PSK31 and FT8 Digital Activity

First, to find out if anyone can  your station, check out PSKreporter.

What do I need to get into digital?

If you have an HF radio, and a PC (I suspect you do if you’re reading this.), you need to interface the radio to your PC. Depending on the radio, this can be as simple as a USB cable or and external sound card device.

Search the internet to find out what works best with your radio, or send me an email and I will help you out.

The key things to remember:

  1. Less power is more. Most digital is best on 5 to 20W of power. Any more than that and you could drown out anyone trying to reply to you. You don’t want to cook your pc or radio, so be careful with RF.
  2. Make sure your time is in sync with an NTP source. This is important as most digital communication is done in small timed intervals. You could miss the reply or the other station could miss you if your time is off.
  3. You need a good digital software for your PC. There are tons that are free. I use HRD (Paid), and WSJT-X.