A Summer Without Sunspots

Re:A Summer Without Sunspots by m0xte on Monday September 30, 2019 @12:20PM (#21116982)

I think a lot of the decline in calling CQ is that SSB is murdering itself. This is happening due to the poor propagation and general disinterest in trying to blast through people with huge PA's and beams as a novice/foundation user. The investment required to go hunting DX is quite high. CW, FT8, JS8call are on the scene and have a lot better performance, require less bandwidth and considerably less power. Much more practical.

I mostly run CW with a bit of FT8 occasionally. That keeps me smiling and that's all that matters :)

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Re:A Summer Without Sunspots by floren on Monday September 30, 2019 @06:36PM (#21120316)

I really need to work up the courage and try a CW QSO soon. I might have to do it at 5 wpm but I've got all the letters and numbers down.

I encourage everyone to give SSTV a shot. My antenna is just a "hamstick dipole" and it's maybe 13 feet in the air, but like I said I've had successful 20m contacts as far away as Quebec.

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Re:A Summer Without Sunspots by m0xte on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @03:22AM (#21122810)

If you call CQ at that speed you’ll get someone answer at that speed. Just go for it. First one I did I actually had a couple of drinks first :)

I’ve been meaning to try one of the ISS SSTV events on 2m but haven’t got around to it yet. Looks like fun

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