Episode 124 - HF digital modes, NOT FT-8!!

Let's make HF digital modes great again. Try something new, that is more personal between hams. Have a conversation, enjoy the hobby.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hey, everyone, Happy Friday,and I gotta let some energy out.
I am frigging destroyed. This morning. I drank an ice coffee. I
haven't drink ice coffee in a longtime. Holy cow, I am just
like uncomfortably singing right now. Soall I gotta do is get on this
podcast, try to burn some energyoff, and wow, are you all

(00:21):
the way to Fort Lauderdale today again? Currently in Vero Beach heading to Fort
Lauderdale, and man, I justwant get out of the truck and run
quite frankly. So last night Imade a video, and so the next
few videos, if you do watch, or if you don't watch, I'll
try to recap on them here onthe podcast. So I decided to go

(00:45):
back and find some videos that Imade about six seven years ago about other
HF digital modes. Now, everybodyis familiar with FT eight and to me,
all what I use FT eight fouris testing antennas. That's it.
You know. I'll set up anantenna, or I'll make an antenna,
or I'll get an antenna for video, or I'll buy an antenna and I

(01:06):
set it up at five watts andbeacon CQ a few times and then go
to a PSK reporter dot info andlook for my call sign on the reverse
beacon network and see what states orareas have heard my you know, it
decodes it could tell you know,it basically decodes my computer on FT eight
sendings CQCQ from kJ four y ZLor whatever, and it'll it'll register on

(01:30):
the map and then you know,I'll be down to one watt and see
what it does. You know,That's that's how I test antenna's you know,
change the orientation or the or thedirection and see how it changes as
the directionals have a different takeoff anglewhatever. That's what he's FT eight for.
But unfortunately, you know, FTeight is just in a data You
can go to any band at anytime of a day or night and find

(01:51):
FT eight. Uh you know,usually around the zero seven four fourteen dot
zero seven four twenty eight dot orseven four seventeen dot onehdred I think,
uh seven zero seven four or whereverand find FT eight And basically FT eight
is boring to me, all right. So there's a lot of other HF

(02:13):
digital modes that have been around along time. I mean I've been doing
somebody these in like two thousand andfive ish, you know when I first
got licensed eighteen years ago, twofour thousand and five, when I got
a license, And these modes areare interactive, you know, keyboard to
keyboard chat. Uh. Some ofthem are fun and a lot of them

(02:34):
have different characteristics for different types ofbands or or like for instance, you
know, some were designed to handlestatic crashes more effectively on the lower or
the higher lower frequencies you know,like uh forty and eighty and one and
sixty with error correction and stuff,and some of them are are made to
be faster and you know, butkeyboard and the keyboard making it personal because

(02:55):
there's no personal between two contacts onefea the computers doing all the work.
You're just clicking maybe on something andwatching it on the screen. Okay,
big deal. That's not fun tome. But I like the fact that
it's there if people want to usethat. Maybe there's some people with disabilities
that can't use CW, people ondisabilities that can't talk on the phone,

(03:15):
and that's how they make contents.But what I don't like is when people
said that's the only thing that worksor that's the only digital mode that that's
a poor statement so bands modes likeOlivia, Contestia, Domino x thor Throb
hell Schriber MFSK one forty four,PSK thirty one, sixty three, twenty

(03:38):
five, and some other ones thatI haven't even mentioned yet. These modes
are very robust in certain ways andcan allow you to actually talk and communicate.
It's just it's more fun that way. I think PSK probably the most
widely used Riddy rtt YV in second. You know people that use it,

(04:01):
but but a lot of people don'teven know. Hell Shriver exists, hell
Shriver, Rudolph Hello, who whomade this? You know? In the
thirties on a machine, and itused ticker tape and had a redundancy with
two ticker tapes in case it wasnot aligned and it was printing off on
a ticker tape. You know,it had a whole bunch of redundancy to
it in the thirties forties, Andnow hell Shriver exists on a computer where

(04:25):
you can watch an artificial ticker tapeand your eyes and brain half a dacode.
You have to read what's on aticker tape, and if there's more
static more snow it's harder to readthe ticker tape that's printed on your screen.
So the computers not doing the decoding, it's just printing on the screen,
and you gotta read it as ifit was a ticker tape, you
know. So what I did wasI took these videos and I started editing

(04:47):
them, taking out some stuff,and most of it's all pertinent to this
day, but I took out somestuff and made a little intro in the
beginning about you know, hey,during these videos, I had an AWF
fifty with a dipole or a verticalor something, and I was using fifteen
wats at the time, fifteen maybethirty, and uh, you know,

