In my experience (sine 1957) casual CW DX contacts have nearly always
been RST, QTH, Name, and for a long QSO maybe Rig. A memory keyer can
do most of TX, and nowadays there are fairly good CW decoders. Not much
different from other digital modes.
It seems to me that most of the thrill of DX is when the DX first
returns your call. Soon you are ready to move on to another conquest.
Contacts between friends are an entirely different matter.
On 4/1/2018 9:20 AM, Jeff Blaine wrote:
There is good and bad with the FT8.
The good is that it is bringing guys into the HF DX realm who never
got active in DX because for whatever reason they felt they did not
have a good DX station. The bad is that the focus on RTTY (my
favorite mode) has become less especially for DXpeditions in favor of
the idea of FT8. The logic behind these varies with the guy - but I
think after the excitement and shine of FT8 wears off, the net will be
still more total participants in HF. That's got to be a good thing.
I don't feel bad for the dxpedition community especially wanting to
promote FT8 over RTTY. Working a RTTY pileup on the dxpedition end
can result in pathetic rates and there has been no effort to promote a
multi-slot skimmer type of software package that would make RTTY
pileup into the high rate that is possible. Along comes FT8 with the
promise to do just that in an upcoming package so I view the
dxpedition guys moving to FT8 as a logical choice over RTTY simply
because it will end up having a higher rate than what most RTTY runs
end up being. I don't run FT8 at the moment but if a dxpedition is
only running FT8 for the digital slot, I guess I will run it. The
genie is out of the bottle there.
It would certainly help if the ARRL especially had not homogenize the
RTTY and all other digital modes into one for the purpose of the
DXCC. Why not issue separate certificates for each popular mode and
benefit from the fees that would bring to the ARRL? That would also
make a lot of guys who have worked their life's for the RTTY DXCC
count not feel as if the accomplishment is being diluted by FT8 and
the other ether-modes. But the ARRL's decisions more and more defy
logic so I suppose that's a topic for another day.
But for contesting and rag chewing and DX, I'm in the camp as the
other traditionalists are - the op on the end talking into the mic,
slapping the paddle or typing to try to keep up with the RTTY feed is
what a real QSO is about. FT8 does result in a technical QSO but I'm
not sure where the sustained enjoyment in that mode is beyond making
the contact.
73/jeff/ac0c
alpha-charlie-zero-charlie
www.ac0c.com
On 01-Apr-18 7:49 PM, Stan Stockton wrote:
Some questions in my mind.
How important is RF in the evolution of amateur radio? Would those
who operate using FT8 be a lot less interested if it were just
computers linking them with others without transmitted RF? How about
operator involvement or skill?
How important is it that hams retain 4 MHz of spectrum on 6m or other
bands if most everyone has abandoned CW and SSB?
Is there some sense of achievement when there is so much headroom in
power alone that another 3 dB or even another 20 dB is so easy to
achieve?
About 50% of my enjoyment of the hobby is thinking, many hours of
every day, about how to somehow achieve another dB on some band or
another with a better antenna. After about 50 hours of modeling I am
now drilling tubing to make what I hope will be a great pair of
tribanders to take to ZF9CW location. One person's total waste of
time is another's passion.
To each his own, but for the long term future of what has provided so
many of us with a lifetime of enjoyment, woe is me.
73... Stan, K5GO
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