This Week at Radio Station N8VCL 2-8Jul22

 

34 Contacts, 3 continents, greatest distance: LU7HH in Argentina at 5575.6 miles.

Seems kinda rinky-dink compared to 85 contacts last week, eh? The majority of last week's contacts were using digital modes. That creates quite an advantage over the CW and voice modes. 

First, digital modes rely on the computer's "hearing" while CW and voice use human hearing. Once the computer breaks the audio down to bits, it can isolate the sounds that contain data and pull them out from all the other noise in the audio pass-band. To explain it another way, I have made digital contacts when I could not hear a signal in the static. My computer could, so it picked out the data and put it on my screen. CW and voice modes have to be audible above the noise.

Second, the most popular digital mode at the moment seems to be FT8. To make FT8 efficient and far-reaching, it uses a very small data field and repeats it several times in a 15-second transmit window. All computers using FT8 are time synchronized and they only transmit on their 15 seconds. Basically, you look at the screen and when you see an interesting callsign, you double click it. The software takes over from there and if the other station heard you, the rest of the contact is completely automated. Essentially, once you've set up the antenna, radio, and computer, there's no skill involved at all. 

That said, it's like getting a notification on your phone when you see your callsign in the box, telling you they heard you and are responding. A little shot of dopamine. haha. It's great fun, no doubt, it's just easy.

So this week I wanted to focus on two things: 1) Make CW and voice QSO's, and 2) Complete the 13-Colonies sweep.

My casual contacts then were all CW and voice, including the longest one this week. Funny enough, I had already worked him on FT8, so now I have him on 20M phone as well. 

My 13-Colonies contacts were where ever I could find them. CW, FT8, PSK31, and sideband/voice. There was even one DMR contact. That was a LOT of fun. I worked most of them on the 3rd of July, but Rhode Island was a tough cookie. I also managed to bag all three bonus stations, GB13COL in Britain, TM13COL in France, and WM3PEN, Independence Hall in Philadelphia Pennsylvania.

 

Other things I had going on this week include building a 40M transceiver which I blogged about here.

 

Thanks for reading! If we QSO'd, thanks! If we didn't, I hope we do soon.
73!

 

"This week [...]" is a summary of Radio-related activity from Saturday through Friday.