[VHFcontesting] The impact of the digital modes on the January VHF Contest and some suggestions on dealing with those impacts

[Steve Kavanagh]

I applaud James for trying to make something constructive of this discussion!  Grumbling about how much better things were in the old days alone does no good other than to demonstrate how far over the hill one is!

I, for one, was glad of the FT8 activity this January.  Being unable to go anywhere due to COVID lockdown, I operated from a my rather limited home station in a poor location.  VE3MIS still managed to break the Canadian LM record, for the second January in a row, without me, with mostly remote operation!  But I worked a lot of grids from home which were beyond my normal January SSB/CW range, under pretty poor conditions, for the most part.

That said, when things are open, or for local contacts, SSB and CW are much better than FT4, which is better than FT8, and some measures are called for to increase activity on the "old" modes, to (a) increase QSO rate, make things easier for rovers where the extra complication of a computer hooked to various rigs can be too complicated and power consuming (b) make things more accessible for newcomers and casual operators who may not have digital capability and (c) retain some of the experienced contesters who, for whatever reason, have no interest in digital modes.  I have also been wondering about activity times for SSB/CW and would be willing to try out James' suggestion on these.  It just needs to be heavily publicized.  Interestingly, this year, mostly through the efforts of a couple of local municipal radio clubs and one or two particularly keen operators, there was a huge increase in FM activity in this area, which can also increase newbie participation.  Some of that was set up on an activity time basis.  Within our club we set a few suggested times for SSB activity, too, which had some limited success, being purely local.

For rovers, activity times are less than optimum, since the operating schedule at each grid is severely constrained by many factors, but it might be better than the status quo.

73,
Steve VE3SMA