Like this Robot FT8 Maritime Mobile Stn from 2018- KH6JF/MM "Voyager".. Got a few rare grids from it. 73, Eric
JS8 is a bit odd too.. A short sentence is broken up every 13 characters or so.. I do dig the JS8 Beacon mode on 10m though. 73, Eric
So - while I dont endorse fully-automated FT8.... The point that some are missing in this never-ending debate is that the engineering of the station and not the operating of it is the competitive or enjoyable part for some folks. They want the awards or the credits or whatever to demonstrate what the station they built can do, not to prove they had their butt in a chair (and also, had the financial and social freedom to choose to have their but in that chair) for x thousands of hours. We all have our personal standards. I have no interest in remote-running other peoples stations via pay-to-play services, and that's me. Other folks either love to do this, or need to do this based on the constraints of their own lives... I don't endorse auto-FT8 because I believe we should all be looking where we TX as not to QRM others. That said, I think FT8 is great mode for those of us who are interested in distilling ham radio down to 'what can my station do, as built, given certain propagation conditions' and also 'what are the radio gods capable of providing propagation-wise, despite common understandings and assumptions'.
^This. Building and testing antennas, chasing bizarre propagation, experimenting with different bands... Something else people are missing is that it's possible to have both. You can run FT8 hands-off and still supervise what your station does. Since something like 97% of the time spent doing FT8 is nothing but watching a progress bar, it's actually easy to do, and is easily interleaved with other tasks. If nothing else, it saves a lot of wear and tear on your mouse hand from not having to double-click all the time. Perhaps more interestingly, it allows you to program policies for what stations you want to S&P, and allowing the machine to do so with more precision and predictability than if the operator tried to do so him/herself. I actually enjoy watching the PC make contacts... it's rewarding feedback for a software development job well done.
You'll be happy to know that FT8 id highly resistant to being "stepped on" by another station. Reason: Powerful signals get subtracted out so that weaker signals can surface in subsequent passes. There's really not much to worry about here with FT8....
How true. "Highly resistant", but not immune to QRM. What's the answer? You can't see-and-avoid what you can't decode. Look at web SDRs constantly?
RR on JT65A @ 48 sec sequences.. There was a big issue about using the "Call3 Text" file for improved confidence decoding about 12 yrs ago when running JT65B on 50/144 MHz EME etc.. . Ref the rules and regs for Region2 >> Google & read the controversy over Jose Ros' - "ROS" mode..Whew! That one took a few years to sort out for US operators.. And then there is "Opera" See pic below... 73
Sometimes I do check websdr's to make sure I'm not transmitting over top unheard stations if I'm trying to work a DX station and it seems like my efforts are failing. Sometimes, though I'll just try a different spot. No good one answer to it though.
FT8 is already boring and not something to talk with others ... it is simply point and click, and with no redeeming technical knowledge or operational experience. WinLink is promising.
Maybe I missed something as I did not read all 20 pages. If I read Part 97 correctly, automatic operation is not permitted on most of the FT8 frequencies. If I have this wrong, please enlighten me.
