Feb 112018
 

At the moment, I’m hearing a whole bunch of traffic around 14.074 MHz in a digital mode that I don’t recognize. I haven’t been able to get intelligible text out of fldigi from this yet. From the amount of traffic, I wonder if this might be some sort of contest activity. Can anybody provide a hint about what this mode is?

It sounds like some sort of multi-tone frequency shift keying, with around 8 tones spaced in a bandwidth of around 50-80 Hz. It sounds somewhat musical as the different stations drop in and out, like weird etherial chords.

UPDATE: I’ve been told that this mode is FT8, which can be sent/received with the WSJT-X software. I’ll download that and give it a try.

Unknown Mode near 14.074 MHz (fldigi waterfall display)

Unknown Mode near 14.074 MHz (fldigi waterfall display)

Unknown Mode near 14.074 MHz (baudline spectrogram)

Unknown Mode near 14.074 MHz (baudline spectrogram)

Here is a 30 second audio recording of this traffic:

And here’s a 5 minute recording:

  One Response to “What’s This HF Digital Mode? (Spoiler: It’s FT8)”

  1. Sounds like “FT8”. All the rage now (Mid 2018)
    https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjtx.html