A ham friend, participant on many, many big DXpeditions, and a terrific CW/RTTY
op, presented to our DX club a while back. During the presentation he asked
for a show of hands of those who actually have audio on when operating digital
modes. I raised my hand, since on RTTY I feel that hearing the pileup is
beneficial. He shook his head and stated more-or-less that he loved FT-8
because he didn't have to listen to it for hours. Draw your own conclusions of
where this might be headed. I've worked about 80 countries just fooling around
with FT-8 but I don't claim them for DXCC credit, and in fact, none are new ones.
Re: financial support. Personally, I contribute to NCDXF, INDEXA and individual
expeditions I feel deserve it. My DX club also supports NCDXF. That said,
after contributing a substantial amount to the snake oil salesman who organized
a major expedition, but made promises that he had no intention of keeping, I no
longer contribute ahead of time. If I judge an expedition to be worthy after
the fact, I'll still contribute.
Wes N7WS
On 4/12/2019 7:20 PM, Steve Ireland wrote:
G'day
FT-8 is so much less labour and operator skill-intensive than CW/SSB that it
has a fatal attraction for DXpeditions - more people can be worked more easily
and more quickly.
Added to this, "He who holds the gold makes the rules" and DXpeditions mostly
hold the gold as we want to work them.
So if increasing numbers of DXpeditions are intending to use FT-8 on 160m what
can we CW/SSB ops do about it to turn this around?
To start with, we can stop using FT-8 at all in our day-to-day 160m operation. The
less stations there are on FT-8 on 160m the less temptation/likelihood there is of a
DXpedition using FT-8 it - particularly if all the 160m stations with good transmit
and receive antennas aren’t using it.
Perhaps even more important – and we come back to the gold metaphor - when you make a
DXpedition donation – and please do so - clearly state you are interested in 160m
CW/SSB and do not use FT-8.
Vy 73
Steve, VK6VZ
They ain't gonna work me.? I'm with you.? Did the FT-8 last summer for around
400 Qs...that was quite enough.? If I don't make 200, 300 countries because I
don't FT-8, so what?
KH7XS
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