Who's active on FT8?

The last couple of weeks or so I've seen 15m and 20m really open up from VK...regular contacts into Eastern Europe, France, Spain, etc. but never seen a UK call!

Hi Jeff 

Am very active on 20 15 and 10m but not been working VK since autumn last year but I did work Indonesia yesterday on 20m so maybe it could soon open up a little further 

Cheers 

Craig 2e0vrx

Sydthecat wrote:

Hi Jeff 

Am very active on 20 15 and 10m but not been working VK since autumn last year but I did work Indonesia yesterday on 20m so maybe it could soon open up a little further 

Cheers 

Craig 2e0vrx

Seeing the European stations this regularly is a recent thing for me, so fingers crossed.

FT8/FT4 is my main activity when in the shack.

I often hear a few VKs on various bands but cannot always get them to hear me.
It's the same for a lot of Oceania but then my setup and location is not the best.

My last VK was VK7MHZ on 40metres back in February.

BTW this time of year, end of April thru to August most of my time is spent chasing DX on 70MHz

Ivy Mike wrote:

BTW this time of year, end of April thru to August most of my time is spent chasing DX on 70MHz

We don’t get 4m here, but regardless, it’s almost winter so our Sporadic E season has well and truly gone.

First UK call on ft8 this afternoon.  M6 call too, so he won't have been running much power.  Mind you, 20m is buzzing here today.

Nice one Jeff.

If they were running low power that's a good catch. (I could receive Australia on FT8 but could never get back.)

Victor wrote:

Nice one Jeff.

If they were running low power that's a good catch. (I could receive Australia on FT8 but could never get back.)

I only usually run 30w myself on digital modes, and way less on WSPR.

I also snagged a Japan call in Antartica, to go with the VK0 I was chatting to last week, so it’s been a good day.

Well done Jeff, I'm suitably impressed.

I may revisit FT8, (if I ever get this FT757 working that is!), and look out for the more challenging DX opportunities.

Victor wrote:

Well done Jeff, I'm suitably impressed.

I may revisit FT8, (if I ever get this FT757 working that is!), and look out for the more challenging DX opportunities.

Antartica isn’t really DX for us though, remember….just “down a bit”!  Europe is way further.

I'm active most days on 20/17m during the day, 17m has been very decent for me lately. In fact an absolute fluke happened last week on there, where I worked a small pile up of JA stations on as little as 6 watts. As some of you will know that there's always one or two stations  that just pick up every call on the gridtracker map, and that is what happened the day I got to JA. Two stations in the south of the country, just kept picking up the signal and I turned the radio power down to as little as 6 watts and both still got me. Although 5 watts was pushing it - it didn't work. 

Worked majority of the JA stations 10w and under.

I also witnessed two other local foundation license holders also working JA on QRP - one of the chaps was using an FT-817 out portable on the South Downs!



During the evening I've been active on 30 & 40m until the early hours and in fact, 30m has been very good for me. Even got into VK on 10 watts.

But yes, most days I'm on FT8 on 17m during the day and 30m at night mostly.

Cheers all, 73' 
(M7MMC)