[CQ-Contest] possible changes for CQ VHF Contest

[Jim Brown]

On 7/23/2019 5:45 PM, rjairam at gmail.com wrote:
> I suspect a lot of those who are using the FT8 mode are not really the
> ones who were using CW and SSB before.

Bright people will find the best way to do things, and if the objective 
is to work weak signals, and to work those in rare locations who don't 
have CW skills, modes like FT8 can be a better way.

Folks east of Chicago are really spoiled -- a look at PSKReporter or 
DXmaps almost any day during E-skip season on 6M shows how good you have 
it. You have multiple strong single-hop openings between areas with high 
population density, so SSB works fine. But it doesn't when I want to 
work those same high population density areas -- I need a LOT more noise 
rejection than I can get from SSB. Until FT8 came along, I worked almost 
all CW in VHF contests. My last CW QSO on 6M was three seasons ago, a 
VE6 who took two years to send me the card for his rare grid.

One thing that WOULD help restore CW on 6M, especially for me and others 
with a P3 spectrum display (which is limited to 200 kHz max width), 
would be to move the FT8 frequency to around 50.27 MHz, because that 
would allow me to monitor the CW frequencies while working FT8. This is 
something that the League Can, and SHOULD do. With FT8 on 50.313, I can 
monitor for SSB, which I don't care about, but not CW.

73, Jim K9YC