[CQ-Contest] possible changes for CQ VHF Contest

[David Gilbert]

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