Rare Contacts and New Adventures in Digital Ham Radio

This is our bi-weekly show where during we discuss all ham radio topics in New Hampshire , new England and beyond . So , whether you're a regular listener or a first-time guest , we're excited to have you here and appreciate your support and thanks for tuning into the show tonight . So let's get into the show . I'm your host , eric call sign N1JUR .

You are , and I'm with my co-hosts paul n1og and todd w1stj all right , cool . Well , before we usually get into our topic tonight , uh , we want to catch up on a few things . As always , our storefront is up and running and you can visit that at livefreeandhamcom forward slash shop , and I want to do a couple things .

Uh , first and foremost , we thank everybody who's gone over to the shop and picked want to do a couple things . First and foremost , we thank everybody who's gone over to the shop and picked some swag and merch for us .

As always , we appreciate it everybody , and I want to point out this time and I'm actually wearing it and sporting it this is our digital life shirt . I wish I could have a back camera . I could probably spin around , but this is the original digital modes , what we call CW , but we also refer to it as manual FT8 .

Either way , you could pick that shirt up , and we have a new shirt that I just put in the store called I Speak Many Languages , and those languages are Quan Cheng , zai , gu Beofeng and TID , so you can pick that shirt up if you're a big Chinese radio fan in our store anytime .

And so with that again , we are ramping up for our July livestream , working out some details on that , so stay tuned .

So you're going to want to make sure , if you aren't already subscribed to our YouTube channel , that you head on over there at youtubecom , forward slash at live free and ham and make sure you subscribe and ding that Bell and you'll be notified when we go live and as we've got a little bit of our usual segments , so once we dive in here Doing good , good

Doing good you do , that's good .

I don't know how you guys feel about that , but in essence , apparently all clubs just don't do good . No one's doing good , not in , not in new England and not apparently in the United States . But you know , there is hope .

If you happen to know a club that's doing good , or maybe you're a part of something and you want to spread the the , you know the love , please just send an email to livefreeandham at gmailcom and let us know what's going on and we'll share it with you know , everybody in our family and community . Because why not ?

You know , let's , let's start raising up the good stuff . I mean , I'm listening to Ham Radio Clubhouse , not Ham Radio Clubhouse , hrcc , and they want to do a you know a segment on all of the lids and everything . And I'm like dude , I want something positive . So you know , let them go down that road .

But you know , if you've got something good coming on , please , you know , share it with us . We want to spread the love . We want to , you know , promote the hobby and just show you know how awesome things are , you know are in the hobby , because there's always a bunch of always bad stuff going on .

So well , let's just steer clear of that all right , I got , I got something good for you .

It was a hybrid , so it was half online and half in person , but it was the Fort Eisenhower ham testing session 52 soldiers tested , 41 passed , including three that upgraded to general .

But that is awesome . So it is . It is true . It is not a lie that there is some good stuff going on .

It is summertime right now and as we're recording this episode , you know we're going to take a little bit of a break there with a little something extra . Todd has , you know , gotten wrapped up in a , you know , a buildup process and enjoying his summer . So he's put a little bit of a break there on studying .

But he has promised the crew here that he'll pick it back up in September and go full force with the hope , anticipation that before April , as HRC and other groups start testing for their extras and upgrades , that he will be ready for getting testing . So you heard it here first and we're going to hold it to him . All right , well with that .

So let's just get into our usual format , as I always ask all of our hosts here . You know what's been going on in your ham radio week , paul , so go ahead and start us off .

I'm having some issues with the primary motor and the secondary motor , but we'll get those wrapped up up here uh this week and and hopefully get her in the water . Um , but then I was , I was doing a walk around the boat and I was showing my my father-in-law this evening because the boat was his and he gave it to me graciously .

Um , but I didn't realize that , uh , I had , I had , uh , I had taken one of the sets of controls out because I needed to wire in some switches , and so when I remounted it , he had six-inch lags securing this thing in and I didn't realize I drove one of those six-inch lags right straight through the hull .

Sometimes we just get busy with other projects and , as we all know , once you get down the rabbit hole it's always hard to get back up out of it . So good on that . Well , with that , todd , as always , how is your Ham radio week been and what's been going on ?

Never did that before , but I got to listen to Eric's presentation on how field day went for our club . But yeah , so I was like , huh , I didn didn't hear that one , but I was too busy making contacts , was working the rail trail , working on the kilo , uh , so I , great night , 20 meters , I got a lot of europe .

