A short overview on 2018 digital modes as practiced by
DJ9ZLAround the year 2000 hamradio offered some 6 to 8 different digital communication modes, CW included. Today there are more than 100 digital modes and submodes available for shortwave radio communication. Some modes are very fast on information transfer with almost no real information exchanged ("contest style"). Others are very robust against all kinds of interference and distortion and therefore very well suited for long, "chat style" QSO's even under difficult conditions. The typing skill and speed of the operator often determines the best mode or submode to use for enjoyable QSO's.
At the moment FT8 is by far the dominant mode used worldwide on the HF bands: It's semi-automatic and pretty fast (90 sec for a complete QSO), but it transfers almost no information except callsign and report (in dB). A new mode recently under development is JS8Call which combines the robustness of FT8 with a "keyboard-to-keyboard" interface well suited for chat-style qso's. SIM_PSK (SIM31) too provides a nice chat mode besides it's semi-automatic information exchange.
For true contesters an even quicker "communications"-mode FT4 is currently offered by K1JT (see latest versions of WSJT-X). And using the new "fast" or "turbo" modes of JS8Call makes ragchewing on the shortwave bands a real pleasure !!!
A short overview on 2018 digital modes as practiced by
DJ9ZL
Band plan including digital modes by
Software
download links (6/2020)In order to facilitate the startup of the various programs for digital mode operations and logging I use this simple
Batch file to start digital modes
A link to this batch file (cmd window) with a suitable icon may by configured as follows: Font, Layout and Colors.
Download all samples
