I got my X6100 two weeks ago.? I live in Maryland.? My first SSB contact with the new rig was from my QTH using a dipole in the attic was a ham in Texas.? He said my signal was 58 and told me my audio sounded good.?
I got FT8 working without any trouble once I saw the posting in this group about the USB cable issue.? Using a standard USB C male to USB C male cable between my laptop and X6100 didn't work - I tried a couple of different ones.? Then I researched this group and saw that I? needed to use the Xiegu supplied cable and put a USB A to USB C adapter on the end of it to connect to my laptop - that worked? Can anyone explain why??
I took the X6100 to a local park and run off an external battery at 10 watts on 20 meters. My first FT8 connection was with a ham in Perth, Australia.? I was -16dB there.? Looking at PSKreporter, I had hits all over the South Pacific, USA, and Europe.? I was using a quarter-wave vertical a foot about the ground with two quarter-wave radials above the ground.? I haven't tried CW on the air yet.??
I am mostly disappointed with the SWR function.? It makes me scratch my head why they would even turn on the feature giving it's configuration!? As elsewhere reported in this group, it puts out 5 watts while it's measuring the SWR.? Mine sweeps from 6.9 MHz to 7.9 MHz.? I can't change the start or stop frequencies, nor the wattage output.? This is really, really a bad thing.
I did the battery four-cycle routine and the battery keeps the radio on in the receive mode for around 2-3 hours. However, I found a potential bug.? I turned off the charger function in the menu while I was running on an external battery in the park.? When I came home something weird happened.? I turned the radio on using the internal battery and it showed no charge and shutdown in 30 seconds. It was fully charged when I left for the park. ? I will have to see if I can duplicate that behavior.? It's like the internal battery was draining while the external battery was connected.?? Hopefully, that was a fluke or caused by something I inadvertently did wrong.
I would like for the Bluetooth to work with my earbuds.? The radio connects with them, but no audio comes out.? That's not a big deal, but it would be nice if it worked.?
All in all, the radio is usable and impressive in some ways.? After my experience with it and all the issue reported in this group, I concluded the X in X6100 must mean experimental.? Fingers crossed Xiegu will debug and flesh out the software/firmware and get everything working properly.??
I haven't installed the latest Xiegu download yet.? I think I read here that it will cause the CAT to quite working - is that true??
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Mike NN3I
