[CQ-Contest] FT8 vs FT4 in the Contest

[Mark - N5OT]

Hey John,

I am an absolute noob here - I made about 15 QSOs in the previous month 
of practice sessions.  My experience was the majority of my QSOs went as 
planned/predicted/smoothly.  I usually got a response from one station, 
we both exchanged what was expected and in the right order, with 
sufficient acknowledgement, etc.  I was able to choose to command the 
program to log a QSO or I could set the program up to log 
automatically.  I could easily delete a QSO if I felt the program logged 
one that didn't really happen.  I could easily edit any entry in the 
log.  WSJT-X is a pretty smart program.  Well done, Dr. Princeton.

Where there could be issues, and I had a few, would be needing to send 
different messages in a different order, for whatever reason, but that 
just takes some thinking and getting used to.  Whoever said it can't be 
done is incorrect.  It can be done.  Unlike RTTY, it's all a slave to 
the 7.5 or 15 second cycles that churn on relentlessly regardless 
whether the operator is thinking fast enough!  Then, too, things may 
wind up in the handbasket when more than one other station is trying to 
have a QSO with you at the exact same time.  You don't really know what 
each of the other stations trying to work you has and has not received.  
Of course, by definition you can only talk to one of them at a time, so 
... it gets hairy.  But in a strange sort of way, that's where the old 
contest strategy brain would kick in, and you would have to use your 
skill and wits to figure out what to do on the fly.  Like at least about 
once a minute, and only if you pay close attention to all that is going 
on.  Which is a challenge.

Imagine how relieved I was when I realized this was not all the 
boringness the naysayers had been building up.  I admit, after a while, 
FT8 was like watching paint dry compared to FT4 but it turns out the 
really smart guys worked a whole lot of higher point QSOs while watching 
that paint dry because FT8 has a better S/N ratio.  I was all 
flash-in-the-pan and worked very few DX stations.  Oh well.  I'll chalk 
that up to experience and operate smarter next time :-)

Interestingly, I heard all kinds of horror stories about how getting 
N1MM and WSJT to work together was not going well for a lot of people, 
but a friend said on the side, "I set it up and it works great" so I 
YouTubed it about 3 hours in, and followed the instructions and it 
worked great for me too.  First try.  I think I had to open a couple 
menus and click a few boxes.  Exporting the existing log from WSJT-X, 
then importing it into N1MM, made it so I could keep the modes separate, 
identify dupes, and keep track of Qs, bands, modes, mults.  In short, I 
was cooking with gas.  N1MM worked great.

I was on for less than 10 hours, but my experience was positive. I had a 
whopping good time.  I'll do it again next year.  And the year after 
that if I live to tell about it.

73 - Mark N5OT


On 9/3/2019 7:33 AM, john at kk9a.com wrote:
> I have never operated FT8 or FT4 but I have enjoyed reading about the 
> recent contest. It appears that there are some things that the FTx 
> operator has no control over such as saying this was a good QSO and 
> moving on. I read of instances were the automated software just keeps 
> sending the grid over and over waiting for a confirmation. Is this 
> correct? In other modes including RTTY the operator has complete 
> control over what is sent and logged. It is also interesting that two 
> different versions of FTx were used.
>
> John KK9A
>
>
> Edward Sawyer N1UR wrote:
>
> I am reading with interest the discussion about the digi contest. Many 
> people were repeating that FT8 was used more than FT4 to "pick up the 
> casuals".  I thought that FT4 was a protocol that allowed a contest 
> exchange.  So if the contest this weekend had a simple enough exchange 
> (grid) that you don't need FT4, what's the point of FT4?  From reading 
> posts, it seems that some of the slow rates were attributed to 
> dividing the contest up between 2 incompatible modes.
>
> Would it make more since to just use FT8 and make sure the exchange is 
> FT8 compatible?
>
> Just asking.
>
> Another observation from the postings - while FT8 may be taking over 
> much of the DXing activity, it doesn't seem to be any threat to the 
> Contest activity.  It's a new interesting mode to try.  And we will 
> see if it sustains good activity as it has time to develop.
>
> 73
>
> Ed  BV/N1UR
>
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