PE4BAS Amateur Radio Weblog: JS8Call QSO party review

Yes, I did participate. However like always, time was a issue. I tried to keep my computer and radio on the whole weekend to accommodate a relay for those that need it. Unfortenately my computer is about 10 years old and although I upgaded it to W10 I have issues using WSJT-X, JTDX and JS8Call together with HRD and other software. It seems it is too much for my computer and I get more and more lock ups of my CPU. This means I was not on the whole weekend... Anyway, back to the party....

Over the weekend I made numerous calls but got less anwers. I've been trying 80, 40, 20 and 17m. 20m was difficult because of a RTTY contest, 17m and 80m no replies. 40m was the band to be on this weekend. I logged only 5 stations over the weekend, they actually replied and had a short chat with exchanging names and QTH. Here is my log:

Sorry countries missing

Especially 40m was open to north America. Though I received a lot of beacons, chats and CQs it was hard to get my signal to the other side. One of the problems was doubling of signals. It is like many haven't got a really good receive and actually if you're in a city with lots of interference I don't blame those stations. But it means in a few cases I couldn't decode. Another problem were undirected calls, was the station talking to me? You need to direct you transmission....but if you're used to just pushing buttons like in PSK or WSJT-X or any other software you just hit the macro buttons and they send it....well to no one. In one case I received the message and it was directed but didn't show in the center screen, I think it is a known bug. A thing I have to get used at is that you have to be patient. Sometimes a message will take 1,5 minute to get through and if you press the transmit button too fast you miss half of it (doubling again), I have to admit it happened to me a few times.

Message sunday morning as received at OH8STN
(Photo credit OH8STN)

The pop up message screen worked fine. I accomplished to send 2 messages to OH8STN wishing Julian a good day and a good morning. Actually I like to send messages that way it is much more obvious the message is for you and no one else and it gets the attention.

Over the weekend I made some screenshots from PSK reporter maps showing what I received and were I was received. PSKreporter has limits so you have to look once and a while to get a real good impression.