FT-8 on X6100 and Apple Mac

By Jabik Postmus PA5BUK

How to setup FT-8 on an Xiegu X6100 and Apple Mac

So I got this new radio, the Xiegu X6100. It is a nice little thing that can do a lot! It can do 5W on battery power, SSB, CW, FM, AM, and of course Digital. One of the best things is that it has a built-in sound card. This means that you can hook it up to your laptop via USB-C without the need for additional interfaces.

The radio is an SDR tranceiver running some kind of GNU/Linux. Some Hams have even been able to run WSJT-X directly on the radio, without the need for a computer. I'm not going that far, but I wanted to give FT-8 a try with this radio. I have it hooked up to my computer: an Apple MacBook PRO.

In this article I will try to describe the steps that I needed to do for it to work in my setup.

Xiegu X6100

The first thing you should do after switching on the radio is switching the mode to U-DIG. Do this even before you start WSJT-X. If you forgot this step, you need to unplug the USB cable, quit WSJT-X, and set the mode to U-DIG.

Maybe you want to use the inbuilt tuner now to match your antenna.

Now plug in the USB-C cable into the DEV port and into your computer. Now is the time to fire up WSJT-X

WSJT-X

When you start WSJT-X, you will have to do a few configurations.

First, in the top "Mode" menu select "FT-8".

Then go to the preferences. Here is what I used:

General

  • My Call: PA5BUK
  • My Grid: JO22KI
  • AutoGrid: yes

Radio

  • Rig: Xiegu X6100
  • Serial Port: /dev/cu.usbmodem535c0063103 Important here is the cu, instead of the tty. You may have similar looking Serial Ports listed in the drop down. I have two, so I had to try them both to get to the right onne.
  • PTT Method: Cat
  • Mode: Data

Those are the sittings I changed in the configuration. All other stuff is left to the default.

Testing it

In the radio tab of the confiugration you will find button called "Test Cat". Press it. You will hear your radio cliicking a few times. If the button turns green, then you are all set. You can also press "Test PTT" now. It will turn red and your radio will begin transmitting. Press it again to stop transmitting.

Now is the time to quit the configuration and go back to the main screen.

Output levels

There is a power slider on the right side of the main screen. This controls the output power of the radio. For some reason this works backwards in my installation. If I move the mouse up, the slider goes down, and the other way around.

When I click "Tune" I can see how much power the radio outputs. I have to slide the power slide almost all the way down to get the maximum power out of the radio.

Operating

There are many manuals on the internet that explain how to operate FT-8. I will only give a short summary of how to do work with this program.

Answering a CQ

In the top left window pane you will see all the messages that are currently received and decoded. Stations calling CQ will show up in green. If you double click one such station, it will be shown in the right window pane.

Click "Enable TX" and the program will start answering the CQ. All other messages in the exchange will be sent automatically.

Calling CQ

You can also start calling CQ yourself. In the lower right corner is a list of messages that can be sent. The bottom message is "CQ PA5BUK JO22" (at least for me). Select the radio-button next to this message and click "Enable Tx".

Now you are calling CQ.

If you have the option "Call 1st" enabled, your program will automatically answer the first response to your CQ.