LongChat - a new(ish) QRP "chirp" mode

 I found this via a post on QRZ today; Oguz Tanrisever (TA2STO), a ham out of Ankara Turkey, has developed a new digital mode that he's calling "LongChat" which allows keyboard-to-keyboard communications over virtually any frequency using a side variety of transmission modes (FM/SSB/etc). It currently only works with a few radios (IC-7300, IC-705, FT-991A).

Apparently, he first posted LongChat in 2022 via a QSL.net link for testing with his friends and there are a lot of articles pointing to this website, which he hasn't updated since then. If you're interested in checking it out, the proper link is here and there is a video describing how it works here; https://youtu.be/ixmKc-gDQT0. You definitely need to make sure you're using the latest version.

I haven't tried this yet but it's intriguing--it looks like it works at power levels as low as 45 microwatts (!) and as high as full legal limit. There's also a good blog posting on LongChat which includes a lot of comments from TA2STO here: https://ei7gl.blogspot.com/2024/11/longchat-new-amateur-radio-text-chat.html

I'll plan on playing with this a bit over the holidays, and if anyone has had any experience with it or would like to try it out with me, let me know.

73,

Mark