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Re: Topband: A way forward to keep 'old school' modes vibrant alongside

To: "'Mark K3MSB'" <mark.k3msb@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Topband: A way forward to keep 'old school' modes vibrant alongside FT-8? (long)
From: "Dave AA6YQ" <aa6yq@ambersoft.com>
Date: Thu, 26 Oct 2017 17:43:11 -0400
List-post: <mailto:topband@contesting.com>
>>>AA6YQ comments below

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark K3MSB [mailto:mark.k3msb@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2017 1:28 PM
To: Dave AA6YQ
Cc: topBand List
Subject: Re: Topband: A way forward to keep 'old school' modes vibrant 
alongside FT-8? (long)

You can’t retract any awards,  and I don’t believe you even have to worry about 
that.

>>>I'm not personally worried, Mark. As I said, none of my DXCC or Challenge 
>>>award credits were made with K1JT modes. I was referring to the impact on 
>>>award recipients who included K1JT modes in their submissions over the past 
>>>several years.

Let’s say you have 150 Confirmed on 160M right now using a combination of SSB, 
CW, FT8 etc.   The current single band award would not change – it’s “Mixed” by 
default.   I would envision 3 new awards to come into existence --  160M-SSB,  
160M-CW, and 160M-FT8.

As I mentioned before,  once you have the software written for one mode 
specific band award (ex:  160M-CW),

>>>Extending DXCC to include band-mode combinations would have large 
>>>implications for the award program. Why just for 160m, as you propose above? 
>>>From the other extreme, many ops complain about pileup congestion caused by 
>>>award chasers seeking new entity-bands for DXCC Challenge; adding 
>>>entity-band-modes would make this worse.

  then it’s a simple extension to add –SSB, -FT8, -AM, -PSK31, -Digital etc  
(unless you really bolloxed up the architectural stage of the software design). 
     The ability to easily add new band/mode combinations will be essential to 
facilitate new modes that will be available in the future.    Like I posted 
before, it’s not rocket science to get this done.

>>>Given the context, it's not obvious why you're focusing on software, but if 
>>>you're referring to DXLab, which I develop and maintain, it has long 
>>>supported the pursuit of WAZ awards, which do support a full matrix of 
>>>zones, bands, and modes. I'll extend DXLab to support whatever the ARRL and 
>>>the other primary award sponsors do, as I (and other logging application 
>>>developers) have done for many years.

>>>A  "level playing field" issue that ops have raised is that some have 
>>>labored a lifetime to achieve Honor Roll on RTTY, only to have the ARRL 
>>>"dilute" this by accepting digital modes that make it "easier" to work DX: 
>>>PSK, Olivia, JT65, and now FT8. There's a similar issue with Mixed awards 
>>>for particularly challenging bands like 160m and 6m. Adding new 
>>>mode-specific awards avoids the "retraction" issue that would occur if the 
>>>ARRL were to redefine the 160m DXCC awards and endorsements to exclude FT8, 
>>>or redefine the DXCC Digital awards and endorsements to exclude FT8 - but 
>>>adding new mode-specific awards doesn't address the "dilution of my lifelong 
>>>effort" issue. 

        73,

                 Dave, AA6YQ


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