Guys,
Worked the WW DIGI Contest this weekend. It was a lot different contest than
I envisioned. Hardly any FT8 contest activity except on 80, where for some
reason the designated FT4 segment was empty. Plenty of FT8 activity; but
most of it was non-contest. Not enough Europeans and DX in the contest, and
W's were covering up the ones that were there. We needed an alternate 3 kHz
band segment.
The software still needs lots of work too. Not enough direction about which
module to use- VHF NA or just regular FT4/FT8. Neither really work that well
for a contest. The built in WSTJ ADIF file creator is very primitive and
cumbersome. Glad one can use the com option to log directly into N1MM. Too
bad WSTJ doesn't support an ability to respond to multiple stations at once
for contesters. I found it hard to deal with guys that would call once, and
then disappear even when you responded to them the first time, only to pop
up again in the middle of someone else's QSO. The program didn't always find
the grid square even when it was there. The program would regress to an
earlier line in the protocol if someone worked another station in parallel
with you. This happened over and over slowing things down. The signal
reports are for some reason are actually stronger for me on FT4 than FT8.
That said, I could watch the screen waterfall many times and see someone was
responding, but no decode. This was particularly true of guys responding to
me off my frequency, so it wasn't multiple folks calling on my frequency
that were confusing the decoder.
The program picked the first decode for auto respond during CQs. It was
frustrating to see it answer a W9 when a 3 point G or DL was calling. Yet if
you don't check the respond to first button, there just isn't enough tome to
do it manually. Just a lot of need for improvement.
Even though FT4 is twice as fast as FT8, I found it hard to get to 60 an
hour for all the reasons I mentioned above. I am a skeptic about those guys
with 500+ QSOs in the log. I strongly suspect walkaway robots on multiple
bands using the SO2R excuse.
I had lots of work to do for Hurricane Prep, so I could only afford 10
hours. But I sure hope some improvements are made.
Larry Brockman, N6AR
_______________________________________________
CQ-Contest mailing list
CQ-Contest@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
|