[TVARC] FT8 for KH1/KH7Z Baker Island

[K2PS Pete Stafford]

A major DXpedition is coming up, beginning Wednesday or Thursday of this
week for the fifth most-wanted DXCC entity, Baker & Howland Islands, a
Pacific possession of the USA.

 

With the advent of FT8, Villagers have a real chance of working this
DXpedition, which will have a callsign of KH1/KH7Z.

 

In order to use FT8 in a competitive way, however, the authors of WSJT-X
have implemented changes geared toward gaining the ability to work many
stations in a limited period of time, since the expedition plans only to be
operating for about 10 days.  So they came up with a foxes and hounds
analogy to describe the relationship between the KH1 station and all the
rest of us, along with modifications to the standard FT8.

 

The DXpedition has given instructions as to how to most effectively utilize
FT8 to work them.  I’ve read a bunch of stuff about that, and I attempt to
list the important points here.  If you’re new to FT8, I urge you to spend
some time with it before the KH1 operation.

 

·         Make sure you have at least the version 1.9.0 of WSJT-X.  No
betas.

·         Make sure your PC’s clock is accurate, since FT8 requires clock
synchronization

·         The expedition will NOT be using the standard FT8 frequencies.
Rather they have set out the frequencies to be used solely for this
operation.  So Add the following to the File > Settings > Frequencies tab in
WSJT-X

§  80M 3567

§  40M 7056

§  30M 10131

§  20M 14090

§  17M 18095

§  15M 21091

§  12M 24911

§  10M 28091

§  6M 50316

·         Check off the “Hound” box in File > Settings > Advanced tab

·         In Hound mode, you will be transmitting higher than 1000Hz, and
listening below 1000Hz.  It will not allow you to transmit below 1000Hz

·         You may see as many as five different KH1/KH7Z stations on the
same band at the same time.  It is really just one station, but operating as
multiple stations.  But note that the power levels are split for each
stream, so they’ll need to be judicious in how many streams they create.

·         When you receive <your call> KH7Z RR73, it’s a good QSO and you
can log it.

·         Check “Monitor returns to last used frequency” on the File >
Settings > General tab (I must admit I don’t understand this one, but I’m
going to do it anyway)

·         Expand your bandwidth to up to 4000Hz if you can.  That will let
you get into a portion of the band where you’ll have more chance of finding
an open spot from which to call him, since many folks won’t be looking up
that high – but they will.

·         Note that the timeout setting has been changed to 2 minutes, from
the usual 6.  So you’ll have to focus on working these guys, and not be
watching TV and reading your email while you do!

·         If you’ve sent your signal report (R-24, for example), and they
haven’t heard it, your transmit frequency will automatically be changed by
300Hz each time, even if you have “Hold Tx Freq” checked

·         And for those of you with high power and huge antennas (LOL), they
suggest that there will be a Max db level set so that these stations will be
ignored.  I don’t really think we need to be concerned about this.

 

Good luck to all, and let us know who has been successful.

 

73, Pete, K2PS



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