[VHFcontesting] FT8 and the ARRL June VHF Contest

[Keith Morehouse]

I think the problem with the whole "QSY 2" thing on FT8 is the other guy
(probably not an experienced contest op) doesn't know if you mean QSY to 2
using FT8 on some frequency he's not savvy to, or QSY 2 on the calling freq
with SSB.  You would think MOST people would understand that 95% of the
operation on bands above 6M is on the calling freq, but maybe not.

To tell you the truth, if I was on 50.313 running FT8 and was asked by
someone on FT8 to QSY to another band, I'm not sure I would be confident we
would get hooked up again.  I think I would probably respond "FREQ?" or
some-such unless I absolutely knew where the guy was going by pre-arranged
agreement or by the fact we had done it before.

The BEST scenario would be for the "local guy on FT8" with other bands to
check 144.200 or 432.100 occasionally and not get so damn fixated on his
WSJT screen.  He has other bands, why not look at them occasionally ?

-W9RM

Keith J Morehouse
Managing Partner
Calmesa Partners G.P.
Olathe, CO

On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 10:23 AM, k2drh at frontiernet.net <
k2drh at frontiernet.net> wrote:

>
>    - There are ways to get stations to QSY to 2M inthe 13 character TX5
> free message but it’s hard and takes up a lot of time.  I tried a few
> different ones:
>       - Just sending QSY 2M? or even WB#xxx QSY 2M(exactly 13 – spaces
> count) resulted in fail open most of the time or at best afree message back
> that said “Where?” or “Freq?” and took a lot of time.  Am I wrong or do we
> have a CALL frequency on2M where you can CALL another station? Seemed
> obvious to me but …
>       - Sending QSY 144xxx was also inefficient andwasted time while it
> was processed (who, me?). I also kept hoping that maybe multiplelocals
> would see it and try to make a few more Qs too, but I guess it never
> occurredto them to try.