Sorry for all the FT8 again – 2025
Here we go again. It is end of September 2025 and there are more than 6500 QSOs in my personal DF7EE log.
I am using a lot of FT8/FT4 as I have a very limited antenna situation here at home. I am using a simple 8m longe wire going into a chineese CG3000 tuner and mostly 50-70w out of my IC-7610. Even with this poor setup I was able to work more than 100 DXCC’s on 5 different bands. I could do better on 30m and 40 meters – but I am not a night guy. 🙂
I really want to encurage my fellow ham friends with poor antenne setups like me – not to give up!
Even small antennas or out door activities are better than no ham radio at all!
What I like on FT8 is that you can have instant feedbak looking at PSK reporter how the propagation works out today, or if your last antenna experiment did do some improvement at all. Here is a live map from 12m FT8 that I was operating early EU mornings.
There is a very nice map tool where you can upload your adif file and it shows your QSO’s on a world map:
https://qsomap.cqgma.org/ADIF_to_Karte.php
This is how the first 9 month look in my case.
Recent dx peditions were E44OM and PJ7K.
This is „only“ FT8, but better than playing golf. 🙂
FP8KE was easy to work even with my setup. They made more than 100.000 QSOs in one week!
I even tried CW and SSB with my simple wire. OK, it is „just“ Canada you might say, but it was fun.
The latest Software WSJT-X 3.0.0. RC1 has made again huge improvements in decoding. This is really amazing!
I like that you can switch bands with a simple mouse klick and move up and down the frequency by left/right clicking in the frequency field. Very nice!
I know there are all the FT8 haters out there, who claim that there is less activity on the bands just „because everyone in on FT8 only“.
If you want to look at some data if this is actually true or not – click here:
Next steps:
There is CQ WW RTTY this weekend and a RRDXA Team is at CR3W M/M over the weekend.
I am operating LX7I again SO/AB (classic)
The CQ WW SSB in October is booked in Madeira again. Look for CQ3W propably on 10m.
CQ WW CW 2025, I will be @ Carstens famous DX Hotel – testing our everything after the 6 month shack rebuild!
Hope to chatch you on the bands!
73 and good dx
Helmut DF7EE
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