I think this is a little unfounded. By no means does the band appear empty,
and it's certainly not due to any migration of operators to FT8. What it
has done is made people who previously did little to no operating start
doing FT8. CWers and SSBers are still quite prolific and prevalent on the
air; more young hams and new licensees than ever are learning the code,
evidenced by the popularity of CW training apps and programs like LCWO, CW
Academy, Morse Toad, Morse Runner, etc. Weekends are busy, and contest
weekends always have the bands absolutely billowing over with stations.
There is no danger to the hobby from FT8.
That said, this particular modulation scheme is pretty resistant to
interference. A tiny CW signal or a handful of DX stations taking up a tiny
fraction of bandwidth won't cause a signifigant degridation in signal
especially if it's packed with error correction code, so even if the bands
were a little more busy, up to a point it'd still get through.
If this is really an intrustion of commerical operations, the FCC will do
their due diligence based on reports made by those who have been interfered
with. In the meantime, I think we should move the FT8 frequency right
overtop of the intrusion and see if it makes them leave. :)
-Sterling N0SSC
On Fri, Feb 1, 2019 at 8:20 AM Dave Lawley <dave@g4buo.com> wrote:
> With so many people migrating from CW/SSB to FT8, our bands appear empty
> to potential intruders. It's not surprising they are going to try their
> luck taking our frequencies.
>
> Those who are now spending their air-time on 14.074 should understand
> the danger to our hobby and make sure to occupy the bottom part of the
> band.
>
> Dave G4BUO
>
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