I think that next week we should go to our secondary freqs for 20m and 40m

I have been finding that I am not getting any benefit of 12m and 15m over 20m. Wondering if we should drop 12 and 15?

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I believe that I heard most stations on the various bands tonight, though I wasn't heard as well as I was hearing. 12m was dead.

I need to figure out who is who and get the protocol down a bit better.

12M has been dead. 15m i seem to do well into Alaska, but I think 17m does about as well for me.

For consideration down the road;

- paying attention to who you can make contact with on different bands.

- paying attention to who can hear you, that can hear stations that you cannot.

This info might lead to certain bands with good net control, secondary net control, for passing messages to leverage more of the JS8 features. Otherwise other data modes do keyboard to keyboard faster.

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Here is mine. That 110uH coil works pretty well on the EFHW.

Agreed. I keep track of who I can hear and who's hearing me on which bands. That's the main reason that I don't see 12 or 15 offering me anything over 20m, at least not now. I tried to bounce a relay to AK on 40m from a rando on an allcall station. He was hearing AK, but I don't think that it went through. It was also past the window by the time I was done.with it.

I think we could drop 12, 15 and 20 in favor of 17m instead of dealing with an alt freq on 20. 17 and 20 propagation are really similar and 17 usage is way less.

Wasnt able to hit the net tonight. slowly working on a new reloading bench. But usually 20/40 qrp good with me

Was anyone on the net this Tuesday, or was that just a one off time?

We did the net, same time same place on Tuesday. Hopefully see you next week.

Ok thx. Was just checking. I couldn't get away, hopefully next week.

I updated the schedule. We dropped 12m and 15m for now. We have 17, 20, 30, 40, 80. 17 and 20 are similar, but I wanted to keep 20 because I believe more people will be able to use it.

20m and 40m will be on the Secondary freqs to cut out a lot of clutter. Read the schedule post to get info on adding secondary freqs to your box, clearing history, and possibly starting on the primary for a propagation check

20m and 40m are also now 15 minute windows, with the net being shortened to an hour.

I've got the secondary freq's inserted. Bad timing for me at dinner, but I will try to make one or two bands if possible. I will try to leave running on 20m as that's where I had the most traffic. My radio didn't respond to anyone's heartbeats. Was anyone on tonight, I checked momentarily 17 & 20 but didn't see any signals?

I'll be on tonight, this could be fun. I like the band jumping.
anybody have JS8SPOTTER installed or running?  
KC0UWF, Mike

Oh whoops, I thought that was last night. No wonder nobody was on.

If things hold up, we should have a decent night. Arf SSB net was noisy tonight.

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I was late on the net. I had AK, IL, ID on 40m. Nobody on 80m

nothing like windows doing an update right in the middle of a JS8 net

Things looked promising 1/2 hr before net. It seemed to go downhill fast.

Well, I heard more then others heard me. I was monitoring on a separate laptop on an SDR online radio with JS8 going on it.  one out of Utah.
"When All Else Fails, ARFCOM"...

I heard IN, IL, NE and OR

Went to Iowa to SIL house for dinner. I would have rather been home playing radio.

finally got most of my issues sorted.  i've got presets in the radio and js8call config for both usb and network connections.  

i had to troubleshoot all kinds of wack issues and at times had cat control with no audio, and other times audio and decodes with no cat control.

in the end, the main points of the setup are

the wired connection is just USB between laptop (win11) and 705, and only running js8call.  windows creates two COM ports, one for ci-v and the other for audio and js8call audio config is mic/speaker usb audio codec.   also  js8call thinks it's talking to an icom7300, and the 705 radio ci-v is changed to 94h.

the wifi / tcpip network connection is going through the starlink router and has WFVIEW configured to talk directly on ports 50001 and 2 and the 705 radio is configured with its default a4h ci-v.  then WFVIEW presents a radio server on localhost:4533.   js8call is configured with radio type hamlib rigctl and pointed at the localhost 4533 port.   For audio, i had to use the virtual cables A and B.

I also had to find and set the modulation controls in the 705.  the choices are mic, usb, mic and usb or wlan.   so that's one of the main differences in the presets is that it's set to usb only when using USB and wlan for the wireless connection.

another configuration thing that threw me for a loop was the mode in js8call, which has options of "usb" and "data/packet".   I of course chose data/packet when i was using wlan, but selected usb when using "usb".   but apparently THAT usb is upper side band, not universal serial bus.   so any time i tried to transmit, the radio would switch from "USB-D" (data) to "USB" and then act like it was transmitting (TX light on) but there wouldn't be any noise or signal.   doh!   so they're both set to data.

plus numerous other issues... and i troubleshot a relative's computer and 705 as well, then we were able to make lots of contacts and very reliably communicate with each other on 40m from about 100 miles.   the only issue now is syncing time.

what i WANT to do is find a way to use the GPS receiver in the 705 to set the laptop clock.   any ideas?    (for clarity, i know it's easy to install software that pulls gps data from 705 and how to export it.  the challenge is that i'm usually indoors and don't have a gps signal, so i need to extend the gps antenna outside.  )


i have a couple of QRP Labs QDX kits ordered and am getting either a couple rasberry pi or zeros.  Hopefully they'll be here soon.  Then i can go through the whole process of figuring this out with different radio and client again.