(05:08):
so I basically took the meat pretendersof the video and put it in,
splice it together and re upload ofthem. I'm going to I did the
first one last night, which isOlivia, and Olivia is a great mode.
Many many different you know modes withinthat mode like eight to fifty or

(05:30):
fucking sixteen five hundred, which iseight tones two hundred and fifty hurds wide,
or sixteen tones five hundred HRDs wideor sixteen tones two thousand hurts wide,
depends on, you know, ifthe band is really good. You
can go up in the bandwidth andtones which is a wider signal, and
transmit more data faster, and eventuallythe work you could drop down. Just
like PSK thirty one it is verynarrow. Thirty one thirty one hurts,

(05:55):
you know, and then PSK sixtythree that might be the bad rate.
I had to check on that.Thirty one body, or thirty one hurts.
There's sixty three a PSK one twentyfive which is wider but way faster,
you know. So a lot ofthese things. So what I'm doing
is I'm re uploading these one atthe time, and like last night in
the video, since last night it'sgot twenty five hundred views. The people
were like, wow, excellent.You know, they haven't seen these videos

(06:17):
seven years ago. And I madethese videos seven years ago, I had
what forty fifty thousand subscribers, andnow I have, you know, one
hundred and forty five. And Idon't care how many subscribers I have.
The fact that's more people have gotteninto hand radio and have subscribed on different
channels on YouTube and they have watchedthis and they had no idea. So
watch for those videos. If youare an Avid FT eight user, you

(06:39):
probably have everything you need to useit. I mean, obviously you have
a sound card interface, whether ifyou're built in your radio or external.
You have a computer, you havesoftware it's triggered in your radio, sending
and receiving the tones and the signalon your radio in your computer. So
you have everything you need. I'mnot asking to buy an anything else.

(07:00):
Now. What I use is DigitalMaster seven eighty DM seven eighty, and
I'm gonna give you a hint.Someone asked about this, and I'm not
sure if I'll get in trouble forthis, but people want to get on
DM seven eighty without pay him forthe license for Ham Radio Deluxe. Ham
radivaling s used to be free.The last free version is seven dot twenty
four dot thirty six I think,or six dot twenty four dot thirty six

(07:25):
it's the last one, or eightdot twenty four dot thirty six, I
can't remember. Now I have that, and you can install it and it
won't have a lot of the presetsfor newer radios like the seven h five
or seventy three hundred because the olderversion. But I've gotten mine working on
it before with you know, justchanging the CIV address and the port that
I'm connected to and saying, likemy seven oh five is actually a seven

(07:46):
thousand, Change it to this cI V address, change this bod rate
boom it comes up. He doesn'tknow the difference. And you don't have
to have ham Radio Deluxe running touse this, but you have to have
DM DM seven which comes in seventy, which comes in hammery of blogs,
and the another one's like mixed wand fl digi, but fl Digi interface

(08:07):
I think sucks. So I mightpost this somehow for people to download for
free because I have the last version. I'm not sure how I do it,
but if I can get people toget on this, if that's what's
holding them back, then I willdo what I gotta do to get people
on this. And if they likeit and it's working, then they could
choose to buy the software to getDM seventy eighty in its newest form.

(08:31):
You know, I understand some peopledon't want to spend you know, eighty
nine dollars or sixty nine dollars whateverfor a license and have it expired every
year I get it. So Iknow a lot of the sites that had
the free service. There's an Italianstation ez for or something. He had
a website. He said, Idon't want people to pay for here it
is and I have it on multiplehard drives and it still works. So

(08:54):
if I could figure out how,maybe I'll make a mega upload. I'll
upload it and I'll send the linkin the video descriptions and just not say
anything to anybody and h but ifI get sued, I don't know how
that's gonna work anyways. So ifyou like, I encourage you. If
you like. If if I doget that working and it does work for
you and you like it, Iencourage you to support the author and buy

(09:18):
the DM seven eight year, theHamburg the software suite, the newest one.
And because you know, but maybeyou want to see how many people
are out there. But I gottaget more people hunter because I can't find
Anybodey on hell Schriber anymore. Ican't find anybody on Domino X, I
can't find anybody on MFSK one fortyfour. Uh, you know, so
I need to get more people outthere. So that's what I'm gonna do.

