I can fully understand the concern about CW and SSB being marginalized
at the expense of FT8 or FT4, but I totally fail to understand your ire
toward FT8/4 versus RTTY. It makes no sense to me at all. From an
operational point of view in either contests or for working DXpeditions,
the mechanics seem almost identical to me:
A. You don't need to hear the audio for either mode. The software does
all the decoding.
B. The exchange for both modes consists simply of a callsign and a
report. There isn't anything more personal about RTTY than FT8/4 since
both exchanges for both modes are equally succinct and both offer the
opportunity to include a brief customized greeting (13 characters worth
for FT8).
C. In practice, I'd bet most RTTY ops click on a button or a bandmap,
or a waterfall or a stack of calls in N1MM+, to jump to the next
contact. Just like ops do in FT8/4.
D. Transmissions in FT8/4 aren't totally automated if you're trying to
multitask QSOs, and transmissions in RTTY are pretty much a rote
sequence of pushing F-keys. I fail to see a significant distinction here.
So please clue me in ... what makes RTTY so much more "real radio" than
FT8 or FT4 for contesting and working DXpeditions? Last I checked this
wasn't the ragchew reflector.
Dave AB7E
On 7/23/2019 10:36 AM, Courtney Judd wrote:
hello Dennis, I enjoyed your email and think it was spot on. I don't
use ft8/4 and don't think they should be allowed .... maybe they
should have their own contests. I spent quite amount of time in this
contest and came up very short of mults compared to those that added
ft8. I am not pleased you could say. 90% of my qso's were ssb and 10%
on CW... 0% ft8. I ended up with 711 qso's and 160 grids as SB 6 HP. I
had one Euro call me on SSB. I had pretty good prop for most
directions except for the North and mid west. Another bug that bothers
me to no end is DX-peditions that do ft8 at the expense of RTTY. They
get NO financial support from me. OK, call me a grumpy old man but I
just don't see ft/8 as real radio.... Just my 2 cents! 73's Cort K4WI
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