We down today?

Isn't it in 45 min? I'm going to have mine running on 20m, but I will be at dinner. I wish it was at different time.

Still on. I'm going through the bands now checking to see how I'm getting out. I'll leave it on 14078 until start of net.

I thought it was 14.084?

It is 14084 for net.

I was leaving it on the calling freq prenet to get a better gauge of propagation

I am afk, but radio is on.

My main OCFD has QRM from local AM station until after dark.

No matter, as long as you are -28db you should be heard?

I have 3 of these, work well.

https://chameleonantenna.com/shop-here/ols/products/cha-filter

20m

It was a rough night. I heard a couple of western stations, but I don't think that they heard me. The "local" station that I normally hear well was kind of sporadic.

I got OR and IN and that’s it

thats way cheaper than the other HPF I have looked into. I even have a coupon code there. Thanks!!

Holy shit. You can get one that works great off Amazon for 1/3 that price.

RX only or they you can TX through? Link?

Works for Xiegu radios, and has been recommended for a while for lower power radios.

Ahh gotcha, that’s a different deal than a 200w version which is different than a legal limit version.

Understood. He has a G90, and that is the popular fix for AM in receive. The kit is 19 bucks.

Going to try and free up some time and participate in the JS8 net this week. Worked all weekend getting the software to work. I actually got it working initially pretty quick. A lot of similar settings with WSJT-X/FT8, figured how to send out a heartbeat and got some good strong signal reports. Left my radio in auto reply mode and went and did a work out. Came back about an hour later and noticed it was no longer responding to other heartbeat signals. The program just kinda went to sleep and I could not figure out how to wake it up. I could send out a heartbeat and it would look like it was working, but no TX signal was being sent. ALC and Power meter showed zero output. PSK reporter showed nothing getting out.

Restarting everything did not work. Tried for hours to toggle something to get things back online and no go. Finally uninstalled and re-installed the program, still no go. Went back and over time I toggled everything I could and out of nowhere it started working again.

I really hate crap like that. I came away with no real answer on how to keep it going. And no idea why it just stopped working.

My son recently got his tech and general license and we have been trying to secure back up comms in case it's needed. We are about 1200 miles apart and he's on a very compromised antenna. Was hoping JS8Call would be the answer, but not feeling real confident in its stability at this point. Trying to learn CW, but it's going to take me a while. So fingers crossed the software is working properly now.

Depending on antenna, radio, and computer connection, it could be common mode current getting to the computer. I choke everything when running digital modes, including the cable between the computer and transceiver.

My 705 would sometimes drop ALC. I would have to restart computer, program and radio. I switched the board over to usb-c instead of usb micro and haven't had any issues. My point being, if you are running a usb to your radio, its most likely some interference from the cable. I think JS8 is a great mode, but with anything complicated, one thing can throw it all off. I would encourage you to keep up with Morse Code. Morse is a very efficient mode, it is about as simple as it gets, equipment wise. But if you aren't at your station you will miss the contact. One way to avoid that is targeted comm windows. That's the great thing about JS8 is you can leave a message for the station.  I really like Winlink, combined with Morse. I like JS8 as well, but it's not my preferred method. I am still learning head copy. I am looking at the Long Island CW Club to take some classes.

Thanks.

I have everything with a choke. Antenna is a DX Commander Classic w/ 80m element. The antenna line is choked in 3 spots. At the antenna, at the radio, and I can't remember the length of the 3rd, but it was some kind of wave length away from the antenna feed point.

Radio is an IC-7300 with the full Palomar Engineers choke system.

Computer is a Panasonic Toughbook, an older refurbished unit. The USB cable does have a choke on it as well.

I think I got the choke situation covered, but I'm very naive about this stuff and still trying to learn as I go.

Interesting... I did restart everything several times, even tried different order of restarts. When JS8 would not work, I switched immediately over to FT8 and it would work perfectly. So I think that would show that the problem was in the JS8 software. But I fully admit I'm just a beginner with all this HAM tech.

Definitely going to continue working CW. Using a phone app call "Morse Mania" right now just to learn the code. Was doing really good with letters and numbers, but adding prosigns, Q-codes, abbreviations, punctuations etc.. has made the progress so much slower. My 2mb brain feels tapped out. I've heard of L.I. CW Club before and will look into it.

I've also heard of Winlink, but know nothing about it. I guess that will be my next project.


Thank you both for the responses.

Winlink  is email over radio waves. I am sure you've heard of Julian OH8STN , here's his Winlink playlist. His channel is about emergency comms qrp digital. With regards to Morse Code, really I would just start with letters and numbers. Once I had those down I started doing my callsign 3 times, then the alphabet and calling cq after, then a paragraph or two from a forum I was reading. I am currently working on my copy speed, but it's slow going. It's a process and the best thing is to just keep at it.

Again, very helpful and it is appreciated.