So I decided to double the length of the dipole to support 20m and go digital. This made sense as I wanted to keep with 5-10W as the antenna was in the same room as I was. Now here is where the decision to with the FT-991 came in real handy as it supported digital modes via its USB connection natively to your PC.
So got the dipole extended and installed WSJT-X on my Ubuntu laptop and tuned up to <1.1:1 SWR. BTW the dipole has a 1:1 BALUN that I built from a kit on Amazon. I started experimenting with FT8 initially and after watching some QSOs take place on 20m I decided to dive in and send out my first CQ @5W. Whoa, I immediately got and response and watched as the software handled the rest with the designed automation to exchange SNR and GRID info. And like that I had my first QSO and logged it to CQRLOG. I later setup WSJT-X to log automatically to CQRLOG.
In a 3 day period I was able to perform 78 QSOs all to unique callsigns including some DXs to Canada, France, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Spain, Dominica, Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela. The farthest QSO was Brazil @4160 mi or 6696 Km which sounds better!
My last highlight before signing off on the second day was I made a QSO and POTA spot for a ham in Washington state that was 2398 mi away. This was a really great QSO that I also spotted on pota.us and confirmed with the same person on the facebook digital POTA group! Nice!

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