WSJT-X and JTDX news from Dave, M0DHO; 50Mhz Meteor Scatter

“I’ve been using WSJT-X and JTDX for about a month. I many cases I could have made the QSOs with CW. However, I’ve worked many more Chinese stations, presumably because they find CW hard for non-English native speakers. There have been a few cases were JT65 or JT9 enabled a QSO that would have been too weak for CW. I’ve worked a number of VKs and one ZL on 80m like that, and a few stations on 6m that would otherwise have been marginal. It’s been very successful for working South American countries on 80m – I’m still trying for Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Suriname, Guyana on 80m, for which getting up at 05:00 seems to be required. It’s the wrong time of year to try it on 160m. There seem to be very few African stations using JT modes apart from the ZSs. Pity because ZS is easily workable using JT on 80m so the others ought to be easy as well.

I’ve tried MSK144 meteor scatter on 6m during the Perseids with good results. But you often have to be patient – it might take 10+ minutes to complete the QSO because the pings might be infrequent. Using the KST chat room helps. At some stage I want to try it on 2m but need to sort out interfacing to my FT847 first.”