I don't recall anyone in those contentious earlier posts telling those who like to use FT4/8 in a contest not to do so. What I heard was personal opinions and personal choices being expressed. As to what appears to be anger by Rick attacking others, I think his reply about him and Jeff being friends is spot on. There are many Type A personalities in the world of Competitive Contesting. It isn't surprising clashes occur. Rick and I have had significant disagreements too, yet I consider him a friend. We're a couple hundred miles apart and I'm in the middle of nowhere South Carolina so our paths aren't likely to cross soon, but I would love to sit down over another mexican dinner or BBQ lunch with him sometime. Rick puts out a good breakfast too. This stuff about FT4/8 isn't a political discussion where choices affect someone's livelihood or, potentially, their life. These posts are opinions over whether an operating mode used in the hobby of ham radio is really contesting or not. Jeez. Get upset about people having strong opinions about that? As Riley Hollingsworth said in his speech many years ago... "Lighten Up." Or as Rick says, hit delete. Or... defend your opinion about how good it is and that it really should be adopted by old school contesters.

I've never operated FT4/8, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once. Er, make that last part I have attended several ham meetings where it has been demonstrated and discussed. And I've read a few posts about problems people had while using it to contest. I can't quite see many special skills needed by an operator that can significantly affect contest scores. One thing that bothers me about those who push FT4/8 is I've never seen a good answer to that. The only thing I've picked up on is how tuning slightly off frequency can set you apart from the crowd. So... why doesn't someone in the FT4/8 contest crowd defend its use just as Rick, Jeff, Hal and others, including me, say it isn't suited for contesting? What's so great about it?  Yeah, you can sit there and operate at your rig if you want, but I've also heard a guy talk about how great it was when he worked a DXpedition. He said he told the computer to work that station, went upstairs and watched some football, then came back at a break in the action and found he had "worked" them. Where is the operator skill needed in that? I can't understand why people are proud about doing that. That type of operating doesn't involve skills like -- you can get better scores if you can copy CW reliably at 35 WPM than someone who only does 25. No tips to help you like -- when S&P you can turn the VFO knob a bit to change your frequency while transmitting and make yourself stand out from the crowd a bit. Just don't go too far and tune out of their filter passband. No tips like -- to help that EU station that is having trouble copying your SSB phonetics of "Romeo Lima" try "Roma London" instead. There are a hundred tips like that in the "traditional" modes which involve split second real time decisions by an operator. How do you program those type things into FT4/8 operation? And if you could program a computer to do it, why bother?

Go ahead and defend FT4/8. Get a discussion going. Maybe you'll change some minds the way my mind was changed about how "good" assisted operation involves much more than point-and-clicking on a spot. I think my head is still sore from Jim, VE7ZO, beating me up for trusting the accuracy of spots! (Thanks again for that opportunity to be beaten up, Rick.)

Being an idealist I also like the idea that being a good CW, SSB, or RTTY contesting op has practical applications in the realm of emergency communications. That's been proven many times. The most recent I'm aware of is when a contester ran message traffic into Puerto Rico after the hurricanes hit. What possible good would FT4/8 be there?  Maybe a standardized message structure like the ARRL uses for its message traffic might help. But that means limited flexibility in message content. And with such few characters being sent in those modes and having such a low data throughput rate I can't figure how being a "skilled" FT4/8 contester would do any good in EMCOMM. So... Limited skill set. Computer to Computer q's with limited to no operator input needed. Little value to anything other than its own specialized mode of FT4/8 communications. Why include it in the contest world? 

Kevan N4XL