Sherman,
Indeed this is a really good reference. A couple of times, once when working Joe Taylor, we did see the rig change frequency. He was calling CQ 280 K1JT, and I looked down at the rig and, damn, we were on 50.280. Surprising but actually pretty darn cool.
I think I also now understand why I did so much better at 200 watts than 800 watts. But maybe 200 watts was still too much. I need to look in the log and see what kind of signal reports we were getting. I have lots of experience with HF JT8. Lately I have been running 40 watts on 160 meters and doing just fine. I would have worked Hawaii, twice, if I had not gotten stepped on but I did have two partials. I am used to seeing signal reports of between -10 and -22 dB.
On VHF, I think this is a new adventure and a real opportunity for some practical field research. We now know what we don't need - a KW - but we don't know how little we need for FT8. Ditto MSK144. The paper also suggests we think more about ERP than just raw power at the amp. It would be useful to know the gain of the 6m stacked beams as well as the aggregate feedline loss so we could map signals over time against ERP. This would be especially useful to know if for some reason we switched antennas. We are talking about a single Yagi for the July 6 and 2 meter contest. So if we knew the ERP needed, we could then adjust the amp accordingly. All of which is important because we have first hand knowledge of what happens when you push the amp into distortion - loud but no decodes. Whole new ballgame!
It also seems that 222 and 432 are totally unknown territory. Again we need to do some testing to see how little power we need. That 20 dB better than CW could be a real boon to contacts and grids on two bands were we are active but could use some more Q's.
Thanks for sharing.
As they say, see you on the waterfall,
Johnny
-----Original Message-----
From: Sherman Banks
Sent: Jan 24, 2018 4:02 PM
To: 'Fourlanders Contest Group'
Subject: [Fourlanders] FT8 Operating Guide