[CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest Digest, Vol 199, Issue 20

[RT Clay]

A lot of the commenters have only been thinking about 6m in VHF contests. Giving points for different modes doesn't make sense on the higher bands. There most contacts are not random but are arranged on a lower band. So you will just get people changing modes as well as bands to get the extra points.
Also people are forgetting that digital modes have a long history on VHF/UHF before FT8; meteor scatter and EME have been digital for quite a while. 

FT8 has been both good and bad in VHF contests. In the past sometimes you would ask someone to qsy to a higher band on CW (because signals are weak) and get the response "sorry, I don't do CW". Now you have a way to work them.
FT8 is a mess however on 6m when the band is open- one audio channel is simply not enough space and weak signals get covered up. The practice of everyone staying on a single frequency is terrible. This can be solved by adapting WSJTx to a SDR to cover a larger bandwidth, but it's going to be a long time before enough people have hardware that can do that.
The other problem with the proliferation of modes (CW, SSB, FM, MSK144, FT8, FT4, EME) is that it gets really hard to find anyone to work because they are all on different frequencies. Around here 2m and up is already very empty. On Saturday of the CQ VHF contest there was a 2m Es opening. In the past that meant everyone would be on or near 144.200 SSB or CW. But now you have to guess whether people will be on 144.200 or 144.174 FT8 (the one station I worked was a VE3 who was 59+ on FT8  ... SSB would have been much easier :) ).

BTW if you want a VHF/UHF contest that is CW only the ARRL EME contest has a CW category.

Tor N4OGW

   On Wednesday, July 24, 2019, 11:48:38 AM CDT, Stanley Zawrotny <k4sbz.stan at gmail.com> wrote:  
 
 I concur with Jim’s suggestion about analog and digital categories. It does two things - it puts each in their own category so that they aren’t competing against each other and it shuts up the grumbling old men who are against anything other than CW. (BTW, I am 76 - old but not grumbling.)

Stan, K4SBZ

"Real radio bounces off the sky."

> 
> Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2019 19:40:54 +0000 (UTC)
> From: jimk8mr at aol.com
> To: dbmcalpine73 at gmail.com, K9JK.cq at gmail.com
> Cc: sumner at snet.net, cq-contest at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] possible changes for CQ VHF Contest
> Message-ID: <1246913705.15823.1563910854480 at mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> Hi Dennis,
> I'd suggest a somewhat middle ground: digital modes (FT*, etc.) and analog modes (SSB, CW, FM voice, etc.). 
> 
> And then allow single "mode" or mixed "mode" (analog - digital) entries, with repeat QSOs on the other mode.
> It did not happen for me this weekend, but it has not been unusual in the past to have cross-mode QSOs - CW to SSB. I would not want to make those impossible, as most were me calling a distant station on CW who was unable to copy me on SSB. 
> 
> As for CW vs. SSB, I had just about the same number of QSOs on each of those modes. Maybe because it was easier to punch F1 with the left hand and punch "page down" with the right hand as I was reading the online news on a separate computer.
> And thanks for that CW QSO!
> 
> 73? -? Jim?? K8MR
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