Made a great DX contact this afternoon to South Africa using the digital mode known as JT-65. JT65 is a digital protocol intended for Amateur Radio communication with extremely weak signals. It was designed to optimize Earth-Moon-Earth (EME) contacts on the VHF bands and conform efficiently to the established standards and procedures for such QSOs. The most popular sub-mode of JT65 is JT65A. JT65 gets ’65’ from the 65 tones it uses.

Working some JT-65 DX

The signals are usually found in the data portion of the Ham Radio Band plans between the CW (Morse) and the PSK/RTTY windows. They are always transmitted in USB mode regardless of band.

The most popular JT65A frequency is in the 20 Meter band.

160m: 1838.0 kHz USB
80m: 3576.0 kHz USB
40m International: 7039.0 kHz USB
40m USA: 7076.0 kHz USB
30m: 10139.0 kHz USB.
20m: 14076.0 kHz USB
17m: 18102.0 kHz USB.
17m Alternate: 18098.0 kHz USB
12m: 24917.0 kHz USB
6m EME: 50276 kHz USB