Topband: Straws in the wind, continued or, "Where's the DX?"

[Milan Dlabac]

I fully agree with You.I can tell You, that lot of old timers in my country
never will go to FT8.I am 68 years old and i promise You that You will find
me  on cw till I die.The same ok1tn, ok1au and lot of others.That madness of
ft8 is really the end of radioamateuring.
By the way You will find me on ol8hq station on 80m cw this summer at IURU
contest.Please, give me the shout.We will be strong(we will use 3el over 3
Yagi at 50m high).

Cw will not die at least for 10 years.

Milan
Ok1awz

-----Original Message-----
From: Topband [mailto:topband-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Brad
Anbro
Sent: Sunday, April 1, 2018 12:04 PM
To: topband at contesting.com
Subject: Topband: Straws in the wind, continued or, "Where's the DX?"

Hello fellow DX'ers,

I have been following the discussion of FT8 and how it relates to the future
of ham radio in general, and in DX'ing, in particular. I am a 66 year-old
retired industrial electrician, who has been licensed sine 1981, having
first received my Novice Class ticket, then upgrading to Advanced and then
finally, to Extra Class in 1983. Needless to say, these were licenses in
which it was REQUIRED to pass Morse Code tests.

Up until recently, I operated on all HF bands, from 10 meters through 160
meters and my operating mode is about 99% CW. The local ham radio club put
on a talk about FT8 a couple of months ago. I sat there and politely
listened to what was being said. I can state for a fact that I will NEVER
engage in the FT8 mode of communication or in any of the other "digital"
modes.

To my way of thinking, ham radio is about PEOPLE communicating with other
people; not about computers
(machines) communicating with other computers (machines). The purpose of
this post is not to condemn any person who operates using these digital
modes. If that is what he or she wants to do, great! But to compare
operating with FT8 with CW is, in my opinion, like comparing apples and
oranges. In the FT8 talk at the local ham radio club meeting, it was stated
that FT8 communications will "get through" under conditions that would not
allow even CW communications to get through.

I very much enjoy DX'ing on 80 and 160 meters because of the challenge of
dealing with the weak signals and the QRN levels with which one has to
contend. Here again, to my way of thinking, if one runs up a big country
total, say on 160 meters, with FT8 and attempts to "compare" that with
another DX'ing on
160 meters using CW or SSB, he or she is making an unfair comparison (apples
& oranges).

I recently moved from northern Illinois to eastern Tennessee, to enjoy my
retirement years and am in the process of putting up a guyed Rohn 55G tower
and will install a Cushcraft XM240 (small 2-element
40 meter monoband yagi) and a Hygain 204BA (4-element 20 meter monoband
yagi) on the tower. That way, I will have a good antenna for a "daytime"
band (20 meters) and one for a "night-time" band (40 meters). I am also
going to put up antennas so that I can get back to working DX on 80 & 160
meters.

Back in Illinois, I operated on all three "WARC bands" and managed to run up
a country total of over
300 DXCC entities on all three WARC bands. I had a home-built copy of a KLM
30M-3 (KLM's 3-element
30 meter monoband yagi) installed at the 87' level of one of my towers and
managed to work 327 DXCC entities on that band, all with using no more than
100 watts of transmitter power.

Before moving to Tennessee in May of 2017, I noticed that the DX on 30
meters was getting less and less. This winter, I quickly put up a delta loop
for 30 meters, in hopes of working Kosovo on that band, as a new DXCC
entity. After putting the antenna up, I found that there was very little DX
to work, using the CW mode of communication. I was not surprised by this in
the least.

I am very afraid that after I go through with all of the work and expense of
again establishing an HF station here in Tennessee that the other bands will
go the route of 30 meters - that there will be less and less CW-DX on those
bands, because most of the operation will have shifted to FT8. I can already
see that happening right now. Twenty meters seems to "close up" here around
1430Z - 1500Z but it really doesn't "close up" - I've heard MANY loud
European stations in the afternoon, calling a DX station that was on a
DX-pedition, the European stations trying to "work a new one." I have also
tuned around on 40 and 80 meters at night and have experienced a lack of DX
stations on CW, especially on 80 meters.

I am going to put up my HF antennas and will continue to work DX, using CW
as my preferred means of communicating. I will be content to work the
"garden variety DX" and will try my best to act as a "good-will ambassador"
for my country, the United States...
_________________
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