Marshall is right on with his comments. Grids have been used now since
the mid 80's and anyone getting on VHF needs to become very comfortable
using them EVERY QSO!!
As far as FT8 and the MSK derivatives go during contests, use them
during eme or late night/early morning long distance activities when
activity is low. I can't stress enough how useless of a contest mode
these are. As W9RM pointed out, contests are about making the max number
of Q's and mults, when local activity is there, don't waste your time on
these slow digital modes, they were not designed for speed and working a
local is just senseless.
Set your stations up for FT8 and test throughout the year but when it
comes contest time, PLEASE use SSB/CW!!!
Terry - W8ZN
On 2018-01-28 11:38 am, Al Wells wrote:
I think a lot of old VHFers were forced to kluge together setups for
FT8 when they realized there was much less SSB activity and were taken
by surprise by the "noise" on 313. With zero experience with digital
modes, we started with default settings but figured out to check
contest mode after fumbling through one or two QSO's. I saw several
other stations go through the same thing.
I'm pretty sure this particular problem will sort itself out quickly.
How many people were scrambling to figure out where something like OE29
was?
73
Al KB3SIG
On 1/27/2018 13:34, Marshall-K5QE wrote:
Hello Alex....the "rules" for what constitutes a proper VHF contact
have been set for over 50 years. No less than Ed Tilton-W1HDQ was the
person involved in the very early days. A proper VHF contact requires
the sending and receiving on both ends of both calls, a signal report
of some kind, and a Roger. In a contest, the signal report is the
GRID....+07 is absolutely useless.
IF the HF newbies would send TX1, which does contain the grid,
consistently, then we could get that piece of information from there.
However, often THEY DON'T. They send TX2 which DOES NOT have the
grid. This means that you cannot get the grid over the air and hence
the contact is not valid. You can waste a huge amount of time trying
to get one of these guys to send his grid OR you can just move on to
someone that knows what they are doing. Your choice.
I did run into a few ops that were still sending "the funny little
numbers" on MSK. All that I recall did send TX1 so that I could get
the GRID. I did exactly what you recommend....I sent RRR and went on
down the road.
I don't care how the HFers operate when they are on HF. I care a lot
about how they operate when they are on the VHF bands. I and many
others, don't want the kind of operating the we hear on HF to infect
the VHF bands. In the UK, if you drive on the right hand side of the
road, you will be pulled over and given a ticket. That is because you
don't know the "rules of the road" for the road on which you are
driving.
I believe that with some education, the newer ops will learn what is
acceptable and what is not. Apparently, it is going to take some
time. I think that a major problem is sending the "funny little
numbers" during casual operation. I believe that we should send GRIDS
at all times on VHF. That is what we do on the other modes, why
should FT8 and / or MSK be different? This will undoubtedly cause a
pot load of flames, but I have a delete key and I know how to use it.
If we show the beginners the "funny little numbers" all the time and
then when we have a contest, we do something different, they will
never learn.
Thoughtful replies gratefully accepted.....flames---->bit bucket.
73 Marshall K5QE
On 1/25/2018 6:39 PM, Alex wrote:
Perhaps some "VHF types" could behave less like "HF newbies" and
learn to just send an RRR message when that happens. That will
advance the other side to the 73 message. You already got their grid
on the first message.
73,
--Alex KR1ST
FN21
On 2018-01-25 18:37, Marshall-K5QE wrote:
...and that took a long time, because we kept
running into "HF newbies" that were not using the contest mode.
ASIDE: Somehow, we need to get these HF types to learn that we need
grids not +07 for a signal report. END ASIDE
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