A couple of days ago, a fellow answered me using an old Heathkit AT-1, the first amateur transmitter offered by Heathkit, in 1951. As you might expect, it was a little bit raspy and a little bit chirpy, and the VFO tended to drift. At the end of the contact, he was off my frequency by about 570 Hz.
Well, after that contact, I turned off the radio and went upstairs to hit the sack. Last night, when I turned on the rig, I forgot that the RIT was still set. I called CQ a couple of times—with no success, of course—before I realized that I needed to clear the RIT setting. With my CW filter set to 500 Hz, there was no way that I was going to hear anyone calling me, unless they were way off frequency, like my last contact.
Moral of the story: Check your RIT before calling CQ!
Personalizing FT8
This afternoon, I wandered down to the shack to make a couple of contacts on 30m. Shortly after, my wife, Silvia, turned on the halogen light fixture in the dining room. This light fixture generates an incredible amount of noise—S9+! I’d get rid of it, except that I do like the way it looks, and Silvia almost always agrees to move whenever I want to get on the air.
Today wasn’t one of those days, though. She and her sister were working on something on the dining room table, and they really couldn’t move. Just before this happened, I saw a tweet from Cale, K4CDN:
Just caught @EricBudinger on 30m FT8 as well! We’re having a show reunion today! #HAMRADIO
So, I figured what the heck. I tuned up to 10.136 MHz to see if I could make an FT8 contact. I know that I’ve written before about not being impressed with FT8, but what else could I do?
I even made a joke of it on Twitter. I tweeted:
Not hearing anything on 30m CW. Maybe I should try FT8.
I then proceeded to work AA1SU after a couple of tries and then called CQ myself. Cale tweeted:
I see you. :)
and he answered my call. That was our first on-air contact!
I got a little ribbing about all this. Bob, K0NR replied:
FT8, it’s always FT8, what the heck is going on here? 😜
Well, I guess amateur radio is going on here. :)
Seriously, though, it was nice to work someone who I’ve known for a while now, and while the on-air contact may have been a bit impersonal, we made up for it with the supplemental contact on Twitter.
I finished my FT8 session with a contact with N4TB. This contact, and the one with AA1SU were kind of impersonal, but I am thinking about emailing them and encouraging them to get on Twitter. I searched for their calls, and found a lot of tweets from other hams who worked them. It might be fun to get to know them.
Rick Barnich says
The FT8 Geek doesn’t have quite the same ring!
Thom W8TAM says
FT8 is great for checking propagation. WSPR is better, but takes a lot longer. FT8 is a cheap way to find out how far you’re getting out. :D
Dave New, N8SBE says
FT8 is great for the International Grid Chase, it seems, if you are into chasing points/paper from the ARRL.
On the RIT subject, at least the Elecraft radios have a bright LED that shows your RIT/XIT is not cleared, along with another one labeled “delta TX” (with an actual triangle, instead) to let you know if you are transmitting someplace that is not your receive frequency (RIT/XIT/Split). Very handy, thoughtful features.