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[VHFcontesting] My take on VHF contesting today and FT8

To: <vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
Subject: [VHFcontesting] My take on VHF contesting today and FT8
From: Duane - N9DG via VHFcontesting <vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
Reply-to: Duane - N9DG <n9dg@yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2018 23:31:42 +0000 (UTC)
List-post: <mailto:vhfcontesting@contesting.com>
I might be contrarian in my view, but in many ways FT8 has piqued my interest 
to some level for perhaps becoming more interested in VHF contesting and DX’ing 
again. What drove the stake through the heart of VHF contesting for me was the 
free for all of allowing self-spotting and QSO scheduling and coordination via 
any means real-time in the contest. That 100% totally killed the fun of VHF 
contesting for me. And it has had devastating effects on the amount of CQ’ing 
and band tuning that now occurs.

I already know that once I know who a station is, where they are, on what 
frequency, and that they have X amount of power into antenna system of size Y, 
that I can in all likelihood work them. That is pretty much a given. The fun of 
VHF contesting for me always was always about finding them or drawing them out 
by scouring the bands RX wise and visually, spraying CQs as much as I could, 
and in as many directions as I could, for as much of the entire contest time 
period as possible. And while doing that, be continually reading the subtle 
cues of band condition shifts and where the propagation paths may be enhanced 
or be opening to, and then adjusting my operating accordingly. Just following 
DX spotting aids or scheduled Q’s does none of that. And for me, “just making 
the Q” was at best 25% of the fun, and when running the bands was even less 
than that.

So what has happened the last few years with all the real-time Q scheduling and 
DX cluster, and QSO chat pages is that vast majority of people are now either 
waiting for posts on those various web pages or phone or texts requests to try 
and make a Q from someone. Or otherwise watching for activity on the DX 
spotting networks, they are not “operating” their radios. Because they are not 
calling CQ much, not tuning around or watching the bands, and are very unlikely 
to be turning antennas either. And those who do try to call CQ these days get 
very few takers because no one is paying attention to the RF that is coming 
down the antenna coax real-time. 

What I find intriguing about FT8 is that you can run it very effectively with 
ZERO Internet connectivity. What you see come across your WSJT-X screen is what 
your antenna, your radio, and the in-shack gear attached to it was able to 
extract from the RF hitting your station. It doesn’t really matter if your 
shack is Internet connected or not. In my mind that is “radio” at its best.

Also WSJT provides built-in mechanism to call CQ a lot. That is a key component 
for making Qs, always has been.  Not sure why so few people in the past, or 
even now, never bothered to try and setup voice keying. It just hasn’t been 
that hard or expensive to do since cheap PCs have been around for 25+ years now.

And modes like FT8 do capture the subtle shifts in band conditions as they are 
evolving real-time. Just like seat time doing SSB/CW did. Spotting networks are 
always behind.

There are certainly plenty of operational shortcomings of WSJT and FT8 etal. as 
has been discussed these last few days in numerous threads. But the potential 
to have people once again be paying more attention to what has come down their 
feed-lines vs. over the Internet or phones is certainly there. And to me that 
is a very good thing.

Duane
N9DG
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