[Alexandria Radio Club Reflector] Digital Net Night

[Kenneth R. van Wyk]

Thanks, Jason!

It was a small, but (I hope) fun discussion. Would LOVE to see more people join in. C’mon in, folks. The digital modes are a ton of fun.

There’s a bit of learning curve up front to get your rig connected. We’ll do our best to help you out with some tips on that.

But, once you have the basics working, adding new digital comms tools gets pretty easy. (Hint: Pretty much all the digital tools share the same sorts of configuration options.)

Last night, we spotlighted Grid Tracker. A lot of people know and love it as a tool for visualizing FT8 traffic. You can see all the connections all around the world. (The ones your radio picks up, of course.) It’s a great view of where people are communicating, overlaid on a world map.

But, did you know Grid Tracker also has a multitude of QSO logging options? Want to automate logging all of your QSOs? Grid Tracker can do it.

And, as I learned from Jason, you can also use GT to send your logs to another computer on your network. I run my radio rig on Windows 10 (mainly for Winlink Express compatibility), but I do all my logging over on my desktop Mac. I run Grid Tracker on both computers to send/receive those logs and then store them in the Mac-based logging software I use, MacloggerDX. It suits my needs very well.

But, we all have different preferences and opinions. (I even admit not everyone accepts EMACS as the One True Editor.) There are many ways to set things up, and the digital net nights are a great opportunity to learn and share.

Oh, and we also demonstrated the PSK Reporter web site. It too shows you a map of radio traffic, but UNLIKE Grid Tracker, you can see where YOUR data goes! So, for example, you can send out a few CQs on 20 meters and within moments see where your messages are being actually heard, around the world. It’s based on a crowd-sourced network of participating stations. (Grid Tracker can also report traffic to PSK for you, so YOU can be among those participating stations.)

It’s an enormously powerful way of quickly seeing how each band is propagating at any given moment in time, 24/7.

If you haven’t joined us for a digital net night — perhaps you haven’t even tried the HF digital modes yet — please come join in. Come ask questions, chime in with opinions, etc. It’s a very informal voice chat room on Discord. The discussions are free form and intended to be fun and interesting.

If there’s a specific digital mode you are curious about, just ask. We are happy to go where people’s interests are.

Cheers,

Ken van Wyk
Armata Scientia





> On Aug 28, 2023, at 7:52 PM, Jason Palma <wa6mpr at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hey all,
> 
> Come join us on Digital Net Night. We will be on the voice channel on Discord (scroll to the bottom). Going to be talking Grid Tracker and PSK reporter.
> 
> 73,
> 
> Jason
> WA6MPR
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