[VHFcontesting] FT8 and Up

[Steve Kavanagh]

Herb

I made one FT8 QSO on 432 upon request from a station around 40-50 km away.  Signal was good - it would have been easy copy on CW, maybe on SSB.  But FT8 had a hard time copying, though it eventually worked after quite a few repeats.  It wasn't hard to see the problems....you know what 432 tropo/troposcatter signals sound like...lots of fading, multiple aircraft- and other- scatter signals on different frequencies (some of them drifting), etc.  Much of the time the different scatter signals' bandwidths overlapped and interfered with each other.

I wouldn't recommend it - FT8 seems to be out of its element, though it was interesting to see all the various different frequency components of the signal on the waterfall!

73,
Steve VE3SMA