Topband: A way forward to keep 'old school' modes vibrant alongside FT-8? (long)

[Mark K3MSB]

You can’t retract any awards,  and I don’t believe you even have to worry
about that.

Let’s say you have 150 Confirmed on 160M right now using a combination of
SSB, CW, FT8 etc.   The current single band award would not change – it’s
“Mixed” by default.   I would envision 3 new awards to come into existence
--  160M-SSB,  160M-CW, and 160M-FT8.

As I mentioned before,  once you have the software written for one mode
specific band award (ex:  160M-CW),  then it’s a simple extension to add
–SSB, -FT8, -AM, -PSK31, -Digital etc  (unless you really bolloxed up the
architectural stage of the software design).      The ability to easily add
new band/mode combinations will be essential to facilitate new modes that
will be available in the future.    Like I posted before, it’s not rocket
science to get this done.

73 Mark K3MSB

On Oct 26, 2017 12:31 PM, "Dave AA6YQ" <aa6yq at ambersoft.com> wrote:

An issue that you'll have to confront in your proposal to the ARRL is the
disposition of awards already granted to operators based on QSOs made in
"K1JT modes". Will recent DXCC awards that included some FT8 QSOs be
retracted? Will 5BDXCC awards or Challenge endorsements be retracted if
they included JT65 QSOs? What about WAS and VUCC awards?

For the record, none of my DXCC or Challenge award credits come from "K1JT
mode" QSOs, but I am using FT8 QSOs in this year's CQ DX Marathon on 160m.

      73,

              Dave, AA6YQ