Hi All,
The WSJT modes have been an exciting and revolutionary addition to our
amateur radio armamentarium. They have allowed us to make contacts that
would be impossible without them.
An unfortunate side effect of their use in some contests (e.g. the ARRL
January, June, and September VHF Contests) is that it has become
difficult to pull folks away from FT8 on one band, particularly on 50
MHz, to make digital or analog contacts on other bands.
Because of the above, a new WSJT-X Message System is under development.
The system is specially designed for VHF/UHF/SHF applications, but is
now also suitable for general use. It is based on a messaging algorithm
proposed by W4ZST in 2021 for the NA VHF Contest to invite your QSO
partner to QSY to another QRG or mode.
A first prototype is ready for testing now in the latest release of
wjst-x_improved, and if the system proves successful, it will likely be
introduced in plain WSJT-X with a future Release Candidate 8.
With this new system, generating these request messages requires just a
few mouse clicks and no typing. When WSJT-X-improved receives such a
request message it generates a pop-up indicating the requested frequency
and mode and gives the recipient the opportunity to reply "yes" or "no"
to the request. When the requestor's instance of WSJT-X-improved
receives an affirmative or negative reply it generates a pop-up
indicating that response.
A Windows installer and a pdf file describing how to use the messaging
system are available on SourceForge at
https://sourceforge.net/projects/wsjt-x-improved/files/WSJT-X_v2.7.1/Test%20versions%20%28WSJT-X%20Message%20System%29/
as is a png image file that shows at a single glance how everything works.
wsjt-x_improved is an enhanced version of the excellent WSJT-X software
by Joe Taylor K1JT, Steve Franke K9AN, Bill Somerville G4WJS, Uwe Risse
DG2YCB, and others. Uwe is the project leader for wsjt-x_improved as
well as being one of the members of the core WSJT Development group.
If you try this new version of wsjt-X_improved and have questions
regarding the use of the messaging system, feel free to email me for
help. If you have questions or comments that you feel would be of
interest to / helpful to other users, please consider posting them to
either the wsjt-x-improved-community mailing list or the WSJT GROUP
forum. You can sign up for the former at:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/wsjt-x-improved/lists/wsjt-x-improved-community
and for the latter at:
https://groups.io/g/wsjtgroup
Thanks to Dick Frey W2AAU and the N.E.W.S. Group club members, whose
discussions spurred the development of this messaging system!
73,
Roger Rehr
W3SZ
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