunny Saturday here and I failed to get a reply in to several BPSK31 calls but then managed to reply to a CQ on MFSK16 - another new mode for me. MFKS16 is quite a 'fat' signal compared to the PSKs and I had to scrabble about for my printout of modes to see what it was. I tried Domino first to no avail, then found the red bars in fldigi just fitted MFKS16 and it decoded nicely, and an eQSL to boot.