[VHFcontesting] Digital modes and Aurora

[jon jones]

That is a great question, Zack and a good answer by Jay. We have not had much aurora here in Kansas the last couple of years, so I have not tried FT8 yet on Aurora. I see FT8 seems to work for evening TEP on 6 Meters from the Caribbean to South America. Evening TEP has some doppler shift and signal spread. But I agree the doppler shift and spreading on 50 MHz Aurora, and definitely the higher bands would likely not work for FT8. CW is still the best mode for Aurora on 2 Meters and up.

 -- Jon N0JK


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Zack, I haven't yet found a WSJT mode that could handle AU well (actually,
at all..).  Possibly the NEW (...another one ??) Q65 mode could work on 6M
since it's supposed to be relatively immune to doppler, but I suspect the
signal distortion would mess that mode up, also.

I doubt there is anything out there better than CW for AU on 2M and above,
although we all know that SSB will do the job most of time on 6 if the
operator is aware of what's going on and changes procedure a bit.

-W9RM

Keith J Morehouse
Managing Partner
Calmesa Partners G.P.
Olathe, CO


On Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 6:48 AM Zack Widup <w9sz.zack at gmail.com> wrote:

> Here is a question I have had, lacking experience in this, How does AU
> affect digital QSO's? I have worked LOTS of AU with CW. It has spread CW
> signals out over as much as a kHz and made SSB unintelligible. It just
> seems to me that, under those conditions, a digital mode wouldn't work over
> AU.
>
> 73, Zack W9SZ