ISCAT vs. JT6M and WSJT-X

I have been playing with the new WSJT-X program. The interface is absolutely fantastic. The use of colours makes it very easy to use. It requires much less concentration.

It looks and feels much like the JT65-HF interface, but it is still 100% the WSJT as we know it from the popular versions 7 and 9.

WSJT-X will hopefully soon include: JT4, ISCAT and FSK441 modes in the program suite.

It sure would be great if we could revive the local 6m early morning digital activity we had a while back.  We should be comparing JT6M and SCAT  with each other during typical weak signal scatter work, possibly with enhancements due to aircraft scatter / meteor reflections.

We know that FSK441 reigns champion during the very short Meteor Scatter pings, but that is not really weak signal stuff. Generally the reflections are fairly strong, but the reflection very short in duration in the order of a few milliseconds.

Hal ZS6WB and I played with ISCAT this morning and it seems as if ISCAT is suitable for aircraft scatter work.

Hal’s antenna was pointing south west and my antenna was beaming west (at 90 degrees to the left). The images below show that decodes are possible from strong short reflection as well as the typical longer reflections we see from aircraft.

The best (weakest) decode was at -20 dB:

073200   0 -20 28.2  194   0    ZS6A ZS6WB KG44               16  4 10  2.2