Chris - Thanks for your comments on the impact of FT8 on the January contest.
To your first point, I don’t think that the increase in 6M activity is due
entirely to casual ops using digital modes (FT8) instead of SSB and CW. For one
thing, this year there was a significant increase, about 19% in the number of
logs submitted in the contest over 2018 while the total number of QSOs in the
contest only grew by about 3%; essentially remaining the same. If the digital
mode ops are all casual they do a much better job of submitting logs than do
the casual SSB ops.
The actual number, as well as the fraction of QSOs on all bands 144MHz and
above decreased significantly over 2018. This strongly suggests that the
increase in digital (FT8) activity came at the expense of QSOs on the higher
bands.
I think that the increase in activity in the January Contest is good and
welcome. I think that the decrease in the activity on the higher bands is not
good. To me, it appears that both of these effects are due to the digital
modes, in particular FT8. Interestingly enough, there does seem to be a
significant number of FT8 ops, who once they saw how straight forward it was to
make digital QSOs, also tried MSK144, thereby increasing that activity as well.
I am not sure what the answer is, but I fear that all the VHF contests will
become dominated by 6M, not just the June contest when Es is in. Perhaps it is
time to rethink the contesting paradigm. - Duffey KK6MC
James Duffey KK6MC
Cedar Crest NM
> I have been wondering for a while where the FT8 VHF contest ops are
> coming from and if perhaps some of the community's concern is overblown.
> I see two possibilities:
>
> * Casual ops who have that HF+6 radio and get on to play around for a
> couple hours, get some new grids towards VUCC, etc. In the past, these
> people would have done the same thing but on SSB. I have a feeling her and
> there's a lot of them. They are not serious contesters and were never
> going to be people you could work through the bands with.
>
> * More serious contesters who are wanting to try something new and are
> focusing much of their time on making digital contacts. I feel like
> there are relatively few of these people due to their likely time and
> money investment in having gear for other bands.
>
> The first group wasn't going to have 2m, 70cm, and up beams and amps at
> home. Not having digital modes available means we are losing points and
> some mults by not being able to work this group, but I don't have any
> concerns that I am missing higher band contacts due to the move from SSB
> to FT8 here.
>
> The second group is the one to be concerned with. I haven't been here
> long enough to know what the answer is, so hopefully someone else does.
>
> Personally, my roving plan for at least future June contests is to have
> two ops. One op will essentially be a mult station, dedicated to
> watching 6m on SSB and FT8 during openings (and also watching for when
> those openings occur). The other op will be the points station and
> handle all the other bands.
>
> --
> Chris Lumens - KG6CIH
> Hike * MTB * XC Ski * Haskell
> Research - Experimentation - Testing - More Testing
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