As a younger old guy in ham radio at 53, licensed since 1978, I am
enjoying the heck out of FT8. It is very different than other modes
such as CW or SSB.
Why the commotion? It takes up a couple of KC's on the band and nobody
is forcing you to do it.
It is allowing people how have smaller stations the opportunity to get
on and use their radios and a computer to make contacts they never would
have been able to make. This is great for ham radio!
FT8 is just another form of RTTY in my eyes. A computer decodes RTTY
just like other data modes. Was there this much angst when it came out?
Unfortunately most old farts in ham radio don't really care if it goes
on or not. The majority of t he ham radio population is old. They are
in it only for themselves and most will not be around in 10 to 20 years.
To survive, ham radio, is going to need things like FT8 and probably
much more to continue. We pride our selves on our emergency
communications. How many people were involved in the hurricanes this
year. Very very very little.
People should be excited that there are now so many signals on 160!
Instead we have 20 plus responses the end of 160 is here. Actually it is
the start of much much more. It is still hard. You still have to have
enough of an antenna to get out. You still have to be able to be heard
and you have to be able to hear. The east coast is still going to
dominate in the DX world even on FT8 from the USA. The only technology
that will make up for that advantage is a remote station on the east
coast, which is a thing!
I have worked one station on 160 FT8 V31MA. I have not been focusing
on 160 though.
Working DX on FT8 is interesting and requires different skills similar
but different to RTTY.
I have worked 405 stations on FT8 since October 14th which was my first
contact on FT8.
Every station my radio hears is uploaded to hamspots.net. That is
pretty cool. With JTalerts I can send a message instantly to other
JTAlert users thanking them for the contact or asking them a question.
Psychologist should figure out why people especially older people have
such a big issue with changes to their lives or their hobbies. Every
change is bad and nothing is ever better.
The dreaded computer continues to be blamed yet everyone here is using
one to email, to log, to send your morse code, to watch your SDR, to
forecasting the propagation but FT8 a mode that takes up 2 or 3 kc's is
going to ruin ham radio?
Try it you might actually like it. The only negative I have is with
people running huge power when it is not necessary, which plagues us on
all our bands but probably more so on 160 and the lack of being able to
have a conversation with the other station. It is easy to get working.
In the end hams have more people to work! This is a good thing. We can
sell ham radio to people with limited access to antennas and show them
they can actually make contacts around the world.
It may not be for everyone, PSK was not for me, but I am making a bunch
more ham radio contacts everyday instead of watching my DXCC needs list
and spot collector telling me there is nobody on that I need.
Like packet I don't think FT8 is going away until there is a better form
of it and that will be the rage.
W0MU
On 10/25/2017 2:25 AM, Steve Ireland wrote:
G’day
As a committed (yeah, that’s probably the right word - complete with white jacket that
laces up at the back) topbander since 1970, I’ve never been so intrigued and disturbed
by anything on the band as the emergence of the Franke-Taylor FT-8 digital mode.
For me, radio has always been all about what I audibly hear. I love all the
sounds that radio signals make - and even miss the comforting sound of Loran
that I grew up with around 1930kHz as a teenager in south-east England. Yeah, I
am one sick puppy.
With the emergence of high resolution bandscopes through SDR technology over the last
decade, I embraced that as it meant that I could find what DX stations I wanted to
hear and contact quicker and more easily (and, in particular, before those stations
who didn’t have the same technology).
It was really exciting and enhanced the sensual experience of radio by being
able to see what I could hear (and no dinosaur me, I was an SDR fan boy!).
During this period, there has also been an extraordinary development in digital
radio modes, in particular by Joe Taylor K1JT.
As a topbander I could see that these modes in which you ‘saw’ signals through
the medium of computer screen or window as being a remarkable technical achievement, but had
relatively little to do what I and the vast majority of active radio amateurs practiced as
radio on 160m, as it had nothing to do with the audible.
The good thing was that I could see that good old CW and Silly Slop Bucket (you can
see where my prejudices lie) that I like to use were still the modes of choice for
weak signal DX topband radio contact as these fancy digital modes were either very
slow or, if they weren’t, were not good at dealing with signals that faded up
and down or were covered in varying amounts of noise.
While some amateurs seemed to have lost the pleasure of actually hearing
signals in favour of viewing them on their computer screens, I felt secure that
these digital modes were just a minor annoyance and any serious DXer or
DXpedition was never going to seriously going to use them, particularly on my
first and all-time love topband, for other than experimentation.
Then, out of the blue, along comes FT-8. Joe and Steve Franke K9AN have quietly
created the holy grail of digital operation with a mode that can have QSOs
almost as fast as CW and SSB and over the last eight weeks 160m DXing has
changed, perhaps for ever.
Where once there were a few weak CW and SSB signals (I am in VK6, which is a looong
way from anywhere with a population so we only ever hear a few), I can see that the
busiest part of the band is 1840 kHz – FT-8 central. On some nights I can see
FT-8 signals on the band but no CW or SSB.
There are countries I’ve dreamed for 20 years of hearing on 160m SSB/CW (for
example, KG4) regularly appearing on DX clusters and I can see the heap of FT-8
activity on my band scope.
Frustration sets in and I even downloaded the FT-8 software but, when it comes down to it, I
just can’t use it. My heart isn’t in it.
My computer will be talking to someone else’s computer and there will be no sense of
either a particular person’s way of sending CW or the tone of their voice (even the
way some my SSB mates overdrive their transceivers is actually creating nostalgia in me). The
human in radio has somehow been lost.
I think back to my best-ever 160m SSB contact with Pedro NP4A and I can still
hear the sound of his voice, his accent, when he came up out of the noise and
to my amazement answered me on my second call, with real excitement in his
voice. Pure radio magic!
So I am sitting here, feeling depressed and wondering if overnight I have become a
dinosaur and this is the beginning of the end of topband radio as I’ve always
enjoyed it.
Now, over to you other topbanders, especially those who have dabbled with FT-8
and live in more populous areas. Has the world really turned upside down and
what do you think the future holds?
Vy 73
Steve, VK6VZ/G3ZZD
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