Digital Radio on MacBook Pro to X6100

In 2007, I qualified to receive an amateur radio license at the General class with call sign KJ4AAH. When I took the exam, taking higher levels was the same price as long as you kept passing. So I attempted the Extra class exam and failed it quite handily. That helped motivate me to study and a few months later, I upgraded my license to Amateur Extra class and changed to a new call sign AJ4FF.

In 2008, I purchased a Yaesu FT-857d radio and eventually put up a homebrew 3-band fan dipole between a blue spruce in one corner of my yard and a much taller spruce adjacent to my house. The blue spruce died and had to come down and I never figured out an alternative to get a long wire into the air with just the one tree near my house. This last year, the tall spruce also had to come down.

Well, in the middle of this time, one of my sons decided to plant a maple sapling near my back fence and it is now tall enough to help me out. I'm also more motivated right now to get involved again. I purchased a Xiegu X6100 HF transceiver and am hoping to figure out how to use it for digital modes as well as QRP phone. I also hope to learn enough Morse code that I can communicate using CW.

Most tutorials for getting started seem to be videos, which are difficult to search for information, and I'm wanting to use my MacBook for the connection. I feel like I'll be struggling to find the right settings by trial and error, so I'm planning to keep a bit of a record of what I've done.

Two days ago, I connected the X6100 by USB to the MacBook and ran fldigi. I was able to successfully copy PSK31 transmissions on 40m. I thought I was transmitting, but I'm pretty sure now that nothing was being transmitted. Today, I finally managed to get the X6100 to talk to flrig.

Here are my lessons on flrig:

  • There is an option for "X6100" so I used that. I left the Baud at 19200, 1 stop bit, left Echo on. All other options were left unselected. I don't know what "0xA4" on the "Default" button is about and left that alone.
  • Plug in the USB before starting flrig. Otherwise I wasn't seeing the modem ports listed.
  • I discovered later that the "Update" button would refresh the ports, so this could be pushed if the radio was attached later.
  • The usb-modem connections that appeared with "tty" would always hang. For whatever reason, the one that works for me was the second "/dev/cu-usbmodem" option after the radio was connected. Then push "Init".
  • I do not yet understand what the "Activate" button does.
Now to fldigi:
  • In the Config window, under "Rig Control", I turned on "Enable flrig xcvrc control with fldigi as client". I don't think I changed any other settings.
  • On my MacBook Pro, running Ventura 13.5, I couldn't figure out how to edit the macros. Control-click didn't work—that just started transmitting (into a dummy load for now) the existing macros. I checked my settings and recalled that a 2-finger click would behave like a right-click and that effectively opened the edit menus.
  • It took me some time to realize that the macros showing right arrows would initiate transmit, those that showed a pause symbol (or half of one) would end transmit and go back to receive, and macros that did not show either would just add text to the typing window.
I will need to listen in on some conversations to make sure I understand the flow now, but I think I have an idea at least how to use some of the basic features.

Next step: connect the radio to an antenna and try it live.

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