Video: A beginners guide to FT8 ...by VK7HH

Even though I don't use FT8 for making contacts, I find it to be a very useful tool in that it can give me a very good idea of what band conditions are like after listening for just a few minutes.

Hayden, VK7HH recently released this video which might be of interest to anyone new to the mode.

Chapters
0:00 An Introduction for Beginners
0:28 What is FT8?
2:16 A QSO Example & How well does it work?
4:16 Get Your Timing Right!
5:12 Setting up WSJT-X for the FT8 Mode
8:29 My Waterfall settings
9:44 Transmitting and message sequencing
14:54 Setting your TX audio level and ALC drive
17:15 I've never worked that country before!
18:11 How much Power should you run?
19:48 A bonus tip to level up your DX abilities!

Links...
FT8 Operating Guide - https://www.physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/FT8_Operating_Tips.pdf
GridTracker - https://gridtracker.org/grid-tracker/
Ham Radio DX on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/HamRadioDX/videos

New 2380km record on 2.4 GHz between Australia and New Zealand

 

The Tasman Sea is an area where there are regular tropospheric ducting openings between Australia and New Zealand. On the 13th of December 2020, Hayden VK7HH and Richard VK7ZBX portable on an elevated location in Tasmania made successful SSB contacts with Nick ZL1IU in New Zealand on 144 MHz, 432 MHz and 1296 MHz.

As the tropo prediction map from F5LEN suggested, the 2380 km path from New Zealand to Tasmania was indeed open.

The really amazing contact however came at 05:58 UTC when there was a successful contact between VK7HH and ZL1IU on 2.4 GHz!

The contact was completed by using CW (morse code) as the signals were too weak for a SSB (voice) contact.

This 2380 km contact was a new Australian tropo record for 2.4 GHz breaking the previous record between VK4OX and ZL1AVZ by some 60kms.

27th Jan 2011 - 2317.5kms - VK4OX  - ZL1AVZ

A video of the contact is shown below. It starts at where the 2.4 GHz contact takes place although you can of course go back to the start to see the site location in Tasmania and the contacts on the lower VHF bands.

If you look at the video at 9:45, you can see that they managed to complete a contact on 144 MHz SSB with just one-watt which gives an indication of just how good the conditions were.

It was also nice to see that in a digital age, CW still has a place for very weak signal contacts!

Other paths???... Obviously the one constraint with making contacts on 2.4 GHz are the low number of stations on the band. This limits experiments with other sea paths which might show some suprising results.

The one that springs to mind for me is the sea path from Ireland/UK down to the Canary Islands.

Back in July of 2020, EI2FG and EA8CXN managed to complete a  successful contact on 1296 MHz over a 2714 km path.

What about 2.4 GHz?

As far as I can see, the current IARU Region-1 record on 2.4 GHz is between Malta and Israel.

Band Propagation Call a Loc Call b Loc Mode Date Distance
2,32 GHz TR 9H1GB JM75FU 4X1RF KM72LS CW 2018-07-22 1914 kms

Time for a new 2.4 GHz record in IARU Region-1???

Links...

1) IARU Region-1 records for 2.4 GHz

2) Australian VHF, UHF & Microwave records