Sweden hadn't had a sweden contact in a while , so , worked sweden , a lot of , a lot of georgia , texas , you know the usual . And I made like 63 or 64 contacts and , uh , I think I'm at 739 and eric's at like 730 .

So we're right , neck and neck and we are definitely trying to get all tied up so we can do a live stream and , uh , show you guys what it's like to do a kilo at the same time , because we've been we've been working on this for a while and , uh , we just got to get it behind us like I had been . I hadn't been to that park since may .

I was like it's been since that long . I'm like you gotta be kidding me two months I'm with you there , man , I haven't .

Work has just been nonstop and a lot of driving . So I think what I ended up doing was the IARU contest was this past Friday , saturday , and I was just kind of doing some other stuff . And when I took a look at the Flex waterfall , uh waterfall , I was blown away how fricking busy 20 was .

And , as I was telling the guys earlier , off uh offline , um , you know , literally in the 15 minutes that I spent uh making contacts , I had every you know , about 20 , 25 and about 15 minutes , um , you know , ranging from Slovenia all the way to Austria , to Belgium and Europe I mean Europe into Europe was like a clear pipeline .

You could literally spend the dial one or two hertz or megahertz in some cases up and you'd be on to the next contact .

That was always at least fun to play a little radio , although I'm sure the family upstairs would have something different to say , because all they kept hearing was N1JUR , november 1 , over and over again , because I had my headphones on , so that's all they heard me yelling you know 5-9 and then my section number or something .

But yeah , it was fun , it was good to play a little contest radio and you know , even for a short time . So that was good and I was taught to allude to . I too have to go back to uh rail trail and uh , make a couple more contacts . So , uh , we can get , you know , at least past the 850 mark .

I mean , we've been at seven something , or I've been at seven something for probably a good you know five , six months now at this point . So we've got to wrap that up and and make uh , you know , uh , good on on getting that dual kilo before September , although I don't want to set a date because we tried to do that before it blew up in our face .

So we're going to hold off on that one , but all good on that . So I guess with that let's kind of roll into our discussion . Tonight we're going to talk digital modes . I mean we're going to obviously talk about we alluded to FT8 in the very beginning there . But you know , we will definitely dive into some of the other areas .

And really tonight is just kind of , if you've never dealt with digital modes , you've never kind of dabbled in it or played with it .

You know we're just going to give you our firsthand opinions of , you know , some of those modes like JS8 , call and FT8 and FT4 and and using whisper , and then , you know , talk a little bit about some of our experiences with it .

You know , all with the intention that you know , if you've never played in those modes you'd never kind of fooled around with them . You know we're going to encourage you to kind of go , you know , try it out .

I mean , in essence , you know , ignore the naysayers , ignore the folks that you know play , you know , in that space and are like you know well , it's just boring , it's like watching paint rides , two computers talking to each other . Yeah , it is , I mean all of those negatives , but it is radio . I mean , in essence it's just another form .

And so if you look at it like that , you know dabble in it , but at the same time you also might realize that , you know , in the times when the bank conditions are crap .

You know , ft8 or any of those other modes in digital world are going to come out shining because they just do their job more efficiently than a voice ever could carry across the airwaves . So with that let's kind of start somewhere . And you know , talk a little bit about it Now , just as a kind of level set .

All you guys have played in some of the form of digital modes , meaning fta , jsa , call those types of modes , right ?

We obviously know , I think , in terms of the digital , let's kind of just do a little high-level set .

When you're dealing with digital modes , it's an interface of your computer through some method of a USB or serial cable to a radio to then convert your audio or the audio being generated in your computer out to the , you know , over RF , and you know another computer over there intercepts that information and then translates it and turns it into this conversation .

And that conversation , I think , can look like a couple different ways . And so , if we just kind of elaborate , at least there's the keyboard to keyboard version , right , and that's like the JSA call , right , paul , just kind of elaborate , at least there there's the keyboard to keyboard version right and that's like the jsa call right , paul .

square and maybe one other you know component , depending on what type of the message is , but it's very controlled in that nature which I think you know know . To touch upon those folks that complain about the hop , you know , the mode being so dry is that it doesn't allow them to converse anything more than you know , a small subset of characters .

So I think that's kind of where people just go well , well , that's just slow , um , or you know boring or whatever , and so um , so okay , so let's kind of what ? Um ? So , you know , todd , actually you're , you're probably a good candidate to kind of talk about it .

