I was the main two meter op at W2SZ. I am not opposed to FT8 — it is an
advantage to those with no other advantage. That said, it is huge time
suck, where SSB and CW QSOs can take as little as 10 seconds.
I decided to do no FT8 during the first 8 hours of the contest. For us, it
worked well… I was the focal point to passing ops to other bands. We went
to EME and meteor scatter overnight. on Sunday, we did FT8 in the morning,
we did brisk business. Our best DX was 658 miles. PSKReporter had us
-12dB at KA9FOX in WI, at 908 miles, but Scott was nowhere to be found.
The biggest trouble with FT8 is the lack of a decent way to pass people
efficiently, especially with rovers.
I did not die doing FT8, I just didn’t rely on it as much. Such is a
luxury of being at 3489’. Thanks for all that called in, and see you next
time.
After 30+ years of doing this, we are a long way from the 400-600 QSOs we
used to make on 2m. That is amazing, as 90% of the amateur licensees are
Technician class these days. Either way, I still get a thrill over working
guys 300 miles away who are running 10w, or EME, msk144 or even FT8.
73
Gerry W1VE
One on the W2SZ MGEF gang
On Mon, Sep 12, 2022 at 8:33 AM <k3sk@buckwalter.co> wrote:
>
> I blame most of the weekend on very bad propagation and mostly general lack
> of participation.
>
> This was both, the worst propagation in 30 years I ever remember during a
> VHF contest. And, it was also my first ever contest using a digital mode
> (FT8). I worked as many SSB contacts as I could find, with frequent moves
> to
> that portion of the band. I only heard 4 or 5 CW calls and all but one was
> stations I already had logged.
>
> During the later hours almost all FT8 I copied were dupes, calls I worked
> on
> SSB or FT8 earlier. This was no different than other VHF contests, where
> only the diehards and power-house multi-op stations just keep hammering
> away. I did the same thing. I kept visiting the SSB calling frequencies and
> called over and over with no response.. Then I'd go to FT8 and do the same
> thing, getting the same results.
>
> Regardless of the mode, it was tough digging out a contact. An example that
> proves this point is 222 MHz. Of the contest bands it's not a normally
> active band but it's one I have and enjoy. I run a full KW and 4 10 element
> LFAs on 222 MHz. In the past on this band I've worked 20 to 50 QSOs,
> sometimes more. Over this entire weekend I worked 9 contacts! 5 of them
> were
> on SSB and 4 were on FT8. There's nothing wrong with the equipment as half
> the QSOs were 400+ mile contacts, Q5 copy and some of those were SSB. On
> FT8
> I kept hearing the same 3 stations over and over again all weekend.
>
> There just wasn't anyone there to work, regardless of mode.
>
> de K3SK
>
>
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>
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