Exactly.
Ham radio communication uses an imperfect medium. There is no way to guarantee
message receipt by the two QSO partners. This is the classic “Two Generals
Paradox” discovered by the computer science community in 1972.
The practical mitigation is to use hints from the QSO context, e.g., did the
other station ask for a repeat or go on to work another station. CW, SSB and
even RTTY have years of operator experience that learned the best “hints” to
decide if a QSO is complete and should be logged. FT operation and contesting
needs the same opportunity of experience to learn what those effective hints
are since FT characteristics differ in several ways from the legacy
modes/protocols.
Ed W0YK
From: John Kludt <johnnykludt@gmail.com>
Sent: 26 February, 2020 09:13
To: ed@w0yk.com
Cc: VHF Contesting <vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [VHFcontesting] FT4 and FT8 Contesting
Ed,
Interesting challenge. There is also a follow-up email that suggests much of
it is about operator training on how to use a new mode in a contest. CW has
been around for 100 years and SSB for 60 years so we kind of have those
learning curves behind us.
Johnny
On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 12:03 PM Ed Muns <ed@w0yk.com <mailto:ed@w0yk.com> >
wrote:
Log checking for several recent contests that used the FT4 and FT8 modes
has shown undesirably large numbers of claimed QSOs that receive
not-in-log ("NIL") status from the other station. The WSJT development
team has worked together with contest sponsors and log checkers to
analyze the probable causes of these NILs. Our findings and some
operating advice for future contests are posted here:
http://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/FT4_FT8_Contesting.pdf
and will also appear in the May-June 2020 issue of NCJ, the National
Contest Journal.
73 from the authors of the study:
Steve Franke, K9AN
Don Hill, AA5AU
Ed Muns, W0YK
Iztok Saje S52D
Joe Taylor, K1JT
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com <mailto:VHFcontesting@contesting.com>
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
_______________________________________________
VHFcontesting mailing list
VHFcontesting@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/vhfcontesting
|