Thursday 28 June 2018

50Mhz on FT8

We had a sudden burst of activity on 6m today June 28th 2018. I worked many European stations between 500 to 1100 miles away. Then as soon as the stations appeared they disappeared.
I worked 27 stations in 2 hours - Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland and Spain. Oh I also worked a Brit in Hull. Not bad going for a June day.

Thursday 26 April 2018

Is JT65 dying out?

A quick listen around the HF bands this morning while using WSJT-X switched to JT65 mode revealed very little activity using JT65 or JT9. Everybody seems to have switched to the quicker FT8 mode. This is a shame as JT65, albeit a slower mode when you consider how long it takes to do a QSO, is actually much more resilient.

The data portions of the bands are now crowded with hams using FT8. I have JTAlert and set it for a matrix of 32 decodes and it regularly displays 30+ stations showing just how busy FT8 has become.

I await for future modes that may be able to transmit more than just brief details but still be as quick and resilient.

Tuesday 20 February 2018

Wouxun KG-UV950P problems

The volume controls on this rig are now playing up. When turning the volume down completely it sometimes goes down to VOL:01 but no further. It sometimes is apparent on VFO B but VFO A is not immune either.

I know that the control uses an optical chopper to convert rotation to pulses to tell the hardware to change value. The result of this is the sound can not be entirely muted. There is also an issue with the channel knob which again uses a chopper. Sometimes it cannot change channel properly.

The rig is permanently in the shack so not subjected to different humidity or heat. The problems are intermittent and sometimes the rig works normally.

I've had a Trio 7500 2m rig for nearly 40 years before it developed any issues. THe Wouxun has been with me for just over 3 years and upto know has been ok. I'm not going to bother getting it fixed and may well just buy a Yaesu rig instead. I never use 10m on the Wouxun and most of the time it is used on 2m or 70cm so even 6m doesn't get a look in.

If anybody knows of a fix for this I am all ears.