So we obviously dragged into the digital modes Once you finally got your , you know , dx 10 and whatnot . You know what was your experience in kind of dealing with them . You know how did you feel when you first , like it was thrown at you , you know you know , I heard you guys talking about fta and I just didn't understand it .

Now , what I , when I really got into it and when I started to understand , is when we used to play that fta off oh man right , and then we had to like get as many contacts and if you used , you know , qrp , you got more points . And then , you know , I started to learn and then it became really fun for me and then they got rid of fta off .

Is that what it was called ? Fta off or something ? Yeah , and then they got rid of it . I was like damn , that was like I looked for what I was like on thursday nights . I looked forward to that . I thought it was fun and like I think like one time I was in the top 10 , so I was pretty psyched um , let's just touch upon that real quick .

So they created this kind of we'll say , a little poker-ish-like , but it really wasn't .

It was just a scoreboard that they built that you could pipe your contact information from your WSJTX to this website and you can compete against points , and it tabulated all this like kind of like real-time leaderboard , and so they'd play for an hour and you'd get to , you know , make contacts and for each level of contact you got a different point score , whether

it was more power or whatever . And and it was very simple and it was really cool because it was fun to be all play with .

But then you know the , the reason why it went south fast was there's a lot of people were start , you know , being jerks and they , you know they weren't being honest with the process and they were saying you know , when you're putting in your power rating , you know if you put in a lower power rating , all it was was just a text field , so the system would

take whatever value you wanted . So you know you could say , oh , I was running qrp when you're really running 100 watts , and they could never tell you just can't . I mean , obviously , unless they were like in the vicinity and they're like . Well , why am I making contacts ?

I thought they they got a little , they got pissed and they just said they shut it down . And I get how they would be upset , but when it was going and people weren't really cheating , it was just fun , it was cool .

They had a live stream going on so you could be in the chat and you could , you know virtual , you know live stream doing it , and we used to do it , uh , I think , through the phone , right through , uh , ham radio hotline ham chat . We would all be on like our club members , and we'd uh see what was going on .

We tried to , I tried to bring up a FTA bingo and that , you know , that worked out pretty well and that was pretty fun to do . And you know , we'll probably have to do that again in the summer , in the fall winter time frame when we did it last , because everyone's now asking in our club to go do it again .

So we might have to try that another attempt there .

I thought it was you and I'm like antarctica , I'm like oh , so I ran down it was a japan station in antarctica right and I ran down to my shack , turned on the computer , got on FTA and uh , saw him out there and went for it and got him and so he's my Antarctic , Antarctica um contact and uh , that gives me all .

It gives me some kind of contact on every continent . So I thought that was pretty cool and I tell people , yeah , I've used my ham radio to communicate with Antarctica . They're like what ?

I mean , obviously you were a serial , or you were destined to be a serial digital uh , you know , um , uh , operator , but , uh , that obviously changed a little bit and you saw the light , uh , but you know what , what led you down that road and why , and you know what kind of inspired you to get your , you know your setup going and and dive into those modes

.

I didn't feel comfortable getting behind a mic and giving my call sign and trying to break through pileups and all of that , and so I did nothing but digital for probably the first 18 months that I was a ham . A lot of FT8 . Ft8 is , yes , it's limited information .

Right , it's your grid square , it's your call sign , it's a signal report and that's the end of the CUSO . However , you can rack up a lot of contacts with foreign countries and different . You know grid squares and you know . So I started chasing , like new U S counties , right , and using a grid grid tracker .

Right , grid tracker is a fantastic a company software to WSJTX , and I would use grid tracker to to monitor like , all right , well , I don't have these counties and I don't have these grids , and , and . That's , that's all I did .

I was just chasing grids and counties and and , and it gives you something to do where you're playing with the radio , right , but you know , like if you're , if you were like I was , and you're playing with the radio , right , but you know , like if you're , if you were like I was and you're , you know you don't want to get behind the mic .

Um , you know it allows you to get a lot of contacts in a lot of different places that you probably wouldn't normally get single sideband anyway right .

But I sure , when it came to like a lot of these dx stations and stuff that you know or expeditions that I could , you know and I know I can't hear or I can't pick up or they're just too far , um , in the , the noise floor that I have here at the house , my noise floor is like a four or five , so it's not terribly bad , but it's still bad enough that

you can't pull something out and I can't set up multiple antennas , so I don't have the luxury of being able to make all that . So you know , that is the draw for me for FT8 , minus the fact that I love the component from the computer standpoint of being able to , you know , just have one more thing .

