#WSPR Svalbard 10m

 

First new one since 2022. I was surprised I didn't have Svalbard in the log with WSPR. See my efforts here: https://pe4bas.blogspot.com/p/wspr-dxcc.html

#60m Chad and Easter Isl. worked

 

I was up early this morning due to a annoying great tit that knows CW and in continue signing "A" "A". If you think that's funny well....this birds always wakes me up too early except when I need to get up early. Anyway, I decided to see if anything happened on 60m. I knew two DXCC I didn't have on 60m were active there the last few days. And indeed, with very loud signals they were. TT8XX took me only 2 calls before he came back to me. Then I noticed a large pile-up from 5353-5356KHz CW. A quick look at the DX cluster revealed that Easter Isl. 3G0YA was calling. And yes, I received him very well. A few calls later in the pile-up and he responded. 2 new 60m band DXCC in the log.

How to make emoijis in VarAC

 I was in a QSO with Robert K9ROB from Fairbanks Alaska today...

As you can see it was quite interesting. I saw Robert spotted me a couple of times before but I never actually saw his signal at my QTH till today. His callsign is also not usual for an Alaskan station. But these days callsigns in the US are not area restricted anymore.

Anyway, Robert asked me how I did get the emoji pictures into my "info" and "welcome" text.

An example, this is what you see when connecting me:

 

Hello ✌, welcome @ my 🏡 station

Which actually means "Hello, peace to you, welcome at my home station. There are also other emojis like the one for antenna and radio. If I send my info you see something like this:

📻 IC-7300

📡 Square multiband halo @16mH

To get this working into VarAC you need to modify the VarAC.ini file which can be found in the VarAC directory on your computer drive. You open this file with notepad and then save it as an UTF-16 LE file. See the example here:

Your file is now ready to fit in emojis.

You can both edit the ini file as the normal "canned messages" in VarAC.

How to get those emojis?

That's easy. Press the "windows button on your keyboard + . (point)". You will get something like this:

This one is in my native language dutch, you get one in your own language. The nice thing is that you type for example radio in your text and you will get the "radio" emoji 📻. You click with the mouse or give enter on it and it will appear instead of the text. This way you can make what you want....

Examples: 

Radio 📻

Antenna 📡

Peace ✌

Kiss 💋

Sun ☀

Goodbye 🖐

OK 👌 (or perfect)

It to your imagination how and what to use for VarAC.... have fun!