ARRL Announces New World Wide Digital Contest

I'm a bit surprised by this, but also not surprised at all. This is good news for antenna-restricted hams!

 

Fantastic! I prefer the written word to video myself so here's my unofficial summary: First weekend in June, will be annual. 160-6 meters. 30 hours, but with 8-hour sprint class, 24-hour limit for single ops. Special class for indoor antenna folks, so really a good contest for HOA-restricted and the like. Scoring is 1 point per contact and one per 310-miles of distance. Recommended frequencies to be posted, separate from usual FT8 frequencies.

 

Now if they would kick them out of the VHF contests, I would be happy again.

 

Happy to see the recommended frequencies are separate from the usual FT8 frequencies.
On 40 and 20 meters FT8, it sounds like a contest every day, as-is.
These contest frequencies might encourage people to spread out a little on a daily basis.

 

Awesome, I can run 3kw on ft8.

 

You mean right in the middle of the traditional other digital mode frequencies loke they historically have migrated to?
Between FT modes amd Winlink, there is not much left for the dozen or so other used digi modes.

 

The ARRL made a big step for hamradio into the future. And to leave the old standards of the 1970s and come to the year 2022 is delayed but now real. That shows that hamradio is alive and develops. At next the digital modes became in the last years of the solar minimum more and more popular. And to that came that not only shortwave developed.

 

I usually don't contest. Actually I never have, but maybe I will try portable for it. I can't run HF at home because it trips my breakers and maybe my neighbors too.

 

You mean on top of the other modes that the FT modes have moved not once, but twice already? So where does everyone else get moved to a 3rd time? I'm already tired of being QRMed on both sides of where FT modes are supposed to be when using PSK or MSFK and Hellscreiber.

 

Twenty years ago, PSK31 was all the rage and people were saying this same thing. But it was fun, and it helped get more people on the air to experience HF. It came, and then it went. FT8 is currently that "mode of the day" and people enjoy it. Right now I see about 40 stations on 40 meters FT8 crowded into 7074 to 7077 kHz. On 7071 to 7074, just dead air. On 7077 to 7080, no signal of any kind, but the band wide open to the Pacific, Japan, and Australia.

 

I suppose I'm just an old guy. I have DMR & DStar capabilities (no FT8 or Fusion) and I play on them occassionally, but I simply don't like digital. I know it's the wave of the future and a LOT of people use it but what are they going to do if/when we get an emergency situation and the internet, cell system or power grid goes down, even some of the the repeaters and commercial towers won't work? To me it seems that anyone with a portable generator and an HF rig will still be in touch, the rest ...? As we say up here ... y'all have fun, I'll 'play radio' the old way. Just my 2¢.

 

Why do we need so many MHz of HF spectrum, if we're only going to use 3 kHz of it per band.

As much as I dislike FT8 (not "hate", just "dislike") I'd rather see it spread out, and use more spectrum, than to have 99.7 % of our bands dead air.

 

Yes, you are absolutly right with your opinion. But think about technologies which dont have found much users in hamradio. For example there is the AOR ARD9800 Digital Voice Modem for nearly every shortwave transceiver. At next with a transverter you can play C4FM with the Yaesu devices at the 10M, too. There are more possibilities than you thought about.

 

IMO, we really don't need yet another bean-counting contest. FT8 or otherwise. There has to be something else in ham radio that we can place value on, other than rote bean-counting.