That was integrated more into my logging and all that stuff . So it just really made it , you know that more , you know , unified , and I was like , oh , this is really cool , you know , I love it , I don't care . You know I have a short attention span a lot of times .

So , like even when I do sideband , it's like I don't rag chew a lot , like when I hear somebody and I make a contact , it's usually five , nine and a couple of passing words and then boom , we're off to the next thing .

Because , you know , and so my digital life is a lot like that too as well , and so it doesn't inspire me and I haven't moved myself towards like things like , you know , jsa call , where it's keyboard to keyboard and stuff , and and we'll touch upon that in a second because I want to take Paul's you know feedback on what he's done , because he's done a lot

more of that , and then the Todd and I have . But have you guys really , you know , really embraced like the whole digital side ? Have you done just FT8 only , or have you gotten into other the other modes and other functionality that's in WSATX at all ?

I'd pull up my phone and start doing some FTA , but uh , I , I haven't really sat down . I , I I'm a sideband guy . I like to talk to people , I like to make the contact voice to voice , but , yeah , but I'm not , uh , I I don't , I don't dislike FTA .

I just said it kind of like , when I was working at home I did a lot of FTA because I would be working at home and I'd be doing FTA . It's a lot easier to do FTA and work at home . Yeah , or do the overnights and do FTA yeah but now that I have the Flex radio , when I do the overnights I can do sideband too .

We obviously keep dancing around a little bit , so I'm gonna throw the floor over to paul there and he's gonna , you know , kind of get elaborated a little bit on the jsa call stuff and kind of try to explain it just as a kind of a little primer , and then you know what your feelings on FL , do , g and all that other stuff and and , uh , you know that we

can kind of go from there .

Um , there's a lot of people that you'll you'll find that are they'll only do heartbeats and acknowledgements , um , and , and then it's frustrating to a point because it's like I know , you're there , you know , like you , you , you got your , your computer just told me that you're there , um , you know , but then you send a CQ out and then nobody answers .

Um , so it does get frustrating , but , um , it is nice when , like you know you , you , you get Finland right . Uh , I'm , I'm always trying to get , uh , oh , h eight STN . Um , he's a , he's a phenomenal YouTuber . Um , he , he does a lot of great off grid stuff youtuber . Um , he does a lot of great off-grid stuff . Um , it's , it's just fantastic .

And so I've always wanted to get him on js8 call because I know that's one of one of his favorite modes . Um , but you know , I've gotten other finland stations and and it's nice to to be able to have that kind of keyboard to keyboard , you know exchange , where you know the .

The signal probably isn't strong enough that you know you could carry on a sideband conversation , um , but the digital is able to get through , uh , and and so , yeah , you , I mean you , it's literally , it's um , you know , it's a live text kind of deal .

Uh , you can , uh , you can opt to not have it , say I'm typing while you're typing , or you can have it actually say I'm typing , which is kind of a neat . Yeah , it's kind of a neat little feature , though , you know , like if , um , if the other person is typing , they have that on it'll , it'll show on your screen .

It'll say you know so and so is typing . Um , you know , and so-and-so is typing . You know , and . But so Vera , ac is a is another great keyboard to keyboard where you know it's . It's along the same lines where you send out a CQ and people will respond or not respond , but you'll at least get signal reports .

You know when you ask for them , when you put that , that out there . Reports , you know , um , when you ask for them , when you put that , that out there , um , you know , and . And yeah , it's just you're , you're having a conversation typing instead of talking . That's , that's the only difference .

Making sure that your audio levels are right , like you'll have to open your sound settings in Windows , assuming you're using Windows . Sound settings in windows , um , assuming you're using windows , you know , uh , but you , you , you have to adjust the the audio levels in windows , otherwise you'll be overdriving the input or you're overdriving uh into the computer .

Um , you know , but it's , it's not super difficult . I would say probably the most difficult bit of digital software to get set up would be FL Digi , and that's just because it can do so much .

There are so many different modes that FL Digi does and having your macros at the top it just makes life a lot easier , and so it takes a bit of a learning curve to get through setting up the macros in FL Digi and understanding you know , okay , well , you know if I'm going to take part in a contestia net .

You know what is the exact contestia mode , because there are several . You know what is the exact contest you mode , because there are several and you know . And then you just wait your turn and you know you chime in . When you chime in , you say okay , yep , I'm here to check in and it's yeah , you can have a lot of fun with it .

You find that it's just a lot longer because it's more manual , kind of keyboard , keyboard type stuff . Or is it about equal or you know , or something in the middle yeah , it will .

