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What to listen to · Amateur radio
FT8 on 80 metres: 3573 kHz after dark
FT8 on 80 m is a night mode: by day the band reaches only the neighbours, after sunset it covers a continent, and on long winter nights 3573 kHz carries signals across the Atlantic.
What you hear
The fifteen-second chorus of FT8, explained in the main article, on a band that lives by the sun. In daylight the passband at 3573 kHz is nearly empty, a few stripes from stations close by. An hour after sunset it fills up and the decodes read like a map of Europe; towards midnight and before dawn callsigns from North America and, more rarely, Asia appear among them.
Who transmits and why
Amateurs who want contacts on the low bands, where antennas are large and signals suffer from absorption and static. FT8 made 80 m DX possible for modest stations: a signal an ear would never pick out of the noise still decodes. Award hunters collect countries here that are easy on 20 m but hard on 80 m.
When and where to listen
From dusk to sunrise, best from October to March, when nights are long and quiet. Summer brings short nights and thunderstorm crackle that hides the weak signals. Receivers in rural Europe show the most. The dial is 3573 kHz in USB, as always for FT8, although voice on 80 m uses the lower sideband.
In ShackDeck
Station catalogue → Amateur radio → FT8 80 m. The program picks a public receiver that covers 3573 kHz, tunes it in FT8 mode and decodes: callsigns and locators go to the On air list and the map every fifteen seconds. No receiver, antenna or account of your own is needed.