Update September 20: I arrived in Swaziland on Sunday 15th September at noon. I had 100kg checked in luggage in 4 packs. The customs cleared with no issue, but took about an hour. I picked up the hire car and drove 90 km to Mbabane. I set the antenna on the following day on Monday. Unfortunately, the noise level is S8-S9+ on all bands. The noise is coming from the power line therefor nothing to do much to eliminate it. I can’t hear any signal on CW. Only the FT8 the usable mode. Tuesday, next week I will move to another, hopefully less noisy location and I do hope I will be able to work on CW.

I received many feedback and complains about the FT8 F/H operation. My signal report and RR 73 confirmation are not sent in F/H mode. I checked everything many times and I wasted lots of precious time for troubleshooting. The first two days i used WSJT-X v2.1 on Win10Pro 64bit. Second day I changed to the 2.0 on the same laptop. Yesterday I used my backup laptop with Win7Pro 32 bit. Also tried both 2.1 and 2.0 WSJT-X in this platform.

The result is the same. It does not send the report and RR 73 confirmation in F/H mode. In the normal mode it works as expected. At least I did not get complains. This morning I received emails informing me that the 3DA prefix non-standard in WSJT-X term and will not work in F/H mode. (Thank you for the help in troubleshooting to Jim AB3CV, Bill G4WJS, George HA5UK and Vatsa VU2AE).

However the strong S9+ noise also may resulting broken decoding and many cases I can’t see If the station sent me report. This is why I need to send report many times to be able to complete the QSO.

All these, the noise level and issue with WSJT-X make the HAM community very much disappointed and frustrated like me too.

73’ Pista, HA5AO

Update June 27: Pista HA5AO reports that he will arrive in Swaziland on 15th September and plans to stay till 1st October. His license for the 3DA0AO call sign was issued last year. The flight and room at Mountain Inn Resort at Mbabane is booked. His plan to start to set up antenna and station on 16th and can be expected on the air by the evening. The station set up contains the Elecraft K3S and KPA500 and feeding vertical antenna. Pista will operate on the 80-10m bands mainly on CW and FT8 on the higher bands. Pista plans to be active on 21/22 September in the All Africa DX Contest as Single Op Single Transmitter CW All Band High power entry.

After the Swaziland operation Pista HA5AO will arrive in Lesotho on 1st October and plans to stay till 19th October. He will use again the 7P8AO call sign. Flight and room at Molengoane Lodge is also booked. Due to other commitments the operation from Lesotho will take place in his free time mainly on CW and FT8 on the higher bands.

QSL policy, Logsearch and OQRS is available at https://www.ha5ao.com

Update Mar,27: Dates to be announced, but look for Pista, HA5AO to return to eSwatini (Swaziland) during the second half of September 2019. Activity as 3DA0AO for 2 weeks; 80-10m CW, RTTY & FT8.

Update Sep,18 2018: Due to circumstances beyond his control Pista HA5AO will return to Hungary sooner than planned. He will leave his equipment in the country and return at a future date. Unfortunately, he is not able to get on the air or participate in his planned humanitarian projects. Donors to his project will receive a refund.

Update Sep,16 2018: Pista HA5AO reports that his planned operation from the Kingdom of eSwatini (Swaziland) is delayed. He and his equipment are in the country but he was unable to install the antenna. While disappointed, he expects to be on the air by the end of next week (Sept 21st).

Pista HA5AO will arrive eSwatini (Swaziland) on 14 September, late afternoon. He plans to operate during his free time between 16 – 28 September from the Mountain Inn Resort at Mbabane. He received the 3DA0AO license and a LotW certificate. Pista will operate 80–10 meters using a Hustler 6 BTV vertical antenna with 17 and 12 meter add-on elements, CW, RTTY and FT8. He is bringing an Elecraft K3 with the KPA 500 amplifier. Logsearch will be available on HA5AO.com. His plans include testing a new feature of the PDXG QSL Management Platform, the uploading of QSOs in real time. While in-country he will travel to rural areas visiting villages, schools and orphanages to deliver school supplies to orphaned children. He is interested in making a long term donation agreement to pay school fees for several orphaned children. Pista is paying all expenses from personal funds. However he would appreciate donations through his website. Any donations received will be used only for humanitarian purposes. You may see Pista’s previous humanitarian projects at HA5AO.com