I wanted to get myself a ham radio-related birthday present that wasn’t terribly expensive. It has been the back of my mind to try digital modes, but for various reasons I wanted to do it with an external sound card interface and hadn’t wanted to spend the money. So, I decided to go ahead and take the plunge and buy a SignaLink USB.
I had already installed the WSJT-X software on my MacBook, and I reserved Friday evening to try to get on the air with the FT8 mode using my IC-7300. Getting everything configured is rather finicky and rather poorly documented, but I eventually figured it out. SignaLink doesn’t come with rig control, but I already had that set up for my logging program. One can use WSJT-X without rig control, but it works better if you have it.
Anyway, after getting most things configured and doing some testing on a dead 15-meter band after sunset, I tried responding to some CQs on 20 meters. However, the band was in very poor shape and I had to go to 40 meters to make contacts. Even there, my signal didn’t seem to be getting out very well with my small transmitting loop and I lost a couple of QSOs due to QSB putting my signal out of reach after making an initial contact. It’s easy to see this because the software calculates a signal-to-noise ratio that is part of the FT8 exchange. Thus you can see if your partner’s signal was stronger or weaker than during the initial contact, and thus whether your signal was probably stronger or weaker at their station.
On Saturday, I spent the late morning and all evening at the radio, mostly with FT8, but also trying to work the VP6D Ducie Island DXpedition on SSB (with no luck, of course). I ended up getting another 23 QSOs, including a few JA stations on 20 meters, and Spain on both 17 meters and 15 meters. Unless everybody I worked was running very high power, this has conclusively shown that my small transmitting loops do have trouble getting out. That’s not a surprise, compromise antennas can only do so much, but it’s also true that I would have never worked this DX on SSB under those conditions.
This leads to an important bit of advice: if you also have limited antenna power, don’t be afraid to run 50 or 100 watts. That was the mistake I made at the beginning when I wasn’t making contacts. When people talk about only needing QRP power, they are mostly talking about people with great antennas and/or great propagation conditions and/or trying to work easy stuff. I had many reports of a S/N of -15 to -20 when running 50-100 watts, while the other station was at -5 to -10. That’s the nice thing about FT8 (and the other WSJT modes), you get fairly objective feedback as to how strong your signal is. Try to stay between -5 and -15, and you will fit right in.
Overall, FT8 operating was about what I was expecting. It’s kinda fun and I can see where it would be addicting. It’s a little too video game-like, just double-clicking on a station that got decoded and using the auto-sequencing feature to do the rest. Also, if you choose what frequency you want to transmit on, that’s more pointing and clicking once you see a clear frequency on the waterfall display and when you have to move.
I do like the technical aspect of it, and it is very interesting to see exactly who you are hearing and where they are. It was very nice to be able to call CQ and have a good chance at a response from across the country. My radio interests are more on the technical side, rather than conversations with strangers. In any case, I can’t really have conversations using my limited station, a point that many people seem to miss. Yeah, you can chat away with your kilowatt (or more), and beams on HF and be heard just fine even under poor conditions. That’s not what most of us have available.
It was also nice to work Europe, something which is remarkably difficult from Arizona on SSB with 100 watts and mostly compromise antennas with such low solar activity. Even in DX contests, I have sometimes been completely shut out from working any European stations by poor conditions and the “East Coast wall” of stations that are just a chip shot from Europe beating out my humble station. I’m on pace to never reach DXCC via SSB, but we’ll see what happens now that I also have FT8.
The Arizona Signal Watcher DXing Blog 