6500 powers through!

Mark_WS7M

I have not had as much time to play as I wanted but decided to hit some JT65 for fun with my new 6500, I first started on 20m today at around 3pm mountain time. With 10w and my lousy Jpole I bagged: LU8HGI LW1DXH PT9IR 7J1BBC CX7BBR CE2VQF C08LY EA4CQR Had to call it quits for errands and chores. Then tonight at 10:30pm mountain time I switched over to 40m with 15w. I got: CO2XK PY7OO N4GGT AE4TA CA3JMH HK6DES This seems to be showing my my antenna is doing ok towards south america and maybe japan. LOL... Anyway this is more DX than I've done in a long time. I do realize JT65 is good for weak sigs but my point is the 6500 on low power just comes through. All of these were a single call with removes between -1 and -14. HK6DES took two calls but the report was -7. I had used my 6300 on JT65 but never did this well. I am not sure that is really anything more than perhaps the bands being more open tonight. Anyway for fun I cranked up the power to 50w to see what would happen and called CQ. The 6500 doesn't even breathe hard! I put it back down to 10w and got a return call I'm working right now. Beautiful radio. I just wish I had an antenna to do it justice... Some one here needs to buy me a tower and a log periodic beam for Christmas!!! :-)

Lawrence Gray

You can build a log periodic. Just a bunch of aluminum tubing. Only requires cutting and drilling some holes. There are detailed plans on the web.

W7NGA

Mark,

Congratulations! After reading your post I downloaded WSJT-X, calibrated to WWV, and was immediately successful on JT65 with my 6500. DAX makes it all so painless (watch your levels however). Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of 'fun factor' there for me. Of course, I can't say I warmed up to PSK31 either. Love RTTY though .. it must be the cool tones and user interaction required. I had watched a YouTube video long ago that demonstrated an application that displayed all the stations of the world that had received your signal. There is some auto-logging utility that dumps your receive log to a global database. I think that would be quite fascinating to see the propagation of your signal throughout the world. I'll have to seek that out later ...

W7NGA  dan
San Juan Island, Wa.

Mark_WS7M

Dan, I agree.  I can't say I'm in love with JT65 either but I will say for a mode that you can easily use on a laptop while not wanting to have to listen or interact much it is a nice way to see how well your ant and rig are doing.

Last night I took the laptop to bed and made 5 contacts on JT65 without having to wake anyone else up in the house.  I do still prefer the interactive modes myself.  PSK is fun but I get kind of tired of the canned macros for report, rig, etc.   I haven't done much RTTY so will have to check that out.

The app you are thinking of is WSPR and in fact I fired it up just now.  It is something you can run pretty much unattended.  I set my 6500 up for 10W and let it run for a while and came back to find I'd been heard in JA land, VK land and quite a few places in the US.  I think I will let it run while I work on chores around the house today and just check it.

Anyway check out wsprnet.org.    Here is a pick of my receives and heards:

W7NGA

I found pskreporter.info ... what a great tool for evaluating antenna patterns and band conditions!

NX6D Dave

40 and 80 have been particularly good the last few days.  I saw a station in Moldova appear for a few minutes last night, but the band didn't stay open long enough to make a contact.

I don't know how much power actually makes it out of the antenna(s), but I usually transmit JTx on 30 watts or so.  I'll crank up to 50w if I think I have a chance of making a tough contact.  All of this is happening through non-directional antennas.  I'll lower power to 20w or less for West Coast contacts with no problem.

My 6500 PA will run this duty cycle all day if it has cool air to breathe.  I'll get the cooling fan coming on sometimes if I shift from "odd" to "even" to make a contact such that the radio doesn't get a break for 2 or more minutes.

DrTeeth

The latest dev builds of WSJT-X - have to be built from source but dead easy with JTSDK has WSPR included. If I can do it, anybody can. Work is currently being done to improve the sensitivity of the JT65 decoder. If anybody needs help, my QRZ.com email addy is good for off forum comms.