Tyrone . . .
On Sun, 18 Dec 2022 16:49:08 +0000 (UTC), "Tyrone J.Burns Sr. via groups.io"
<tyke1954@...> wrote:
The software does not need to be free (he has the funds), but the most user friendly one would be nice...no sense buying different softwares' to find one he will like!!
Did you get some good recommendations on which programs to use? I was looking
for something else in my old email and saw this again.
All of the digital programs are not intuitive to set up, in my opinion. An
almost all-in-one program would be HRD (Ham Radio Deluxe). It does not have FT-8
built in but works with WSJT-X (the most popular flavor of FT-8). I believe it
logs automatically for you when running WSJT-X.
There's even a version called WSJT-Z that can be set up to automatically make
and receive calls on a given band. I feel that's cheating, though. FT-8 is good
to see how propagation is doing, and it wasn't all that difficult to set up. A
friend in our club helped me get it working.
HRD has RTTY built in. I haven't got that working yet. HRD has some useful
tools, too, including one of the better loggers.
For logging, even though I have HRD, I use THE N3FJP logger. You pay once and
get free upgrades for life. It works well with things like a club field day
event, making it easy to combine logs for the day for the contest. For $10 more,
you get ALL of N3FJP's logging programs, many of which are for logging special
contests. If he creates a new log program, if you purchased the entire suite,
you get anything new he develops. I purchased that and though I haven't used the
other loggers he developed yet, they're there if I get involved in one of those
contests. The total is $59.95 for all of them, I believe, $10 less for just the
main one that's very popular.
I would suggest your friend join a local club. There will be members there who
(hopefully) will want to help him set up FT-8, which gives you a lot of easy
QSOs. Note: FT-8 is time sensitive in that if you don't have it synchronized to
within a second or less, others won't be able to work you. The transmission and
receive time slots have to be "on-time" so that the computers can talk with each
other through the radio. Some other digital mode software will no doubt require
synchronization, too.
You would use a time synching program to get the timing differences with others
doing the same thing. Some may be automatic. I use a manual one. Once I was
having difficulty in making ANY contact using FT-8. I worked for over half an
hour before finally making a call. Then I still wasn't synching up with others
until I synched the time and it was fine then. This time synching sounds like
it's something difficult to do but it's quite easy. A program has to be
installed and you just have to open the program and click a button.
FT-8 is the only program I use for digital modes. I use it on my Icom 7300 and
my Icom 705 (a QRP radio).
Donald KX8K
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Some ham radio groups you may be interested in:
/g/ICOM /g/Ham-Antennas/g/HamRadioHelp /g/Baofeng/g/CHIRP 
jim