But so if you've got a long bit of text , what it'll do is it'll transmit your 15 seconds and it'll wait for the acknowledgement , and then it'll , it'll continue , it'll wait for the acknowledgement , and then it'll continue right until it gets to the end , and so it it does take a little bit longer . I guess I call FT8 now my lazy radio .

It's what I do when I'm multitasking , right ?

So if I'm on a voice chat in a Discord server , I'll have FT8 go into the background and I'll just , yeah , all you know , enable tx to send , send the cq and then , and then I'll get the pop-up dialogue when , when the qso is complete and I know that I got to go back into the app and hit enable tx again , right , and it's nice that you can just kind

of run it in the background , you don't have to babysit it so much . Uh , whereas the I mean the keyboard to keyboard modes , like you have to be yeah , yeah , you , you've got to be right there on it , um , otherwise the other person is going to be sitting there and they'll be like why hasn't he responded yet ?

It took a really long time I will say , uh , because we are talking like digital , uh , you can't uh forget to mention win link , because win link is , uh , that's one of those that , yeah , it's not a super popular mode , I guess , but it's functional and I believe that there is a use for it , especially if there was ever a situation where the internet went

down , because you don't need internet to do Winlink . Right , it's email over HF , and so , as long as the other computer is receiving your signal , it's all a store and forward kind of deal , and so it's a nice thing to know how to use .

So , um , I've dabbled a little on windlink , but I'll I'll say I cheated and didn't really do it over HF , did it over Telnet , and so we won't discuss that and the reasons why I did or didn't . But I haven't really gone back and then fooled around with Winlink itself . How about you Todd Any of those modes you've gotten into ?

That you know , if everyone remembers , you know what I read about the world coming to an end , so forth , and so on .

The lovely , you know forked developers who probably helped contribute , obviously , to writing WSJTX , also wrote a what they call a Z component of WSJTX and I always get flack when I say I used it , so I don't tell anybody I use wsjtx or I don't put the z at the end any longer .

But those that know you can download it it's the same version as wsjtx does a lot of the same . It's the same basic . Well , let's get to the positives on that one .

So wsjtxJTXZ is an automation tool , like , literally like , if you love automation , then you need to just skip over WSJTX and go to the Z version , primarily because they have auto modes , they have a lot of capabilities that allow for , you know , we'll say automation of making or trying to get contacts .

So one feature I truly love in WSJTXZ is that if I'm looking for a , I'm trying to hunt a specific call sign , I can just go into the tool and fill in a field and say I'm looking for this call sign because I know they're popping up on either the cluster or whatever and they're doing FTA , and WSJTX will watch for it in the decodes and keep watching , keep

watching and then when it finds it and there's an opening , it'll automatically start the contact for me and go through the whole exchange and then , when it's done , log it and done and then you know it's finished .

Or you know I'm fooling around with the auto CQ that Paul alluded to that that method is , you don't really have to hit the TX button with that one , you just click the button and you can literally walk away . Guilty , I walked away for five hours and I had come back and my log was like full and I'm like what happened ?

And I realized , oh crap , I left auto CQ on and it was just kind of logging . Whoever heard me . Whoever heard me was just like yep , I'll grab you , I'll grab you , no problem , and just kept going and going . And , uh , you know , I think I literally worked overnight and made like 50 , 55 plus calls , I mean because I forgot .

And you know I obviously didn't learn my lesson the first time because I did it two other more times before . So , like , as Paul said , it can fill up your log fast , you know , and you don't know how quickly it does it until it does it .

So , yeah , there's a lot of cool features in WSJTXZ that help in automation and is a great tool , and you decide for your own personal choice as to whether or not you feel comfortable in using a tool like that or you'd rather be with the regular folks in the regular JTX world . So I'll go there .

But , paul , I assume you probably have a couple of , you know , fun features that you used in it that you know you might want to elaborate on .

you see somebody in in the decode and they they could be making a QSO with somebody else , but it shows up as like a different color because it's somebody that you want yep and and you just you right , click on on the , the , uh , the decode , and you go pounce and the next time that they say seven , three or they call the queue , it'll automatically jump on

them for you . That is fantastic . The other cool feature of the Z mod that the regular doesn't have is the . The auto find the opening Right and so sometimes you know sometimes , like where , wherever you are in the spectrum scope , it fills up quick and everybody's on top of everybody .

