[SCCC] FT4 on 7047

[Steve]

At 12:20 PM 5/2/2019, you wrote:
>..... looking at the chart on Club Log, more of the digital signal 
>users have come from the SSB and Other users and not so much from 
>CW. I believe this is mainly due to depressed sunspot numbers 
>forcing people who want to play radio to move to digital.

What is more depressing is watching spots for the many QSOs now being 
made via E-skip by Europeans on 28 and 21 MHz (and a few Asians) that 
state the S/N ratio is POSITIVE, meaning a CW/voice QSO could have 
been made instead of by using "below-the-noise-level" digital modes. 
BTW, note that that S/N ratio measurement does not include the 
effects of QSB, since only a spot-check is done by the software of 
the actual S/N ratio at some particular moment.

>Since there is so much more wasted space on SSB than on CW it makes 
>more sense to move digital to the SSB portion of the band. Steve's 
>point of over driving modulation is just one issue. Creating 
>multiple digital modes requiring more and more bandwidth is.

I had not thought of that, since I don't operate voice, never tune up 
there, and have just about completely forgotten what the voice 
subbands are  8-). But true, although this would be far too much to 
hope for, especially in this day of FCC deregulation. I live in the 
fear that one day soon, the FCC will abolish mode subbands 
altogether. Probably after some such proposal put out by the fine 
folks in Newington.

>Whoever chose 7047.0 to channelize FT4 clearly has no understanding 
>of 40 meters. No understanding the value of W1AW. No understanding 
>of the CW band. Perhaps the intent is to float 7047.0 out there and 
>see if there is any push back from the CW community. So far I have 
>seen very little which is distressing to me.

K1JT has essentially commandeered frequencies for his 
custom-developed digital modes. Instead, he should not even make any 
suggestion of where to operate his digital modes, letting people, 
theirselves, chose. Had that happened in the first place, it seems 
reasonable that these modulated-tone modes would have established 
theirselves within the voice bands to begin with. This would quickly 
spread them out and they most likely wouldn't even be having the 
"crowding" problems they now complain about, since they would not be 
"forced" into one or a few channelized frequencies on each band. They 
would quickly settle on certain "calling frequencies" and my betting 
is they would, for the most part, be up higher in the bands than they 
now are and thus causing less interference. Remember what happened 
just a month or so ago when two DXpeditions showed up nearly 
simultaneously in Africa, and both got on FT8 on the same band at the 
same time, both using fox mode with tones lower than 1000 Hz AND on, 
initially, the SAME frequency. When one became aware of the other, it 
moved just 2 kHz DOWN, causing it's "hound" callers to pile up right 
on the second DXpedition. I had to laugh at that  8-D

>I don't feel this issue is a lost cause for the CW community. I 
>believe that once the sunspots return and people can actually make 
>human to human contact again the ham radio that we know and love will return.

I don't think this will happen, because despite the positive S/N 
ratios now being spotted, it obviously is not happening now. If the 
recent ARRL proposal to the FCC to allow Technicians on the HF bands 
becomes law, this is even less likely.

SteveH, K0XP