Tonight at about 0330UTC I just had a good round table QSO with John VE5MU and Andy K3UK.
We were on the Digitalradio calling frequency 7034.0kHz USB with center audio at 1500Hz. Center frequency 7035.5 kHz. We started on Olivia 500/16 at 100% copy. Considering the extremely weak signals between Andy and I, and my local noise level, that was amazingly good. I could barely see Andy's signal on the waterfall. Since all three of us seemed prone to be rather verbose keyboarders, we wanted to increase typing speed, so we switched to Olivia 500/8. It worked fine also, much faster, but 95% print on the weak sigs due to occasional dropouts during local static crashes. After Andy signed off, John and I continued the QSO, switching to Olivia 2000/64. We found it was an excellent flavor, and we could reduce our power level down to 5 Watts with 100% copy. Good fast typing speed noise immunity. At one point, John said a strong PSK31 station tuned up and called CQ in the middle of my Olivia signal, but he could still copy 100%. I look forward to trying some more of the 2kHz Olivia modes, and I especially want to try the 128 tone flavor. Perhaps it could be a good companion to the ALE 141A modes when the going gets rough. Bonnie KQ6XA
