52 Week Ham Radio Challenge 2026 - Week 2: Make a QSO in a mode you are unfamiliar with!

Challenge for 2026-01-05 - 2026-01-11

Category: 📻 - Difficulty: 🟠

Make a QSO in a mode you are unfamiliar with!

Try and find an uncommon digital mode or maybe make a CW-QSO on 2 m? Use your imagination and get on the air!

Toots mentioning this challenge

DateUserUser ScoreStatusToot Summary & Link
January 05, 2026 19:37 UTCDK1BOU@mastodon.radio1Working on it...@hamchallenge working on HC02. Finally got VARA HF and VARAC running with WINE on Linux and recived some stations on 20m. But no QSO yet.
January 07, 2026 12:36 UTCg7kse@mastodon.radio2Success!@hamchallenge 2 different modes for HC02S FreeDV on 60m so a weird band for me as well. The other being a 'successful' AX25 HF connection with 3 nodes. FreeDV was especially odd. Barely any signal and clear audio that went a bit choppy at times. Packet will need a bit more effort to get it right. Once I get a better handle on it all it should be more fun
January 07, 2026 17:09 UTCDK1BOU@mastodon.radio1Success!@hamchallenge HC02S. Had a VARA QSO with IU7LVA (thank you very much). We did not properly disconnect, though. VARAC with WINE crashed. That is what I call foreshadowing ;)
January 26, 2026 16:37 UTCDJ3CE@social.darc.de2Success!#hamchallenge no 2 was a good motivation to use RTTY, which so far I had only been decoding. Except for the one time I *thought* I would be fast enough to use the memos of an Icom rig to have sth like a RTTY-QSO (dr op pse excuse my unpolitely short answers…). Now I made a sked for a 2m RTTY QSO, using fldigi, answering properly. Faszinating mode, but it feels a bit weird not being able to hear the received content. We later switched to BPSK, which turned out to be more reliable :). HC02S @hamchallenge
February 08, 2026 13:27 UTCdavekuk@mastodon.radio3Success!@hamchallenge @hamchallenge HC02S. Completed Made a contact on HF 20 meters with W7KMJ using VARAC. Interesting mode. Used windows for the easy install. (Linux box gave me missing Font crashes)

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