I fear we have not heard the last of this so I have started another cesspit.
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for good or bad 
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Oh you definitely haven’t heard the last of it. There will be my hands-free qualification video to come. My attempt to produce such a film today failed because several operator interventions were absolutely necessary, which kind of defeats the object - and dispels a few myths!
What’s for sure is that in (so-called) fully automated mode, attentive operator supervision is absolutely essential.
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For those not reliant on GPS or sundials for correcting the time, perhaps JTSync is the answer.
I have yet to try it, but it does sound an interesting piece of software.
*“When the Internet connection is not available, JTSync allows you to make time adjustments based on decoded QSOs within the WSJT-X application.”
Stuart - G1ZAR
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Just downloaded and installed. Superb. A tech solution that is actually easier and faster than my non-tech solution. I’m in!
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Well, since Richard has started off a continuation thread, I’d like to clarify my earlier post, in which I rambled on about the rules. Prompted by other posts, I just followed a train of thought to see where it led. One of those thought exercises which would have been better concluded with a “cancel” rather than a “send”. It was certainly not my intention to criticise anyone, or any activity, still less to stifle new ideas and techniques.
It really isn’t worth worrying about whether the screen should be tapped once at the start of an activation, once at the start of each QSO, or more than once during each QSO. As others have said, it is already easy to send stored messages in CW or Voice, and the world hasn’t been ended by either.
Right, I’ve spent enough time in this hole, so now I’ll stop digging 
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Am I the only person thinking that this is a wonderful method of sabotaging portable FT8 users so you can get a better Flavour score. Just have your clock forced to drift by 1/2 sec after each QSO (using that nice Powershell script to incrementally move your clock) and each QSO partner using JTSync alone will get dragged further and further off from the real time making it impossible for them to have QSOs with anyone else until they manually reset their clocks.
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I would imagine so, yes.
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Possibly. Worth a try on your own FT8 activations perhaps?
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Those are the sort of thoughts that you get from a poacher turned gamekeeper!
nice thinking!! 
edit: sorry for the deletion above. I posted a link instead of a replay
Hello group,
Just wanted to chime in and thank everyone for the info on this thread and previous ones. Since moving here to Alaska I was able to activate a few summits VHF-only. Five watts SSB on HF wasn’t cutting it though, so I’ve been looking for other options since.
I’m hoping that the WSJT mode will give me reach outside the state. There are an obscene number of never-activated summits up here, and I’m hoping to fix that.
Gear Plan:
Radio: Yaesu 817ND
Interface: MiniProSC with a separate CAT cable.
Antennas: Homebrew linked dipole or QRP guys tri-band vertical.
Computer: Small dell notebook.
Time Synch: U-Blox GPS and manually adjusting the time in Windows
I’m planning to test the setup from the backyard this Sunday. I’m brand new to WSJT-X so there’s going to be a bit of a learning curve there, even if I can get a signal out. Anyway, if that goes well then I might be able to do a small summit the weekend of the 14th. Keep your fingers crossed.
Brandon
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Both are in the planning stages Tom, hopefully for implementation when the weather improves a bit…
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Ft8 gurus, is an older atom cpu ok for decoding frames on time?
I have a dell venue 8pro but it needs some work and I don’t remember how fast it was. I don’t want to spend 5 hours building it without an ok outcome.
Some of you use windows tablets, atom cpus?
Thanks
I have a 9 year old Acer Aspire netbook with an Atom CPU which is too slow for web browsing, but for FT8, PSK31 and SSTV, it does the job. I installed a SSD and use Linux.
73 Jens, HB9EKO
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So i built it. Its ok but it take a little bit more than a 15sec frame to decode, its ok, you only start a bit late I think
Atom users: how many decode threads do you use? Other setting for slow cpus?
I didn’t change anything to the default settings after installation.
Hello group,
Making a follow-up post after some testing yesterday. I was able to get my portable setup running and tested it at length from the backyard. It worked, and pskreporter.com indicated that I was getting picked up outside Alaska on 40 M and 20 M, but it was a really slow process. Only about four contacts or so over the course of a few hours.
That got me wondering about the power requirements of these modes. Even using FT8 those are pretty long transmissions, and it takes a ton of them to CQ for a while and complete contacts. Has anyone ran into issues with running batteries down operating that way?