Q65 mode guide for DXers

[VK5PJ]

Hi
after some discussion on VKspotter and the KST logger I was motivated to see if I could produce a new user guide for the Q65 mode from the WSJT-X suite.  It is not aimed at some one who has never seen WSJT-X before, more for those who have been using FT8 and JT65 before and want to see what Q65 is all about.

I lay no claims on it being a perfect guide but hope it will be accepted in the spirit of sharing.

Guide removed while it gets a major update, see comments in follow up postings below

Should a reader find any mistakes, please get in touch with me via vk8zlx at gmail dot com

There is a Q65 guide for EME operations that was compiled by Lance, W7GJ, this can be found here: W7GJ EME guide

[VK4ADC]

Peter

I encountered Q65 only this week and have decoded a few ZLs and VKs and added 50.275 to the frequency list for Q65 use, but obviously nothing is optimised.  

I will follow your well-drafted suggestions and set up optimised settings for the various modes and maybe I will start 'seeing' the South Americans too.  I worked a few on JT65 a year ago but time has marched on - so now Q65 is the current flavour. Yummm. Not...  Such a well-thought-out Christmas surprise.

The setup should go ok given your detailed instructions - but only if I make sense of each bit. (Maybe some Seasonal grog would help.)

Thanks

Doug

[VK2XAX]

Goodonya Pete for putting this together.

Only this morning I was searching for the optimal settings for Q65 and had read many of the WSJTX list posts and found the EME guide too.

I stopped for a moment to look on AHRDF and low-and-behold there's your post 

Thanks for a timely tutorial

cheers

Tim

[VK4BLK]

Hi
Just what all those struggling with this mode needed, terrific work Peter well done
 Ray vk4blk

[VK5LO]

This is excellent work Peter especially for us that are always working and cannot find the time to research it all. I have not had much luck with any of the weak signal modes here due to ongoing power line noise issues. It would be good if all of us could work out what frequencies we should be using in Australia and recommended timing as there are clashes with other modes on or near the same 50.276 frequency. I have been hearing Local JT65A and Q65A signals and sometimes stations are overlapped or transmitting on top of each other, or using different timing. I would also like to see the 50.320 beacon in Adelaide moved as it causes keying interference here on 313 and also FT4 cannot be used. I have noticed in the past week that FT8 is slow with contacts when there is fading, and often I have not completed contacts. Some of these signals are strong enough for SSB and you could get a contact through in a fraction of the time. On 2M I think that we should be all running FT8 and forget the beacons. Maybe sticking to the recommended IARU frequencies in WSJT for our region would be good, and forget the outdated WIA bandplan.

Cheers Mark VK5LO

[VK5PJ]

Hi Mark (vk5lo)
the trouble with some of the frequencies listed in WSJT-X and its derivatives is that they often clash with well established VHF operations. A good example of this is the FT8 freq on 144 MHz, the 'recommended 144.174 MHz is right plum in the middle of the long standing EME segment used across the world but still they keep listing that as a default recommended frequency.  For those who may not be EME savvy, they advocate for the use of this frequency even though it causes pain to EME operators.. 
Another one that is listed on 144 is 144.120 for all digital modes, I often wonder what drugs were in the room when some of these spots were included.  Love them or hate them, the WIA does gets some things right.

[VK5PJ]

Hello,
looks like the Q65 decoder in the later releases of WSJT-X has issues where it does not auto decode multiple signals in the passband. Others had reported this problem but I had not seen it here in recent times as most signals I had seen had been affected by meteors, well that's what I was telling myself. Tried to decode the test sample files just now and its not working.. stay tuned... will update this as I find more.

[VK2ZIW]

Hi Peter,

Have you tried MSHV ?

[VK5PJ]

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Okay major update to how you should set up your Q65 in WSJT-X, please set your 'Ftol' value to a really LOW value like 20 Hz and you will find the ability to get decodes from multiple signals in one period is magically back to where it should be.

My original document had a recommendation to set Ftol to be a large number (1,000Hz) and that is I now understand the WRONG thing to do..

I have spent the last three days on this and bugged lots of people for ideas and have to give credit to Charlie Suckling G3WDG for engaging with me in an exchange of ideas where he made reference to a narrow Ftol value.

if you want a TEST file to decode, please feel free to download this file: Q65-30A test file

if successful you will see these three decodes:

224100  -7  0.3 1173 :  CQ OC W4TAA EL87  q0
224100 -11  0.2 1520 :  CQ AC4TO EM70      q0
224100 -17  0.2 2510 :  CQ KD5M EM60      q0

If you stretch you Ftol to cover more than one signal you will break the multi signal decodes... its sort of the opposite of what we did for setting up JT65..  you live and learn.

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Hi Peter,

Have you tried MSHV ?

Hey, yes tried MSHV today to see if I could do better with it but sadly it did not seem as sensitive BUT I need to spend more time tweaking to give it a fair test...  will report back what I can achieve.

[VK4ADC]

*****************************************************************************
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Okay major update to how you should set up your Q65 in WSJT-X, please set your 'Ftol' value to a really LOW value like 20 Hz and you will find the ability to get decodes from multiple signals in one period is magically back to where it should be.

My original document had a recommendation to set Ftol to be a large number (1,000Hz) and that is I now understand the WRONG thing to do..

if you want a TEST file to decode, please feel free to download this file: Q65-30A test file

if successful you will see these three decodes:

224100  -7  0.3 1173 :  CQ OC W4TAA EL87  q0
224100 -11  0.2 1520 :  CQ AC4TO EM70      q0
224100 -17  0.2 2510 :  CQ KD5M EM60      q0

If you stretch you Ftol to cover more than one signal you will break the multi signal decodes... its sort of the opposite of what we did for setting up JT65..  you live and learn.

Peter

I grabbed your test file and played with a few settings in Q65 mode.  I had followed your doc and set FTol at 1000, but saw 4 sigs a day or so ago and decoded none of them.  However just a single signal was decoded when received later.  FTol now set back at 20Hz.

I also tried the Decode settings using that file to find that Fast is correct (as per your doc), Normal is ALMOST tolerable, Deep is so slow as to be intolerable. The decodes take so long that you would miss alternate transmission cycles, but it probably would not be obvious as to why.

Thanks for making that file available, much appreciated. Playing with settings while using it is well worthwhile.

Doug