(09:39):
That is the next six videos comingand uh, you know, a
re upload with a little bit oftouch. It actually took longer to take
the videos and edit them and makean intro and edit the stuff out that
wasn't pertinent anymore and stuff like thatand just make a video then it did
to actually make the original video becauseI know, watch it all, take

(10:00):
clips out, you know, stretchthe screen, get rid of the date.
That's going to confuse people when yousee on the bottom right in my
clock says twenty sixteen year, likewhat you know? Or wow, I
thought you had this radio? Whyare you using that one? Well,
yes, I'm taking the material screencapture and just re uploading it, voicing
over some parts and whatever. SoI hope you enjoyed those videos. I
hope they help you in something differentthan FT eight. And some people commented,

(10:24):
okay, Eric, well I appreciatethat, but what about jsaight call
or FT four, which are FTeight variants that allow you to actually talk
on keyboard to keyboard. But nobody'susing those either. Why when I swore
when I made that video FT four, when it came out, I swore,
this is gonna destroy FT eight becausenow you can actually instead of just

(10:46):
CQ call sign grid square, thenseven three and you don't have any interaction.
You'd actually type short messages back andforth. It's a lot faster,
and surprisingly nobody jumped on it.Everybody wants to just sit back with their
feet up, pet dog, doa crossword puzzle while their computer racks up
contacts. I don't think that's fun. Again, I may sound very very

(11:07):
uh you know, anti like alike a like an asshole. What do
you want me to say? No, I just don't like when new people
get into the hobby and they're toldall you can do is f FDA because
it's all that works. You don'teven have to try, it'll work.
And the people are using five hundredwatts sometimes on FT eight. That's so

(11:28):
boring. It's like shooting fish ina barrel. Go ahead and get a
five FTA at five hundred watts,and it's just gonna get boring in minutes,
because when you broadcast SEEK, you'regonna have a bunch of stations call
back and it's it's yeah, okay, somebody signal wants in New York.
Okay, big deal. Oh soI went to South Africa, Great Australia,
Fine, that's it. But Idon't know who that station was what

(11:50):
they're doing. All I know istheir call signing their grid square. Big
deal. That's just me. SoI'm going to make a push to get
these people back on. Let's makeHF digital modes again and continue to use
your FT eight to test antennas,get on something like hell shriber. I'm
gonna have a hell shriber net.I'm gonna have a domino x net.
We're gonna do nets and we canget on there, and you know,

(12:13):
maybe one Saturday a month we'll trya different mode. We'll all do nets.
That would be pretty fun. Sothere you have it. At twelve
minutes, tweaked the hell out hereafter a nice coffee. I really don't
like this feeling. But also anothervideo. We want to talk about my
FT my FT five D versus fmy ID fifty two. You know what

(12:33):
do I? You know, notversus they're both great radios, but what
do I like about each one ofthem in comparison. I'll give that video
and a podcast to follow up.But yeah, this weekend is hopefully gonna
be a decent weekend or a longcall. But I don't have to go
anywhere a labor day and then I'mback to work Tuesday from Friday. It

(12:54):
kind of sucks getting old real quickdoing everybody else's work. That kind of
kind of gets old. But whatever, So I'll just keep driving all over
the state of Florida, wave asthey go by. But thanks to my
sponsors at HIM Radio Prep. ButI always say thank you to sponsors.
Uh you know, they have theirHF Master Class brand new course. I

(13:16):
gotta make a video on that aswell, and then I'll talk about it
after the video and podcast form forthose of you don't watch my videos,
But hey, you want to getproficient at HF and getting the DX and
contacts and make the best of itinstead of just grabbing a radio and callin
CQ and getting bored because you can'tmake contacts. HF Master Class at HAMB
Radio Prep definitely walks you through onvideos and interactive stuff to to show you

(13:41):
in real life circumstances on how tomake contacts and how to know when to
talk, on what bands and andwhich bands work better and why antenna you
know, patterns make a difference fordifferent bands at different times of the day,
at different times of the year.It all works out in HIM Radio
Prep their HF Master Class you usethe code Erica twenty, you save twenty
percent on any course you buy,including the masterclass. That's pretty cool.

(14:05):
And then you'll be able to geton there and know, you know,
the good and the bad and uglyand really you know you'll be a contest
or at no time if that's whatyou want to do. So thanks to
Ham Radio Prep for giving them thatdiscount as well. Thank you guys for
listening. I'm gonna trying to havea decent weekend and yeah, check out
those videos and if not, I'lljust talk about them, you know,

(14:28):
as the podcast rolls on seven threeeveryone. Thanks, I love you guys,
man, Thanks so much for listeningto all the emails Ham Radio Concepts
at gmail dot com. You guysput a smile on my face when I
get those emails. It could beabout anything. Some people, Hey,
man, check this out. Igot three things to check out already that
I haven't ever heard of, socheck those out. You guys are awesome,
So love y'all. Man. Thanks