On the waterfall display, the green bar indicates what part of the band the program should decode in that right side. The right side lets you concentrate on a particular exchange, a particular swath of 50 HZ. K4SE is a US station sending a message to DK5ON, a station in Germany.
#Jt65 mode code#
The ~ is a code indicating this is FT8 mode. The 903 Hz is the offset frequency above that reference frequency of 7074 KHz. (The more negative number is weaker, and I can probably detect and decode down to about -25.) I’ll skip the 0.2. The -17 is the signal strength that I measure, relative to the noise floor. The bottom line, the most recent, shows it is at time 2 hours 56 minutes 15 seconds Greenwich Mean Time. The left side is a recording of all the contacts on the band. The second display shows the signals decoded. At the bottom, the green wiggly line shows the current signal strength measured across the band. You can see there were two other sets of contacts going on recently, one still was ongoing. The present moment is at the top, and the history is scrolled downward. Sometimes you can see their signals more faintly. In between other hams are sometimes in contact with him transmitting back. (1000 Hz is 1 KHz.) His signals are showing more strongly (with more dots) and you can see he transmits in one strip, then skips and resumes. On the waterfall I copied, TI2CC in Costa Rica has been transmitting from 1040 to 1090 Hz above the reference 7074 KHz. Then the waterfall display shows the spectrum above that. I set my radio to 7074 KHz as a reference. The part of the band used for FT8 is 7074 to 7076 KHz. So for instance the 40 meter band extends from 7000 KHz (7,000,000 Hz) to 7230 KHz. And informally, hams use particular 2000 Hz wide spectrums in each of the high frequency bands. The FT8 signals themselves are 50 Hz wide. One is a “waterfall” display, that shows me the signals actively on the band, across a spectrum of 1000 Hz. I copied two displays from the program I use. The FT8 program I am using is called WSJT-X, created by Joe Taylor.
![jt65 mode jt65 mode](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/L8TxryJiT8c/maxresdefault.jpg)
#Jt65 mode plus#
Plus I made many more contacts around the US and Canada.Īnd as it turned out, on Saturday one of the first contacts I made at Ellicott happened to be Joe Taylor himself K1JT, on the 30 meter band. From there I was able to make contacts with Latin America and across the Pacific to Japan. I also tested using the mode from the PPRAA club station in Ellicott, which has some good antennas. I am pleased that I can operate from home. But I have been able to work around the US and Canada. I am finding it works well enough from my apartment, with a small magnetic loop antenna. The FT8 mode is intended for weak signals. But I am starting to feel comfortable, and I am figuring out some techniques to make it easier and less stressful. I needed some time to get used to such a rapid pace. Of course, you don’t have to make many contacts one after another. If the conditions are good and if many folks want to make contacts, many exchanges can be made in a very short time. You can intervene, or change the messages, but in general you just let the program run. The computer program for FT8 automates all of this, so that you set it up, and then when you make the contact, the program runs through the whole sequence. If there is a problem, the last transmission is repeated. If there are no problems, the whole contact lasts 90 seconds.
![jt65 mode jt65 mode](https://img.informer.com/p0/jtdx-jt9-and-jt65-modes-for-lf-v17.4-main-window-picture.png)
There are just 3 sets of exchanges: 1) the call sign identification, and an alphanumeric code that identifies the location in a worldwide grid system, 2) the signal strength reports, and 3) the acknowledgement that the previous information was received and a code for goodbye “73”. The mode utilizes a standard format, in which 15 second transmissions alternate between each side, each transmission exchanging information in a set sequence. (His JT65 mode that I already use was originally created for communicating by bouncing signals off the Moon.) FT8 was brought out earlier this year, and has become very popular in the ham community.Ĭompared to JT65, this communication mode is rapid, and requires some quick thinking.
#Jt65 mode professional#
It was created by Joe Taylor, K1JT, who in professional life is an astrophysicist, and who created a number of other digital communications modes specially made for weak signals. This weekend I tried a new digital mode in amateur radio communications.