K1HTV FT8 prop report
By K1HTV, Rich Zwirko
__________________________________________________ ____________________
Starting on July 10th, and for almost a month, I've been chasing DX using the new WSJT-X "FT8" digital mode. In the past week, even with the solar flux numbers in the low 70's DX conditions have been very good. After 3 weeks of operating using FT8 I had already worked 89 countries. In the past week as the result of a number of days with low K Indexes, 13 new DXCC FT8 entities were added to the logbook. That brought the K1HTV FT8 total to 102 DXCC countries worked in less than a month.
For the past week, the north polar route to Asia has been relatively undisturbed. On 20 Meters I was able to work stations in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and South Korea. The path from my VA QTH to Asia has opened as early as 09Z. But more substantial Asian signals usually can be copied from around 11Z and depending on the day, until as late as 13Z.
Almost every morning on 40 Meters I've contacted stations in the Pacific, 30 QSOs being in Australia. Good Trans-Atlantic conditions start around my local sunset and continue until after their sunrise times. This has resulted in many hundreds of 40M QSOs being made with countries across the pond in Europe and the Middle East.
European stations have dominated on 20M from around my local sunrise until after sunset. Signals from UA9 & UA0 stations in Asiatic Russia have been quite good between 02 and 03Z on the band.
The amazing thing is that the over 1000 DX stations that I have contacted so far using FT8 have been worked using a tribander and wire antennas while only running around 50 Watts. With so many stations now using the new FT8 mode, it is very interesting to see that there are propagation paths open to distant lands at times which one would not normally expect. Two website where FT8 activity can be tracked are PSKReporter and HamSpots:
https://pskreporter.info
http://hamspots.net
If you haven't yet tried the new FT8 mode, you can find it in the free WSJT-X software package, which can be downloaded at:
https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html
By K1HTV, Rich Zwirko
__________________________________________________ ____________________
Starting on July 10th, and for almost a month, I've been chasing DX using the new WSJT-X "FT8" digital mode. In the past week, even with the solar flux numbers in the low 70's DX conditions have been very good. After 3 weeks of operating using FT8 I had already worked 89 countries. In the past week as the result of a number of days with low K Indexes, 13 new DXCC FT8 entities were added to the logbook. That brought the K1HTV FT8 total to 102 DXCC countries worked in less than a month.
For the past week, the north polar route to Asia has been relatively undisturbed. On 20 Meters I was able to work stations in Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and South Korea. The path from my VA QTH to Asia has opened as early as 09Z. But more substantial Asian signals usually can be copied from around 11Z and depending on the day, until as late as 13Z.
Almost every morning on 40 Meters I've contacted stations in the Pacific, 30 QSOs being in Australia. Good Trans-Atlantic conditions start around my local sunset and continue until after their sunrise times. This has resulted in many hundreds of 40M QSOs being made with countries across the pond in Europe and the Middle East.
European stations have dominated on 20M from around my local sunrise until after sunset. Signals from UA9 & UA0 stations in Asiatic Russia have been quite good between 02 and 03Z on the band.
The amazing thing is that the over 1000 DX stations that I have contacted so far using FT8 have been worked using a tribander and wire antennas while only running around 50 Watts. With so many stations now using the new FT8 mode, it is very interesting to see that there are propagation paths open to distant lands at times which one would not normally expect. Two website where FT8 activity can be tracked are PSKReporter and HamSpots:
https://pskreporter.info
http://hamspots.net
If you haven't yet tried the new FT8 mode, you can find it in the free WSJT-X software package, which can be downloaded at:
https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html