You might lose where you're at , where there's somebody else that's just blasting on top of you . Now the people that could hear you can no longer hear you . You click that auto and it just finds the holes for you . Every time you click it it'll move to a new hole and so you can watch across and go okay , yep , that's a good hole and I'll stick with that .

And then you just hold your TX frequency from there and go . So yeah , those are my two favorite features of the Zmod .

So I've used it a lot where I've like really had the urge to get on the radio and do something and there's nothing on the waterfall and everything you hear is staticky and whatever .

So I'll switch over to FT8TA and then all of a sudden you'll see a lot of activity and then you know you can , you're still playing radio , but you're , you know you're , you're not , you're getting , you're getting through that noise . You know the digital is is and the computers are able to weed through that and hear you . And then you start making contact .

So it can be fun , like in that sense . But like I said , for me , if you like the bands , there's just people talking and I see I'm gonna jump on that . But like I said , yeah , I mean I I haven't done it on poda yet , but I do .

When I do do fta , anyone that says cq poda , I always jump on those guys and those guys will hit you more than once . So a lot of times if you work a guy on , in my experience , if you work someone on FTA , they're not going to answer you because they're looking for new contacts .

Right , the POTA guys will pick you up anytime because they're just looking to activate their park as many contacts as they can get , yeah , so I always jump on the POTA guys and try to make sure they're just looking to activate their park as many content as they can get , yeah , so so I always jump on the poda guys and uh try to make sure that , uh , they

get their contacts in .

It's not , as we'll say , gui-intensive as GridTracker is , although GridTracker does a lot more than just POTUS-type stuff or just FTA-type stuff . So it doesn't really there . But I needed something a little bit more , kind of like quick visuals where I could sort things by , like all the things I need .

So you know , if it's going against my log and I'm looking like Paul said he was hunting for grid squares , I can filter out you know all the extra noise and just only go for you know certain grid squares that I know that the system knows I'm missing or I need , and you know .

Or if a special event station or it's an at no for my log , it tells me very quickly in a text flashing idiot sign says hey , you know , click on this one , click on this one , you need to make a CUSO with them and you know , it gives me a lot of like quick , easy information from a visual standpoint . But GridTracker , we all have used it .

I don't think I think I uninstalled it , but I haven't played with it in a while . I mean , um , talk a little bit about . I mean paul , you obviously mentioned it , but todd , you use it heavily too as well , right , yeah , yeah , yeah .

When I do fda , I'm on grid tracker now , do you like it because of just its visual tech stuff or the visual aspect of it ?

It's kind of like the way grid tracker is for me yeah , I would agree with you .

But I will tell you this they have not figured out a way for my parents Like it's too , complicated for them and I'm just like what is going on ? I like I go . How can your grandson do it when he was like , not even speaking ?

And you're a grown adult , many years on this earth , you know , been through colleges , schools , worked , retired Like you honestly can't figure this thing out Like come on .

So my mother's , my mother's freaking out Cause she's got to go to a , she's flying out to see my brother in California and she can't get the printer working . And she can't . And I'm like , ma , I'm like , all right , I'll come over , I'll come over . I'm like I got her the simplest printer .

It's like you turn it on and you just it's hooked up to her phone , her computer and her iPad and just hit print and it'll go . It's as simple as that . She's flipping out . I go over there , I look at the printer , I hit the on button . There goes all her 30 boarding passes that she's printing .

Uh-huh , yeah , definitely Find someone locally who can go next to you , sit parallel with you and walk you through all of those components , because I guarantee , once they get you set up , they'll spend a little extra time explaining a few things so you know what to do when the crap hits the fan or something stops working .

Because we all know and Paul mentioned it , it's like Windows You're bound to have some stupid sound setting get changed and you know , all of a sudden the driver for the sound card just goes on the fritz and says I just had to take a vacation , I'm not working with the radio today . You know , go call somebody else .

You know , or whatever you know , you fill in the blank . So you know , go call somebody else , or whatever , you fill in the blank . So I guess that's kind of the best thing for advice I'd say is don't try to do it on your own , you will get frustrated .

Why isn't this working ? Fix this for me , uh , you to pay me in beer . That's the problem , yeah and you know what , and I'm not . I'm not like . For me it's just like with the , my flying hobby .

I really hate building airplanes , I hate putting together , I hate , I just like to play with them , right , I like to fly them , just like with ham radio , like I don't . Me personally , I don't really get into the . I'll listen to you guys talk , but I don't all the how to set this up , I just want it to be set up and I want to work it .

You know , that's me , that's just the way I am , you know I me , that's just the way I am um , you know , I don't care how it works .

