[SECC] Correction - FTx and contesting

[Bill Coleman]

> On Jun 16, 2020, at 12:08 PM, Jeff Clarke <ku8e at ku8e.com> wrote:
> 
> I've found it's very difficult to have any type of rate on FT8 in a VHF contest. Even with 800 watts and a 5 element yagi @ 45 ft I got beat out all the time. Also there are some people who don't reply "RR 73 <Their Call>" after they call you so you're not sure if you're even in their log correctly.

I think a lot of this is just the entirely sporadic nature of the propagation involved. Perhaps the send the RR73, but you don’t hear it. Perhaps they didn’t hear your report.

FT4/FT8 really allows you to see super marginal paths that would go unnoticed on SSB or CW.

> Some people claim you could maybe do one contest per minute on FT8 but the best I did was maybe one QSO every few minutes or even longer. You can do much better on SSB/CW if the band is open.

What I don’t understand is why for contesting people haven’t embraced FT4. It’s has nearly the signal depth that FT8 does, but it is twice as fast.

Of course, my brief foray into the VHF contest the other weekend (about 1 1/2 hours) I saw a lot of evidence of people NOT in the NA VHF Contest mode, just trying to work contacts with the default FT8 settings. 

> I know there is a lot of debate about FT8 but I'm afraid it's here to stay.

Yes, for VHF especially, it’s not going to go away. Indeed, even if the band is open enough for CW / SSB, there may be many more people listening on the FT8 frequencies. If the people aren’t there, you can’t work them. 

> Some say FT8 isn't real radio because it's machine to machine. But that's also true for RTTY and EME work which have been around forever.

For RTTY, at least, there’s a nuance — knowing exactly WHEN to transmit can get you through a pileup. FT8 takes that away, since the transmit window is guided by atomically coordinated clocks….

Bill Coleman, AA4LR, PP-ASEL        Mail: aa4lr at arrl.net
Web: http://boringhamradiopart.blogspot.com
Quote: "Not within a thousand years will man ever fly!"
            -- Wilbur Wright, 1901