Recently I have picked up the addiction to use JT65HF. I had been hearing the “flute” play on the digital bands for some time now and finally figured out it was JT65HF… Like most hams I was curious and had to give it a try… The software is freely available here:
On that page I see 771 downloads and from that I can guess there might be 50 to 75% of those downloads that are actually using the software. Ok that means there are 380 to 578 JT65HF users out there? That may be too simplistic as some may have gotten the software somewhere else but that is not very many users out of a huge (in the million number) number of operators on the Ham bands… That said at first there is plenty of contacts to be made… see my log for the past few weeks…
My recent contacts with a lot of JT65 activity
Now if you get into the JT65HF you will for sure want to get the two add ons JTAlerts and JTMacros from these pages…
Add-ons for the JT65HF… really help out
Next you probably want to get some help with setup and operations, I sure did… as I struggled at first to see how to make a contact and get it logged…
Here are some help spots..
The last link even links to some Youtube videos and other things that really helped out in getting my first contact in the log… the JTAlert works well with my HRDlog book but there are some quirks in things that you need to go back and check the set up on… like how it defaults on the LoTW and eQSL updates and a few other things that you will notice once you make the first contact and send it over to the logbook…
Now that you have the basics you can get after the contacts… having been a PSK31 enthusiast , because I could “ragchew” or make multiple contacts with out much other input, I got after the JT65… as you can tell in my log above I did pretty well for the first week. I am not backed off some and last night could not get any contacts in the log, but that was probably due to me being in the wrong place at the wrong time,etc.… I could have made some contacts on 40meter as it was pretty active but really wanted more on 30 meter, then it occurred to me… WHY?
I always seem to get into some activity and give it a lot of effort and with JT65 I think my focus will be to get WAS and what ever else I can on the “new WARC” bands (new to me after 30 years)… so I focus on 30, 17, 12, etc.… for most of my “new mode – new focus”… ok all that said, yesterday I had a little time to kill before picking up the wife for lunch so I stopped by to talk to another Ham that does some digital contacts and expressed I had gotten into JT65… His comment was yes he tried it but it didn’t fit with his need for some “real dialog” in his contacts. I had to agree that in JT65HF it the contacts are semi automatic… you click buttons to either call CQ or answer a CQ… you exchange simple reports of signal readability…. then you close with a 73 or short macro expression… now all this will take a minimum of 3 to 5 minutes to accomplish and what have you really done? You didn’t ask about WX, rigs, power, antenna, etc.… all the things we normally do , even in macros, with the other modes… Yes JT65HF is for contacts in extreme weak signal conditions but it is excruciatingly slow for a very limited amount of info passed… I came back to him with a comment that it was “like a very very slow motion contest”….
I don’t think I will give it up any time soon but it does rattle around in my mind that “what is the real purpose” “ what are we actually doing” out side filling in the log with contacts to places we normally might not be able to contact and making all those certificates a bit easier… ? Suffice to say I am not a big certificate hunter, in fact I have none… I do now have confirmed contacts and cards from all 50 states on 160meter SSB… but I accomplished that in 1986 at a different location… Thanks to the ham son of a ham – K4SO – son of N3ADT, I now have a card and scanned section from his Dad’s log that shows I made the contact.
All that said… what is the real purpose and draw of the JT65HF? There is a Google forum group for it as well that you can visit and track… JT65 at Google. Recently there has been a big discussion about quality of soundcards… I need to find some way to knock out power line interference that runs S7 to S20 at times so I can hear other things as well… but that is for another post…
WD0AJG