JT9-fest!

Yesterday morning, I decided to tune in to 14.078MHz - the JT9 portion of the 20m band that has, since the advent of the mindless FT-8, become almost dead.

Imagine my surprise to find this waterfall:

JT9 is back!

The action was all part of a very worthwhile effort by the Russian Digital Radio Club to promote 48 hours of JT9 activity.  I'm not a contester, but I do applaud the 'most kilometres' scoring system used.

I spent quite a lot of the time I had free on Saturday working long-haul DX into Asiatic and Pacific regions of Russia, which gives the mind a wonderful trip of imagination to far-distant lands.

JT9's slowness is, to me, its strength.  Apart from yielding much better DX than FT-8, it gives you time to look operators up on QRZ.com, think about propagation effects between stations, and allows you to 'feel' the propagation changing as the planet rotates.  It's a mix of experiences that the manic FT-8 just doesn't give you.

I hope we see much more JT9 on the bands once more - it's a great mode.  Heck, I will even become a contester in the next digi-event! For the moment, I've joined the RDRC as member  number 1084.