In Chapter 2 we ended up with our computer, a time sync program, an MFJ 1204 interface, and an installed copy of WSJT-X.  Now that we have all of that in one place, what do we do with it?

This is a step-by-step guide to how I set up the most simple, yet effective, digital station I could muster.  I tried a lot of different things in the process, but this is what I ended up with.  There are more elaborate and attractive ways of going digital, but in the interest of ease and lower frustration levels, I opted in the end for simple, simple, simple.  Once you get your digital station going, you can always add more features if you wish.  The setup described below does not include a rig-control function.  Rig control is a convenience you can add later if you wish.

STEP ONE: Let's do the hardware connection between the computer and the radio.

Get out the MFJ 1204 (or whatever interface you've selected) and connect the interface to the computer with the supplied USB cable.  Connect the interface to your radio with the supplied data cable.  This will usually go into some sort of data port on the back, though sometimes it will actually replace the mic cable.  This is when you'll use your radio manual as a guide on how to make the connection.  Chances are the data cable from MFJ will fit only one hole on your radio, so that will limit the opportunities to do it wrong.

Now that the interface is cabled between the radio and the computer, set the two knobs (receive and transmit) on the front of the interface to their halfway points.  We will fine tune these later, but for now, halfway is about right.

STEP TWO: Open WSJT-X on your computer.  If you get warnings about "cannot connect to LoTW" or "Must use version 2.0" just X out those, and ignore them for now.

In the top left-hand corner, click File > Settings > General tab.  You'll get a window much like the one shown below.

For the time being, change "Station Details" to match your station info, and set everything else to the settings shown here. These are not the only settings that work, but these settings do work. You can make changes later once you figure out what you're doing and you develop preferences.

STEP THREE: Click the "Radio" tab at the top, and in the dropdown box for 'Rig" choose "None".  The rest of the settings in the window will be grayed out, so you can ignore them.

STEP FOUR: Click the "Audio" tab at the top.  This is where we are going to tell our software where to listen for a signal from the interface, and how to pick a path for sending our transmission to the interface.   Your settings will not look exactly like mine, but that's okay.  In the Input dropdown and the Output dropdown, choose a USB device for each.  This tells the software to look for the incoming signals in the interface's USB cable, and the send your transmitted signal to the interface by the same path.   If you have more than one USB device available, you may have to monkey about with the USB devices a bit.   In the Save Directory and AzEI directory fields, choose the default values.

STEP FIVE: You can skip the Tx Macros tab. Click the Reporting tab at the top of the window.  Add your call sign to the "Op Call" field, and the rest of the settings are personal preferences.  Just getting started you probably won't have any preferences, so these are good options for your maiden voyage into FT-8.  Again, you can change these options later.

STEP SIX: The next tab, Frequencies, needs no changes on your end, BUT this is an important section to look at.  This tells you what frequency you'll operate on when doing FT-8 or other digital modes that WSJT-X can handle.  Have a look at the chart below:

This chart gives you perhaps the most important bit of info you'll need to get started doing FT-8, and that is "What frequency do I use?". For this article, we'll talk about only 20M.  Looking at the chart above, you can see the whole world (i.e., all IARU regions) uses frequency 14.074 when doing FT-8.  As odd as that may seem after doing traditional amateur radio, just accept that, for our purposes,  all FT-8 traffic in the world on 20M takes place on 14.074 MHz. So, in the daytime, let's use 20M for now (14.074), and at night let's use 3.573 (80M).   For the purposes of this article, we'll stay with 20M for most of it.

The over-simplified reason we all set our radios to one frequency is that the FT-8 transmission is a very, very narrow slice of bandwidth.  Narrow as in tiny-width.  Thousands of transmissions can take place simultaneously in and near that one spot, 14.074.     The WSJT-X software will pick exact frequencies as we operate, but for starters, just put it on 14.074.

You can ignore the tabs named Colors and Advanced for now.  Later you will want to take a look at the Colors tab to see what the various color stripes mean in the WSJT-X software display.

STEP SEVEN: Turn your radio's power output down to about 30 or 40 watts.  Yes, you read that right.  Turn it down.  In FT-8, more output is not better.  Remember in Step 6 we talked about how FT-8 transmits in a really, really narrow slice of bandwidth?  Because of that, 30 watts is all the "push" you need to go to the other side of the planet.  More wattage will probably distort your signal, and 100 watts will be unreadable.  TURN IT DOWN.

Okay, we've now connected our computer to our radio and done the initial setup of our WSJT-X software.   In Chapter 4, we'll talk about actually using this stuff and making it work.  For the time being, resist the urge to download and install the tons of other free digital software.  Let's get this one simple setup running first, and then you can branch out, add additional conveniences, and try our other modes.

73, Allen AG5ND