Topband: FT8 - the end of 160m old school DXing? (long)

[W0MU Mike Fatchett]

As a younger old guy in ham radio at 53, licensed since 1978, I am 
enjoying the heck out of FT8.  It is very different than other modes 
such as CW or SSB.

Why the commotion?  It takes up a couple of KC's on the band and nobody 
is forcing you to do it.

It is allowing people how have smaller stations the opportunity to get 
on and use their radios and a computer to make contacts they never would 
have been able to make.  This is great for ham radio!

FT8 is just another form of RTTY in my eyes.  A computer decodes RTTY 
just like other data modes.  Was there this much angst when it came out?

Unfortunately most old farts in ham radio don't really care if it goes 
on or not.  The majority of t he ham radio population is old.  They are 
in it only for themselves and most will not be around in 10 to 20 years.

To survive, ham radio,  is going to need things like FT8 and probably 
much more to continue.  We pride our selves on our emergency 
communications.  How many people were involved in the hurricanes this 
year.  Very very very little.

People should be excited that there are now so many signals on 160!  
Instead we have 20 plus responses the end of 160 is here. Actually it is 
the start of much much more.  It is still hard. You still have to have 
enough of an antenna to get out.   You still have to be able to be heard 
and you have to be able to hear.  The east coast is still going to 
dominate in the DX world even on FT8 from the USA.  The only technology 
that will make up for that advantage is a remote station on the east 
coast, which is a thing!

I have worked one station on 160 FT8  V31MA.  I have not been focusing 
on 160 though.

Working DX on FT8 is interesting and requires different skills similar 
but different to RTTY.

I have worked 405 stations on FT8 since October 14th which was my first 
contact on FT8.

Every station my radio hears is uploaded to hamspots.net.   That is 
pretty cool.  With JTalerts I can send a message instantly to other 
JTAlert users thanking them for the contact or asking them a question.

Psychologist should figure out why people especially older people have 
such a big issue with changes to their lives or their hobbies.  Every 
change is bad and nothing is ever better.

The dreaded computer continues to be blamed yet everyone here is using 
one to email, to log, to send your morse code, to watch your SDR, to 
forecasting the propagation but FT8 a mode that takes up 2 or 3 kc's is 
going to ruin ham radio?

Try it you might actually like it.  The only negative I have is with 
people running huge power when it is not necessary, which plagues us on 
all our bands but probably more so on 160 and the lack of being able to 
have a conversation with the other station. It is easy to get working.

In the end hams have more people to work!  This is a good thing. We can 
sell ham radio to people with limited access to antennas and show them 
they can actually make contacts around the world.

It may not be for everyone, PSK was not for me, but I am making a bunch 
more ham radio contacts everyday instead of watching my DXCC needs list 
and spot collector telling me there is nobody on that I need.

Like packet I don't think FT8 is going away until there is a better form 
of it and that will be the rage.

W0MU




On 10/25/2017 2:25 AM, Steve Ireland wrote:
> G’day
>
> As a committed (yeah, that’s probably the right word - complete with white jacket that laces up at the back) topbander since 1970, I’ve never been so intrigued and disturbed by anything on the band as the emergence of the Franke-Taylor FT-8 digital mode.
>
> For me, radio has always been all about what I audibly hear. I love all the sounds that radio signals make - and even miss the comforting sound of Loran that I grew up with around 1930kHz as a teenager in south-east England. Yeah, I am one sick puppy.
>
> With the emergence of high resolution bandscopes through SDR technology over the last decade, I embraced that as it meant that I could find what DX stations I wanted to hear and contact quicker and more easily (and, in particular, before those stations who didn’t have the same technology).
>
> It was really exciting and enhanced the sensual experience of radio by being able to see what I could hear (and no dinosaur me, I was an SDR fan boy!).
>
> During this period, there has also been an extraordinary development in digital radio modes, in particular by Joe Taylor K1JT.
>
> As a topbander I could see that these modes in which you ‘saw’ signals through the medium of computer screen or window as being a remarkable technical achievement, but had relatively little to do what I and the vast majority of active radio amateurs practiced as radio on 160m, as it had nothing to do with the audible.
>
> The good thing was that I could see that good old CW and Silly Slop Bucket (you can see where my prejudices lie) that I like to use were still the modes of choice for weak signal DX topband radio contact as these fancy digital modes were either very slow or, if they weren’t, were not good at dealing with signals that faded up and down or were covered in varying amounts of noise.
>
> While some amateurs seemed to have lost the pleasure of actually hearing signals in favour of viewing them on their computer screens, I felt secure that these digital modes were just a minor annoyance and any serious DXer or DXpedition was never going to seriously going to use them, particularly on my first and all-time love topband, for other than experimentation.
>
> Then, out of the blue, along comes FT-8. Joe and Steve Franke K9AN have quietly created the holy grail of digital operation with a mode that can have QSOs almost as fast as CW and SSB and over the last eight weeks 160m DXing has changed, perhaps for ever.
>
> Where once there were a few weak CW and SSB signals (I am in VK6, which is a looong way from anywhere with a population so we only ever hear a few), I can see that the busiest part of the band is 1840 kHz – FT-8 central.  On some nights I can see FT-8 signals on the band but no CW or SSB.
>
> There are countries I’ve dreamed for 20 years of hearing on 160m SSB/CW (for example, KG4) regularly appearing on DX clusters and I can see the heap of FT-8 activity on my band scope.
>
> Frustration sets in and I even downloaded the FT-8 software but, when it comes down to it,  I just can’t use it. My heart isn’t in it.
>
> My computer will be talking to someone else’s computer and there will be no sense of either a particular person’s way of sending CW or the tone of their voice (even the way some my SSB mates overdrive their transceivers is actually creating nostalgia in me). The human in radio has somehow been lost.
>
> I think back to my best-ever 160m SSB contact with Pedro NP4A and I can still hear the sound of his voice, his accent, when he came up out of the noise and to my amazement answered me on my second call, with real excitement in his voice. Pure radio magic!
>
> So I am sitting here, feeling depressed and wondering if overnight I have become a dinosaur and this is the beginning of the end of topband radio as I’ve always enjoyed it.
>
> Now, over to you other topbanders, especially those who have dabbled with FT-8 and live in more populous areas. Has the world really turned upside down and what do you think the future holds?
>
> Vy 73
>
> Steve, VK6VZ/G3ZZD
>
>
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