I am never , ever , personally , ever going to use any of this because it doesn't interest me and it doesn't affect me , from taking my radio , going out to the park , setting up my antenna and making contacts , nothing right , and that's just . That's me personally . Like some guys are really into that and that's great .

I got guys in my flying club that they are like they don't care so much for flying . They fly but their big thing is building and it's awesome . Build away , have that pride and do it . I love looking at the stuff you're building , but don't give me a kit and say here , todd , build this , because it's never getting done , ever it's not happening .

You know any of you guys play with any of the other modes because obviously FT8 is a good one , but you know you've got like Hellschreiber and a including FT4 .

I always forget about FT4 and about you , but it's like I'll be doing FT8 , and I'll be like I've seen the same contacts on the waterfall all the time and I never think to myself why don't I always flip over to FT8 ?

It's a faster mode by almost half of what an FT8 contact takes to be able to generate , but yet I still don't remember to flip over to play with it . You guys do a lot of FT8 at all in any of your digital stuff . I'm sorry . Ft4 ?

But you know , go ahead , describe a little about what Whisper is and why you like to use it .

You run whisper , run whisper for a couple of minutes and and check the the PSK reporter and see you know , all right , well , who's actually hearing me and you know how well am I doing ? You know , know . And then if you've , if you got an issue with your antenna , it's going to show up right away .

If you had an issue with something , it's going to show up right away . You're going to see it .

I do it for probably like a monday , wednesday and friday and I usually run it overnight and let it just kind of cycle , and you know , then I'll go back in in the morning and I'll take a look at the six hour , eight hour timeframe just to see where I'm situated and then I'll do a comparison by maps over the course of three days to see how I play out .

And nine times out of 10 , most of the the the maps are lining up with a few little ads here and there that might have picked me up , but it shows me where I am , per se , stronger and weaker in other areas .

So you know , I know I can't hit uh , you know the west coast as well , but I can hit , you know , right down the middle of the united states , down to florida and definitely everything over europe wise , and even as far as to the other side of south africa in some cases .

So , um , yeah , it's a great visual tool , like paul said , and you could probably find a boatload of stuff on the youtubes on how to do it and how to set it up , and we could go into hours on how to tweak it , but it's built right into wsd atx .

I was getting from , from whisper , was like I wasn't hitting the Pacific Northwest or any Northern California , hardly at all . You know , through the middle of the U ? S was fantastic , very , very little to South America . But then Europe was fantastic , right , especially , uh , well , europe , uh to Africa was fantastic , uh .

Then , when the antenna went up for the second time , um , it , it , it shifted and it was about five degrees more towards the Northeast , uh , to Southeast and all of a sudden , like , the west coast of the us starts getting better , right , um , getting into the middle east got better , yep , and so the the third time the antenna went up , it went up , uh , a

lot higher and and then it went up , you know , about 15 degrees to the northeast , uh , to southwest , and and I I don't want to change it , it , the way that the antenna is set up currently is almost perfect , um , no issues , especially fta , um into japan , to uh , through all the the middle East , um , I've gotten .

You know India and , um , you know middle of Russia . No problem , you just fantastic . And and it was only because I used whisper through each iteration of moving the antenna that I was able to see those changes right . And so you know like it's .

But I mean , todd , I mean you haven't done whisper tests on yours , but I know we've adjusted your antenna twice and and I kind of estimate .

But I mean , todd , I mean you haven't done whisper tests on yours , but I know we've adjusted your antenna twice and I can imagine , like where you know , if we did it both on those A-B tests , it would have , you know , given you some more detail on that stuff .

Like Europe , no problem , I mean it's like you know , getting Europe is for me , you know , from the shack , is like any given day . I also get South America very easily , but getting out to like Asia a little bit more difficult . Middle East I've only got a few contacts in the middle east .

So , uh , you know , hopefully my vertical will uh improve , at least maybe that because I it seems like I get really good . I get farther out west when I'm doing poda on my my uh , my poda antenna than I do with my dipole here in the shack . You know like I can get Alaska no problem when I'm out in the field .

Who would ever thought I'd get that on 20 meters sideband , like literally having usos with the ? I'm like you gotta be kidding me . That was awesome . It was probably one of the highlights of my uh , ham radio short career was being able to have QSOs with guys in New Zealand and Australia and uh , but that was pretty awesome .

Never say never , right .

