Waiting for family, working the bands

Another round of waiting for teenagers to return from some crazy activities somewhere led to a brief opportunity to work 17m from the shore this afternoon.  Weather continues to be amazingly warm and sunny for the time of year, but with a moderate easterly wind that brought out the windsurfers.

I wondered if I could get JTDX to work on the Raspberry Pi 4B, so downloaded it using the mobile wi-fi.  Whilst the version listed for Linux wouldn't work, the version for the Pi 3 did.  

One thing to note if you download JTDX for the Pi is that, once installed, you must reboot to see the program listed under 'Sound and Video'.

 JTDX, up and running on the Pi 4 in the car.

From then on, it was easy going!  No more WSJT-X, which is far less capable than JTDX.  

Very happy to be the only station being heard on 17m WSPR by VU3KAZ (1W out), despite the simplicity of my /P station.  Of course, with the seawater, the effective signal is known to 'grow' to something between 10 and 25W typically. 

Just a shame K2IL started sending FT4 for quite a while, straight on top of ongoing WSPR transmissions.  In fairness, after sending him a polite e-mail, he moved a good distance down in frequency within a minute or two.

Sun, wind and kite surfers (and a weirdo doing something with a big antenna!)

I managed 19 FT8 QSOs using 6-8W, spanning the western US to Brazil and Indonesia.  Again, very pleasing results with such low power.

6-8W FT8 coverage at 18MHz from the beach.