Build a VHF STATION, Russian HAM, BAN FT8, ARRL BOMB 

Thank you and welcome to the channel

Thanks for the feedback Michael We will be addressing most of your comments this coming July episode

SO HOW COME YOU ARE NOT SHARING THEM????

I consider feed line the most vital part of a station......It all starts with the feed-line and antenna

Unless your going to be doing narrow band digital modes on 23cm the radio standalone is fine. Honestly once the radio warms up if your only operating 23cm the fan never comes on because TX power on 23 is only 10 Watts. I have two 9700's and use both of them stock with the exception being I did add some ceramic wool over the reference oscillator RF shielding can for insulation. That alone stabilized the frequency considerably as the fan cycles on and off when in 2/70.

Only if you are doing some EME or such....I have had NO drift issues with either of mine mobil or the QTH

Sure, will petition the courts for the adoption tomorrow. :)

I will refrain from replying to this until the show - so stay tuned to next months show.

I might be off on this (disclaimer) but I’m going to give it a shot. FT8 was designed as a weak signal mode, created to be used to determine propagation conditions. To me, that’s the plus side. It’s surprising how far very weak signals can travel. An indication for potential communication using other modes (I.e. analog). The downside is, I believe there is an automatic mode allowing you to make connections while you’re away from your station. Some would call them QSO’s because, technically, two way communication between stations happened. People will go after WAS or DXCC using FT8 and it can happen in a reasonably short period of time. However… There are those of us who have committed to two way communication between two people, as the definition of a completed QSO. To me, automatic FT8 is like you buying a nice sports car (your radio) then hiring a driver (your computer). You wave goodbye to the driver as he takes your car out for the day while you make quiche. When the driver comes back with your car, you tell the world what a great driver you are. Not really the same as you acquiring the skills to be a great driver and maybe making mistakes you have to fix. Put another way, self driving cars might be a hit with the nerds among us but I’m pretty sure it will be a long, long…long time until we see self driving race cars more popular than human driven race cars. I’m not opposed to digital modes as long as there’s a human at the controls. I’ve been tempted to try QRP EME and meteor scatter. I live under a major east to west flight path for commercial and military aviation so airplane scatter is a possibility. Those would be great situations for digital modes. As someone trying really hard to get Mobile DXCC (currently 75/100), I’ll be d@mned if I give credibility to “FT8 DXCC”. ARRL’s website lists ~38 Hams with Mobile DXCC compared to ~370, for example, who have QRP DXCC…no easy feat! If FT8 interests you, go for it. …just, please, don’t tell me about “your” accomplishments. I know the difference. 73 de WB3CFN