The Xiegu X6100 is the newest transceiver from Xiegu.  The second batch of X6100's shipped out at the end of 2021 and is the subject of this page.

Upon receiving it, my first "task" was to upgrade the firmware to the latest version and so began a small adventure.  There are tutorials to explain how to do the upgrade and they are very good, though I found one item missing:  PLUG POWER INTO THE RADIO!

Without power connected, my radio would immediately shut off when attempting to update the baseline firmware.  Once plugged into a 12V source, the update went along exactly as described and I was able to complete the radio upgrade.

Once the upgrade was complete, the radio behaved oddly and, since I had nothing in it to lose, I did a Factory Reset; this cleared out whatever the problem was and the radio works fine now.  I'm running 1.1.2 as of 1/5/22.

After completing the update, I did try FT8 with the radio, following the Tutorial which uses Omni-Rig and IC-7000 setting.  WSJT-X was able to control the radio very well, allowing me to attempt contacts.

Unfortunately, it was late and conditions were fading, so I was unable to make any contacts, however, PSKReporter showed that I was getting out to monitoring stations across parts of the US.  It showed that things are working...  Stay tuned.

Update on 1/9/22
I have now made 10 contacts with it and figured out the displays and how to get things working nicely. When transmitting, the S-Meter becomes a power meter and the display to the right of the power meter shows the SWR.

My antenna setup uses an MFJ automatic tuner that requires at least 2W of power to tune correctly.  When the X6100 sees a mismatch that exceeds > 2:1 SWR (I don't know the actual number.), it cuts back the power to about 1.5W which is too low for the MFJ to correctly recognize the signal and tune to the antenna.

The "fix" is to use the ATU to get the X6100 to tune to the antenna which generally puts out more than 2W of power and then the MFJ can tune.  Once done, I turn off the ATU and then tune again with WSJT-X, it tunes nicely and the SWR is quite reasonable, "like normal."  BTW, this is the approach I used with the X5105 and this tuner.

2/26/22 I’m now running 1.1.4 from 2/19/22 and it’s pretty nice. The CW Decoder doesn’t appear to work at the moment but everything else is doing very well. I am having a fun time making many contacts on FT8. It’s a blast to play with. I’m getting really nice coverage according to PSKreporter and my log shows it!