Hi Gang
It is mid summer here and E season on 6M has been fun to play with while 160m
is pretty S L O W as it usually is.
On these pages there has been alot of chatter regarding FT8 - (which basically
took over 6M DX'ing starting in July 2917 - all DX is now on 50.313 FT8 - which
is why I had to adopt this mode in order to continue DX'ing on 6m). It was
either do that or give up operating on 6M during E season.
I do hope that CW continues to thrive on Topband - but this past season there
was TONS of DX on FT8 and in my opinion LESS DX on CW than in prior years. It
is quite possible to work in JA on 160m from here on FT8 with 100w out - which
would have been quite rare indeed on CW as I recall (I do not think I ever
worked JA with 100w from here - but who knows?)
Today as I write this - I am listening to 28.074Mhz on a totally DEAD 10m band.
If I tune the entire CW portion and the whole SSB portion, there is NOTHING -
repeat NOTHING there - no signals whatsoever to be found.
Yet on 28.074Mhz - I just worked a whole page of Europeans on FT8 - to my
almost total INCREDULITY!!
I am not sure how I feel about all of this - but one thing is SURE - the DX
world has changed - and there is no looking back.
I love CW on Topband and used to love CW on 6m - but that no longer exists -so
I do hope the 6m migration to FT8 does not repeat itself on Topband!
To all a good summer and CU on CW again starting in September.
73 JEFF VY2ZM
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