FT8 with SparkSDR (macOS)

[Chris Bryson]

Hello,

Firstly I want to say how much I appreciate SparkSDR. What it achieves using such low resources is very impressive, I also love the cross platform nature and have been using it both on my Windows and Mac systems. 

I've been using WSJT-X for a few years and it's taking me some time to adjust to operating FT8 through SparkSDR. I find that I'm getting more responses using SparkSDR with my Hermes Lite 2 than I do with WSJT-X and Thetis on both Windows and Parallels through macOS.

I'm primarily using SparkSDR on my M4 Mac Mini at the moment and had a few questions?

1. Is it possible for SparkSDR to prompt to log a QSO on completion?

2. Can it somehow be connected to GridTracker on macOS? (I spent hours trying)

3. When I change band and press the tune button, the radio goes into PTT but no carrier is sent. If I engage in a QSO it works fine, but start of QSO initiates the tuner.

There are many YouTube videos demonstrating SparkSDR decoding digital signals, I'd like to create some videos actually operating using SparkSDR. Hoping to do that soon.

Thanks,

Chris 2M0NZB