Goodbye FT8, Hello Olivia, The MAGIC Digital Mode For HF!

With the aging ham population and the slow speed of Olivia, there is the significant possibility of at least one party in the QSO going SK while waiting for the transmission to finish.

 

...I can't believe that this topic has garnered 16 pages of responses. I did not read them all. Did anyone mention the bandwidth that Olivia requires? If it is "widely" used, there is not much space for many contacts on any given band. The good news is, PSK31 can be decoded right on top of Olivia or Contesia signals.

OT, what is with all of the FT signals spilling over into the PSK and RTTY portions of some bands? Are there no designated spots for FT?

 

I know 16 pages of really nerdy stuff, but thanks if it wasn't for you type of hams we would not have any of those Fun Modes Kudos to you Guys!

 

I sure did. Because it's so wide, you can get like 2 or 3 Olivia signals on a waterfall? FT8 I've decoded over 20 at one time.

There are designated spots. On some bands, those new designated FT8 space conflicts with established PSK (and Olivia!) "bandplans", and in those cases have been met with a shrug. Most people (if they can see it) try not to interfere with another mode's QSO.

Some people have drifted a little lower (or higher), but not most.

 

To quote a seen from "The Matrix" by a program wearing dark glasses, "Is it over?"

 

61 countries 194 contacts since July 20 to July 30 all continents except africa, I can say that it has been excellent for me. Warning ... not for turtles you have to be a fast hunter ha ha and you can interact with a few words at the end.---

 

I have tested most all digital modes and I must say Olivia is my favorite. I like it because I can setup a sked with other hams and always get thru.

 

So its ok for your computer to get an award for you? Not much of an award if you just sit back and let your computer get the paper. Spin the dial and do an actual QSO. That means something. Why not just sell your radio, print yourself some certificates for "Emailed all states" or "Texted all States"? At least you would have made the contacts and maybe had an actual conversation instead of taking a nap, watch the game, go eat dinner and check in every couple of hours to see what your computer did. Zombie mode for sure.

 

No, I'm using FT8 om many HF-band and for my use this is the best !!
Greetings de OH0KCE Aland-Islands

 

I tried Olivia, not for me. I moved on, no name calling, no mode shaming. If another ham wants to use tin cups and string, thats his choice.

 

I don't get the "half mode" logic... since clock is received via Internet that somehow makes JT/FT illegitimate because it isn't all "wireless".

Soooo... when I set my clock by hand listening to WWV and use FT/JT is it now suddenly legit because I used "all radio" to perform these tasks?

:-D

Tom, W2YF

 

I rarely use the internet to synchronize my clock. A USB GPS receiver does that job for me.

 

We get that you don't approve of the mode. A conversation is not a requirement of a QSO. Have you actually used FT8? Apparently not based on your comments; you don't "take a nap, watch a game", you have to work at it just like any other digital mode, including RTTY.

If a conversation is a QSO requirement, I guess all the contesting contacts, meteor scatter, EME, DX pileups, etc., shouldn't count.

 

Hi Tom, the word "clock" has two meanings here, for totally different ideas.

First idea is real time, as you noted. It's great to have the exact hours and minutes on the computer. But JT modes are looking at the seconds, they all coordinate by "top of the minute", :00

Second idea is "clock recovery". That is, separating the different symbols in the transmission. Think about CW, how does and dahs run together, if the sender does not put a space (dead air) between Morse letters.

Every encoding has this problem. Some encodings are "self clocking", the receiver can do some work to separate the symbols. Check out Manchester Encoding to see a simple example of how "clock recovery" works.

JT65 devotes half of the signal to "sync tones", arguably working as "clock recovery". Other JT modes do not, and use other mechanisms to separate the transmitted symbols, arguably a 3dB gain.

Editorial: this thread is disappointing to me because it's gone on so long without making these ideas clear. Several of the posters know all this but for whatever reasons made intentionally obfuscatory and argumentative posts. Sorry.

 

Yeah, I have one of those. I got the Adafruit GPS hat, RPi board, and the external antenna from Amazon and the antenna sits outside my window on an angle bracket.

Total cost for all the parts was about $90 ( already had a PoE breakout and a multi-RPi rack). I have it enrolled in pool.ntp.org where it averages about 1ms drift from UTC.

The only thing you really need to do software wise is compile ntp to use pulse per second and install the gps related stuff via apt-get. There are many guides.