Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio The other day day I managed my first DX contact using a new mode, FT8. It wasn't very far away, all of 2600 km or so, but it evoked memories of my first ever on-air DX contact nearly a decade ago. I should say thank you to YD3YOG for my 15m contact, fitting because my first ever was also on 15m as I recall. Unfortunately I never did log my first. Recently a friend asked me how the two compared. 15m and logging aside, there's a lot of similarities, even though I'm a more experienced operator today when compared to when I made my first ever contact. The preparation and the building anticipation is what made the contact all the sweeter. A while ago I managed to connect the audio of my radio to a computer. This is pretty much the first step in starting to use digital modes. Essentially many common digital modes use an SSB transmission to generate and receive audio that in turn contains digitally encoded information. There are hundreds of modes like this, from PSK31 to RTTY, WSPR