Tuesday, May 14, 2013

We've had digi QSOs on PSK, RTTY and JT65!

A JT65 QSO with W1YIF.
We've endeavoured to try to work some QSOs on digital modes while on Inis Mór. Thanks to the efforts of Liam, EI7DSB, we had several QSOs on the weak signal mode JT65. Liam demonstrated extraordinary patience while using this mode, plucking out QSOs at a rate of one QSO every six minutes! He also enjoyed his first foray into PSK31, which he enjoyed thoroughly. Just now EJ7NET is active on 20 metres RTTY.

Band conditions have been such that we've tended to use more CW than phone, with reasonable success. We don't have a total QSO tally at this stage, but we should know tomorrow morning when we export all the ADIF files from the various laptops and merge them into one complete log.

Gordon GM7WCO on 17m CW.
80 metres has been very poor. For two nights now we've tried 80m phone and CW, with very few callers coming back. 40 metres has been much better, particularly on CW, while the bands that have seen the highest Q rate have been 17 metres, 20 metres and 30 metres. A sustained sporadic E opening on 6 metres yesterday evening lasted several hours and we now have well over 200 QSOs on that band. We are using a small halo antenna for 6m, and were heard all over EU yesterday, from Scandinavia to Iberia to the Black Sea.


A very short video showing Liam explaining a JT65 QSO.

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