Team, Good evening! There's a club station just down the street from me (~1.2mi) with several towers and is operated remotely operated by several hams. Tonight I jumped on 6m (FT8). Unfortunately, I couldn't do much operating based on the attached coming from that station. Being relatively new to FT8, is this a result of a high power, close range, or poor ALC / radio config. And is there anything I can do to reduce the impact? Thanks.
I feel your pain but it is Time to change frequency and ir add filters and attenuators. What kind of rig are you running? With the right filters you should be able to work on the same band, big QRO contest stations do it all the time. I have antennas separated by 400 to 1,500 feet and I can monitor different frequencies are modes on the same band no problem/ with no special filters.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm running an IC-7300 with a simple trapped dipole in the attic. Ref your update: I'll shop around and see what I can find. I've hand no problems on the lower frequencies with hams in the area. I've worked several within a mile or two no problem. It seems to be a 6m issue so far. Although, I don't think I've been operating when they've swung that boom around and cranked up the amp during a contest.
Make sure your operating the 7300 as a SDR Radio correctly. SDR open as a barn door so don't use preamps and use attenuators on 40 and lower frequencies and you will find it helps tremendously.
How strong is that main signal at ~1200 registering? My first knee jerk inclination is that they are the ones throwing out the garbage.
The main signal was +5db around 882 (JTDX decoded ALL of those emissions.. which I have a screenshot of as well).
Is that what you are seeing while on a certain frequency? Or is that what you are seeing through out the entire 6 meter band? If it is limited to a certain frequency then I would say it's probably due to the close proximity. If it is across the entire 6 meter band then there is a problem. Maybe they're using a KW for FT8 transmissions... WQ4G
That's the entire FT8 portion of 50.313 (about 3khz). Using the attenuator doesn't help much. (I'm not sure what happened to the original image. I can't seem to link another one now either)
