FT8 ⁽³⁾

This part was going to be about the full transmission path but I am still getting the POTY and LDF4-50A line ready. Instead, I wanted to experiment with the SG Labs 13cm transverter. For the test the FT818 was dusted off and set to 432MHz FM so it would give a constant output when keyes. This fed the transverter, the output of which was put into a dummy load via a 20dB directional coupler that in turn fed a frequency counter. The output was giving 2,404MHz and was nicely stable over a couple of hours (not keyed all the time of course). When finished the transverter will be locked to a 10MHz reference from a GPSDO. The output power was around 18mW, again via the directional coupler, so about 1.8W. The FT818 was not set to full power and the PA, when finally installed has a maximum input of 250mW so some attenuation is still needed. Ok, so I have a full receive path for both transponders, I can decode FT8, hear SSB and see DATV. And I am now happy that I will be able to transmit once the PA and POTY are all in place. My next thoughts…

I made my first QSO on the QMX+ on 30m today. It is a nice little QRP radio, the one I have has all bands from 160m to 6m. Getting it on the air is a bit of a fiddle, not caused by the radio itself. I have a very shorrt random wire antenna tuned by a Z-11Pro II tuner that works very well with the big radios but the QMX+ needs to be treated carefully. Tuning at full power is a bad idea because the tuner is going to hit some very high SWR figures and damage to the finals is a real risk. But there is more to this tale... First off, I wanted to run it from my old MacBook but no matter what I did it would never see any data from the radio - the QMX+ has CAT and audio along a single USB. CAT was working fine in wsjt-x but no audio of any description. So I loaded wsjt-x on the Mac Mini but it crashed every time I tried to set the radio up. Anyway, I wanted to use the rather neat iFTx app on the phone which does FT8 and FT4 and…

Some interesting distances in the VHF/UHF lift on the 18th and 19th January, all not too bad for loft mounted antennas - a 2m QFH and a 70cm big wheel, running 20W from the TS2000X, FT8. On the 18th I managed three 2m FT8 QSOs with French stations, one 386 miles south from me. Later on I was receivd 502 miles away in Denmark on 70cm FT8 but no QSO. On the 19th came a 2m FT8 QSO with Denmark at 432 miles.