Keith nailed it for the serious contester .. RULE #1 you go to the
band/mode/whatever that yields the highest rate! But one caveat for VHF that
makes it different is that you can't (usually) win on one band and you may have
to make the occasional exception to run a Rover and/or a multiband station that
is there now but won't be later for the extra points and mults. If your at a
multi like Keith was that is taken care of by others. But staying on FT8 or
even CW when you can get a better rate on SSB is just plain poor decision
making. As is waiting in a DX pileup .. it's just one more 6M mult after all!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FT8 is great for weak Es bubbles. Its a great tool for sure and I embrace it!
I just wish more stations were listen on 2M too and not glued to the screen.
I'm betting its not the death of CW/SSB and the pendulum will swing back a
little to the center when the shiny new wears off a bit. I can see the wisdom
of smaller stations sticking with FT8 as long as they can but that said you
can't get blood out of a turnip either. If FT8 is jammed up with strong
signals the little guys have no choice but to play elsewhere like on CW or SSB.
Heck when the band is really open it doesn't take much of a station or antenna
to be S9 or better. There are plenty of guys calling CQ that can hear the
little guys just fine and I worked a few hundred of them myself this past
weekend. My neighbor up the river who just got on 6M (and totally fits the
limited resources just out of college and on his own description) worked a
couple hundred Qs on 6M with 50W and a loop up 20' mostly on SSB! When the band
is really open even the little guys can have fun and rock out! And yes he did
work FT8 when the band was quieter but if he had stayed there he wouldn't have
worked 10% of what he did. Rule #1 He gets it! As does AC0RA who is still
under 30 and renting yet has mounted national winning limited rover efforts
over the past 5 years.
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Let you in a dirty little secret. Yes I do have some killer antennas but they
are not always the ones pointed at you. I also have some old CC 5els (you know
the crummy ones with gamma matches that people practically give away) up at 20
feet fixed on TX and FL. Heck even a renter kid can afford one of these and
put it up on temp pipe over the weekend. When I'm low power 200W I'm only 3db
louder than the 100W guys and I'm often using these small antennas and getting
20 over 9 reports when the band is open. Yeah K5TR is 40 over running a kW and
big antennas down the band, but I'm still running rate! So FT8 isn't the only
game in town for the small guy when things heat up.
------------------------------------------------------------- . And any
way you slice it the rules do limit you to one signal per band (though I
thought they made a loophole for an APRS TX). So the Multiops won't stay on FT8
(I did see W2SZ on FT8) when 6M rips open like it does because THEY all get it
too! Yeah maybe some will stay in FT8 and endure the QRM. But to call
yourself a Contester you can't be a one mode wonder, ya got go where the Qs are!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
73 de Bob2 K2DRH
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