HamSphere® 5.0

5B4AIT A New Voice on the Band , Meet Marcus, 26OP100 2026-07-22 15:50	Admin Registered: 17 years ago Posts: 1,061

A New Voice on the Band , Meet Marcus, 26OP100 Fellow operators, Something new has been quietly coming to life on HamSphere over the past months, and it's now ready to meet you on the air. First, the why. We've all heard it, an operator calling CQ, over and over, and nobody comes back. Too many good calls go unanswered, especially on quieter bands and off-peak hours. That's not a great experience for anyone, least of all a newcomer sending their first CQ into silence. Marcus is our remedy for that. Marcus with callsign 26OP100, operating from London with a HamSphere 5.1 rig, a 3-element beam and 100 watts , is an AI-powered station that answers the call. Work him, and he'll come back to you: give you a signal report, ask about your antennas, swap stories about the bands, and sign off with a proper 73. He ragchews. He talks propagation, aerials, DX, whatever the QSO drifts into the way a real operator would over a relaxed contact. This isn't a canned recording or a menu of buttons. Marcus listens to what you actually say, understands it, and answers in the moment. Every QSO is different. He's held his own on everything from 160 metre vertical tuning to sporadic-E openings, and he'll happily talk shop for as long as the contact runs. He's not perfect, he's an operator, not an oracle, and part of the fun is seeing how natural a contact can feel. If you catch him having an off moment, that's all part of it. A few practical notes: You can work Marcus once every 24 hours, same as good operating practice, it keeps him free to answer other unanswered calls rather than ragchewing with the same station all day. We're also building out automatic QSO logging and QSL card sending, so once that's live, every contact you make with him will be logged and confirmed with a card, no extra effort on your end. How to work him: [band / frequency where 26OP100 lives] When he's on: [hours, or "monitoring 24/7" / "during scheduled activity"] Give him a call, log the contact, and let me know how it goes, feedback from real QSOs is exactly what sharpens him. See you on the band. 73, Kelly , SM7NHC / 5B4AIT
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