Um , yeah , yes , right , listen , I , I spoiled myself with this tuner , um , but it's , it's amazing , the differences between the dipole and the vertical , and sometimes , like that station , that you can barely make out , you switch to vertical and they're clear as day , you know , so it is . It is nice to have that , that option .

You can uh to our technician base and I , you know , I want to let people know that . You know , if you are a technician , this is some of the stuff you can do .

I mean , in essence , it is available to you and you know , right now it might not be the place to do it in , but you can get self-set up and try it out and get prepared to when the bands actually start to come back into season .

Because right when the fall starts to kick in , I remember getting out there doing a lot more FT8 because the conditions have changed and 10 all of a sudden starts to come a little bit live more and people are starting to use it , and more so that when certain contests come about , it really doesn't matter what the propagation is .

If there's a contest , guaranteed the band is going to be freaking alive . Pay attention to some of those contests just to make some contacts and start to get familiar with using some of your voice privileges on those , but more so on the digital side too . There's no reason why you can't . So on the digital side too , I mean , there's no reason why you can't .

Obviously , cw is available to you everywhere , but digital modes are another alternative too as well . So definitely , we want to encourage you to go do that and start getting set up for that . Find somebody who can help you out with that , as we alluded to before .

So I guess , to try to put a bow on all this , any kind of last-minute advice we want to throw at people who are maybe kind of teetering on the the idea of digital or been kind of poo-pooed upon when the you know they mentioned to some of their club members , um , or you know , in other , uh , you know forums that they've been in , and they just kind of

shied away from it .

You know , like I don't know , I haven't done CW , um , maybe haven't even attempted it , but at some point I'd like to try it . You know , maybe I'll like it .

I mean ft8 was awesome because I was sitting at home at home I was doing all my work and I could have like my ft8 going and , like you said , you can just keep making contacts and then by the end of the day , like oh wow , I got 60 contacts . That's pretty awesome . So yeah , give it a shot . I've new group , don't , don't be afraid .

Most of the time it's effortless , you know , and it just works . So it's worth the the a little bit of a hassle and getting it set up , just to have that tool in your arsenal .

So that if you're sitting at home and you know we've just had an M class solar flare and you know you've got an S seven noise floor , well , try , digital , you know , throw , throw out some some CQs , and you know . Or , well , try digital , you know , uh , throw , throw out some some CQs , and you know .

Or or even , just , you know , give , uh , give , give the program a minute to to do some decodes . Um , you know , see what's out there . And you never know , you know , uh , it's , yeah , it's just a , it's just a good tool to have .

Know that there are a lot of moving parts in all of it and all of them have their own idiosyncrasies and ways to do certain things . Some of it's not always intuitive , a lot of it's counterintuitive in the thought process , but it made sense when it was designed that way . So just take your time with it .

Ask a lot of questions in places that you can get people that want to support you in getting those modes set up . And then get into it and you might be surprised . Like we all said , you might be making contacts that you weren't able to do on voice or other modes , and it might surprise you and it might actually help .

If you are one of those folks that like to work or hunt the awards , that can definitely get you to those goals much faster than trying to just do one mode only , which is an admirable approach but very much an arduous slog sometimes to be able to get through .

So it's all good there and if you've got any questions on your own that you run into , you can always head over to our discord at uh , lit free and ham . Uh , his website at the bottom is our discord link . Feel free to join Um . We've got a couple of um channels there that you can jump in on and we'd be glad to uh , you know , uh , help .

We can't help you . We'll point you in a direction to be able to get you the resources you need so you can get on the air and and start playing with those modes and maybe one day , you know , heck , we might make contact with you . So all good on all accounts there .

So , with that , if we're going to wrap things up tonight , as always , I appreciate everybody who is a part of the live free and ham community .

We've had a bunch of new people join our discord and so , uh , thank you guys for coming in and hanging out and saying hello and and uh , we , you know we want to , you know , help you out if you need it or , you know , as always , if you , you know you like we just uh , there's another .

Uh , I just remember a conversation I had with another podcast , um , the ham radio linux podcast , that I've been chatting , uh , with russ back and forth on and off , um , and so we've been making some good friends and he's got a good podcast going on over there . So I'm going to check that out , which is always an alternative than the Windows world .

You know you can always get into Linux and I'm sure they'll be just as helpful as us Windows people or Mac users or mixables . So you know , with that , as always , you know , if you haven't subscribed to our podcast community , I always say you know what's wrong with you .

You know , continue to spread the love and just hang out and meet new people , because we love doing this podcast and we do it for you guys , as always . With that , you can connect with our show a number of different ways .

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