FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

It's good to see some here state diplomatic opinions concerning operating modes. Having attended an HOA annual meeting last night I am totally amazed at how much rancor can be stirred up by someone merely stating their opinion. I merely stated that administrative costs exceeding 25% of net revenue appeared a little high to me. You would have thought I had questioned the morals of the President of the board's spouse given the response I received. I was glad I was in a room surrounded by other homeowners for protection.
As some one accurately stated a long time ago..."We have met the enemy...and he is us!"

 

I was in a similar situation for 7 years. Promised myself I was going to do whatever it took to buy a house free of all this BS. Very fortunate to have succeeded. I don't want to face anything like it ever again, even after death, so cremation is the direction I have given the family when 'propagation' finally closes on on me.

The problem is that it's getting harder and/or expensive to escape this 'arrangement', in big cities at least. Maybe the younger generation will see it as just part of life, and go with the flow, no hamradio though. Harder for us OF.

 

I've got WAS using FT8 v1.x, now going for WAS with FT8 v2.x

 

^ KJ4VTH operated by K1JT

 

Finally someone brings up a good point about FT8 and that's actually getting confirmations for the contacts. I've been running FT8 and CW about 98 percent of the time for the past year. What I have observed is about 95 percent of FT8 contacts are uploaded to LoTW in a 24 to 48 hour period, were only about 30 percent of CW or SSB contacts are ever uploaded. During the past 2 CW contests, I worked 100 stations by CW and 100 stations by FT8. These were contest stations running CW so I'm sure that they were logging. I also ensured that I only worked stations that were showing up on the DX cluster that indicated that they had uploaded to LoTW in the past. The results are:

Contest number 1: 98 percent of the FT8 contacts were uploaded and confirmed by LoTW, while only 28 of the CW contacts were uploaded and confirmed by LoTW. The 28 contacts took over 6 weeks to reach that total. The FT8 contacts hit 98 percent in 5 days.

Contest number 2: 96 percent of the FT8 Contact were uploaded and confirmed by LoTW, while only 33 of the CW contact were uploaded and confirmed by LoTW. The 33 contact took 4 weeks to reach that total. The FT8 Contacts were confirmed in under 4 days.

Hams are still looking forward to getting that wall paper. As the above writer states that he only has 3 states to go. I managed to work WAS on 9 bands in 2 months running FT8. I'm still trying to get WAS on one band running SSB and CW, after 9 years of operating and logging and uploading every contact that I make. It seems that SSB and CW operators, just don't log their contacts.

As for DXCC, after 9 years of operating, I have 245 countries confirmed by SSB and CW. In a one year period, I've confirmed 146 contrives using FT8. I Also travel a lot, so out of that one year period, I've been away from that station for at least 6 month. The nice thing about the FT8 confirmation is, I didn't have to send $3.00 to this guy, or $10.00 to another guy, just to get him to upload the contacts to LoTW. Which is a pretty common practice for SSB and CW DX contacts. FT8 operators, just seem to upload their contact.

So if you want to keep CW and SSB alive, start logging your contacts and uploading them LoTW. If your chasing DX, who wants to work a country, that will never be confirmed.

Regards and 73's,

Mike Chasse
w7wrj

 

Well said! I'm relatively new to FT8, started in November. Of my 257 FT8 contacts in LotW, only 68 are unconfirmed. For RTTY, of my 142 contacts in LotW, only 40 are unconfirmed. For my 909 SSB in LotW, it's right at 550 confirmed. And I basically only run contests (since I have so little on-air time, I try to maximize my QSO/QSL rate), so I know the other side is logging..

So, confirmation rates are:

• FT8 = 73%
• RTTY = 72%
• SSB = 60%

John
N9OU

 

ft8 is nothing but become a robot.you will be looking at the monitor,and nothing else to do.i test the ft8 and is a waste of time. i will not use it.i'm not become a robot looking at a monitor.

 

I'll stick with big ole radio with a lot of knobs and wires in the trees. I get confused operating cell phones digital maybe fun to those in the new digital age but wow I'm out of touch

 

I will be there along thousands of others, CW wont go away like FT8 is.

 

well i am not interested in data modes per say, but come on is this real radio... imo it’s not, it’s very hard to find people on the air in the uk on just about any band so why oh why have this, it’s almost as interesting as watching paint dry, in fact why can’t we just have less bands to play on ? this may bring some life back into radio as it used to be, all these new modes where one radio made by yaesu will not talk to the other like an icom, bring back the common ground here, THATS MEANT TO BE RADIO not this rubbish of buy mine it’s better than the others,
DMR
FT8
PSK
FTM
DIGITAL
ETC ETC, some may say that cw is the only mode that matters but we have all fallen for the let’s text and not talk to each other using a phone, let’s not buy a camera as my phone has one on it, nothing is killing ham radio other than itself with the rubbish we are ALL having shoved into our faces,

i could go on but its Christmas catch you all on the air some time real soon,

bob g0wyd

 

I sorta got hooked on ft8 around the middle of this year. Had lots of fun working the grid chase, picked up a couple new countries. Found it easy to run while doing something else in the shack, only have to pay attention every couple minutes.

But, I don't see that I will stick with it as I would rather be chatting on cw.

73 es tnx for a fun run with ft8,
Larry KB0R

 

FT8 signals use the same ionospheric point to point path as ssb/cw so it most certainly is a radio path.

Dmr, Fusion, Dstar use a point to point VOIP Path so some may say that is not radio.

I say enjoy them all

Mele Klikimaka !

G3SEA/KH6

 

Whoops ! Mele Kalikimaka !

G3SEA/KH6

 

What young people of today want. No talking, no skill, no effort, and no patience.

 

You forgot: smart phones and dumb apps. And NOW!