>>>AA6YQ comments below
-----Original Message-----
From: Mark K3MSB [mailto:mark.k3msb@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2017 1:28 PM
To: Dave AA6YQ
Cc: topBand List
Subject: Re: Topband: A way forward to keep 'old school' modes vibrant
alongside FT-8? (long)
You can’t retract any awards, and I don’t believe you even have to worry about
that.
>>>I'm not personally worried, Mark. As I said, none of my DXCC or Challenge
>>>award credits were made with K1JT modes. I was referring to the impact on
>>>award recipients who included K1JT modes in their submissions over the past
>>>several years.
Let’s say you have 150 Confirmed on 160M right now using a combination of SSB,
CW, FT8 etc. The current single band award would not change – it’s “Mixed” by
default. I would envision 3 new awards to come into existence -- 160M-SSB,
160M-CW, and 160M-FT8.
As I mentioned before, once you have the software written for one mode
specific band award (ex: 160M-CW),
>>>Extending DXCC to include band-mode combinations would have large
>>>implications for the award program. Why just for 160m, as you propose above?
>>>From the other extreme, many ops complain about pileup congestion caused by
>>>award chasers seeking new entity-bands for DXCC Challenge; adding
>>>entity-band-modes would make this worse.
then it’s a simple extension to add –SSB, -FT8, -AM, -PSK31, -Digital etc
(unless you really bolloxed up the architectural stage of the software design).
The ability to easily add new band/mode combinations will be essential to
facilitate new modes that will be available in the future. Like I posted
before, it’s not rocket science to get this done.
>>>Given the context, it's not obvious why you're focusing on software, but if
>>>you're referring to DXLab, which I develop and maintain, it has long
>>>supported the pursuit of WAZ awards, which do support a full matrix of
>>>zones, bands, and modes. I'll extend DXLab to support whatever the ARRL and
>>>the other primary award sponsors do, as I (and other logging application
>>>developers) have done for many years.
>>>A "level playing field" issue that ops have raised is that some have
>>>labored a lifetime to achieve Honor Roll on RTTY, only to have the ARRL
>>>"dilute" this by accepting digital modes that make it "easier" to work DX:
>>>PSK, Olivia, JT65, and now FT8. There's a similar issue with Mixed awards
>>>for particularly challenging bands like 160m and 6m. Adding new
>>>mode-specific awards avoids the "retraction" issue that would occur if the
>>>ARRL were to redefine the 160m DXCC awards and endorsements to exclude FT8,
>>>or redefine the DXCC Digital awards and endorsements to exclude FT8 - but
>>>adding new mode-specific awards doesn't address the "dilution of my lifelong
>>>effort" issue.
73,
Dave, AA6YQ
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