Category: Digital Modes
-
What Is WSJT-X?
WSJT-X is the free software behind FT8 and other weak-signal digital modes. Here is what it does and why it changed ham radio.
-
AREDN Mesh Networking: Building a Ham Radio Internet
AREDN turns cheap off-the-shelf routers into a high-speed data network that runs entirely over ham radio frequencies, no internet required. Here is how the pieces fit together.
-
What Is PSK31? The Original Low-Power Digital Chat Mode
Long before FT8 took over the digital segments of every HF band, PSK31 was already doing keyboard-to-keyboard chat over weak, narrow signals. Released by Peter Martinez, G3PLX, in 1998, it’s still around today, and it’s worth understanding even if you never plan to make it your primary mode. How PSK31 actually works PSK31 uses phase-shift…
-
Setting Up WSJT-X, GridTracker, HRD, and TQSL: A Digital Station That Logs Itself
How to install WSJT-X, Ham Radio Deluxe, GridTracker, and TQSL, and get them syncing so every FT8 contact logs itself and uploads to LoTW, QRZ, and PSK Reporter automatically.
-
What Is RTTY, and Is It Still Worth Learning?
RTTY, radioteletype, predates every other digital mode covered on this site by decades. It was running over HF long before packet radio, PSK31, or FT8 existed, and it’s still alive today mostly because of one thing: contesting. Mechanical roots, digital survival RTTY traces back to actual mechanical teletype machines, using a 5-bit Baudot code to…
-
FreeDV: Open-Source Digital Voice for HF
Every digital voice mode covered elsewhere on this site, D-STAR, DMR, System Fusion, lives on VHF and UHF. FreeDV fills a different gap entirely: open-source digital voice on HF, where none of those other modes operate at all. Open source, top to bottom Unlike D-STAR’s proprietary AMBE codec or DMR’s commercial ETSI roots, FreeDV is…
-
Getting on FT8 with the Yaesu FTX-1 Optima (and the Field Head Alone)
Whether it’s docked to the SPA-1 amp or running solo on battery power, here’s how to get the FTX-1 talking to WSJT-X and onto FT8.