Another digital mode via your computer’s sound card?  YES!  But this one is way different from the others.  Although similar to PSK31 and MFSK16, this software is specifically designed for VHF High Speed CW Meteor Shower communications. The latest version (WSJT 2.0) is capable of copying 18db below noise level making it an excellent EME (Earth-Moon-Earth) application

When 6m or 2m SSB is dead, which is most of the time, it is possible to make 1300+ mile contacts 80% of the time by bouncing your signal of the trail of a meteor.

Unfortunately, meteors exist in our atmosphere a very short time.  During meteor showers however, it is possible to send your call, signal report and confirmation very, very, very fast, to complete a real quick QSO with another Ham. 

Until very recently this was done by recording your CW message on a tape recorder then playing it back at high speed over your transmitter.  To receive the incoming message, you would reverse the process, recording the message at high speed and playing it back at normal speed in order to decode the message. at 15 – 35 wpm.

With the recent advent of Phase Shift Keying technology, it is possible to digitize a Morse coded message and speed it up to several thousand words per minute.  I can send “CQ W7KCN KK7LK” in less than 4 thousandths of a second.  By sending the CQ for 60 seconds raises the probability of contact considerably, and the discriminating circuitry of the weak signal processing DSP sound card improves the odds even more.

Joseph Taylor K1JT has recently released  several upgraded versions of his FSK11 (sub-modes A, B, C) with added forward correction FEC on a character-by-character basis to improve message reliability.  They also provide shorthand messages that are more robust than the single-tone messages of traditional FSK441.

By arranging a “weak signal hi-speed CW meteor scatter” contact in advance, usually around dawn, two Hams using WSJT can almost guarantee a successful contact.  If your HF/VHF transceiver and computer are set up to operate the standard digital modes such as PSK, you can now operate single skip VHF on 6 and 2 meters on a regular basis. 

For more information, check out these web pages:
http://pulsar.princeton.edu/~joe/k1jt/
http://www.qsl.net/w8wn/hscw/hscw.html
http://www.nitehawk.com/rasmit/ws1_15.html
http://www.qsl.net/pnwvhfs/