50 years ago the great hams of Salt Lake City helped me to get my ticket, build/checkout an HW-101 100 watt radio, and get on the air with CW at 13WPM and SSB. After about 5 years on the air, I sold all my gear and left amateur radio behind (but kept the ticket renewed for sure).
TODAY! First "QSO" in 45 years. Since my CW copy is slow with frequent missed characters, I used WSJT-X in FT8 with my newly built QRP-Labs QMX rig on 20m for my first contact attempts.
I strung up a 20m EFHW about 5 feet off the ground, and checked the SWR. Not great - between 1:2 and 1:3 but what the hey, we'll see what happens.
I sent a CQ QRP and checked fskreporter.?I was getting out!, and was even more surprised when someone actually responded with my call. WSJT-X noticed the reply and auto-sequenced the QSO - Pretty cool.
240713_135645 14.074 Tx FT8 0 0.0 1604 CQ QRP WB0ZJJ EL96
240713_135700 14.074 Rx FT8 -18 0.1 1603 WB0ZJJ WA6GXQ FM06
240713_135715 14.074 Tx FT8 0 0.0 1604 WA6GXQ WB0ZJJ -18
240713_135730 14.074 Rx FT8 -18 0.1 1603 WB0ZJJ WA6GXQ R-11
240713_135745 14.074 Tx FT8 0 0.0 1604 WA6GXQ WB0ZJJ RRR
240713_135800 14.074 Rx FT8 -14 0.3 1603 WB0ZJJ WA6GXQ 73
I entered the QSO into??as my first logbook entry and hope to see it confirmed.
WB0ZJJ-Alan