Friday, June 18, 2021

The QSO that didn't happen but happened in the end...

 I realize that the title of this post sounds very strange. And it is a strange story indeed. Actually a fellow blogger is involved.

What happened? Well, I suddenly saw EI2KC Anthony on 6m FT8. He was just finishing a QSO and I though just to call him. After a few calls he came back to me, or at least the JTDX software made it appear so. I didn't see Anthony again so I apologized we couldn't finish the QSO via fb messenger. Anthony responded that he was not aware we were in QSO, he didn't see me at all and so it couldn't be him answering. I send him this evidence:


I've experienced this kind of decoding a few times before. And I know some HAMs did even complete a QSO that has not really happen. This is quite annoying. I use JTDX and I think this has something to do with "hint" decoding. You could switch "hint" off in previous versions but the button is blocked now.

If you're using JTDX like me I warn you to not believe everything you see...

Anyway, Anthony decided to swing his brand new 5 element LFA into my direction. What happened next was pure magic. We were both having quite a strong signal.

Actually that strong that we were confident a SSB QSO would be possible. So we quickly agreed a frequency and indeed we had a reasonable copy. And although there was a lot of QSB we managed to exchange reports and some words.

A little too late I decided to make a recording, I only catched a few words unfortunately. It gives a impression though...