Strong Plasma cloud in offering on Jul. 2nd for Sporadic E

I don't think digital has been a waste of time at all. I was about to drop ham radio a couple of years ago and decided to give digital a try since my IC-7600 had built in RTTY. Frankly I wasn't to impressed as it was too finicky. The interface I built for RTTY and CW that connected my Apple II+ back in the 80's required less work to keep it synced up.

But it did get me interested enough to look at the other digital modes since the software was free and I have lots of computers to play with. I got interested in PSK31 and dabbled in that for awhile, then tried some other modes. I was interested enough to go as far as setting up my two radios (IC-7600 and IC-746Pro) with SignaLinks and their own computers so I could do digital on both HF/6m and 2 meters at the same time. I even bought two copies of HDR (when it was on a half price sale) plus installed a number of the free software for modes that HDR doesn't cover, such as the JT modes.

From the JT modes I've expanded out to trying out meteor scatter with MSK144 and I'm now playing with the new FT8 mode as well. So going from ready to hang it up to fairly deep into digital, I'd say that the digital modes is not a waste of time. I don't believe I'm the only one that has found this out either. When I started playing around with it and got into doing the JT modes, I had very few people around me here in the PNW that was into it. I had Japan, Asia, Russia and some Europe, etc., pretty much to myself in from this area. And from the contacts I made, it appeared that there was a lot of people that wanted to contact Oregon as I had worked all states in 3 weeks and sometimes I think every Japanese station in Japan.

This year somebody let the secrete out of the bag because the JT area on 6 meters is wall to wall a lot of the times from hams in my area. I know we are tripping over each other with our signals so I've moved to more MSK144 and FT8 for the time being and back to the JT area when everyone else things that 6 meters is closed and it's usually not. What many think is a dead 6 meters is usually open out at least 1100 miles. I can tell because of PSKReporter telling me where my digital signal is being seen when I send out CQ. I love the easy and quick ability that digital gives me to test my antennas and power settings. I wish SSB was as easy.

The social aspect of SSB was lost a long time ago in my opinion. It's hard to be social on the bands because so few want to have a "conversation" anymore. You have nets that are so regimented that you are really just broadcasting out a bunch of comments without the chance to discuss any of them (there are exceptions, we have one here in the Portland area). The contests are all about making the contact in as short of a time as possible. CW still has some semblance of being social, but how social can you be when you can tell by the voice what the person is really saying (much like texting and email have lost the social aspect). Yes, there are some groups and people that just want to rag chew but they are getting rarer and rarer. Back in the 80's there were a lot of informal group getting together on the different bands. I was part of a group in the Wash DC area for a number of years.

Ham radio has changed and continues to change as any of us that have been in the hobby for any length of time can attest to. But at least there are still areas of ham radio that provides interest to all of us. Right now, it's digital for me. I suspect that as all the "old" hams die off or get out of the hobby, the younger generation of hams will be more into digital modes... just like they have intertwined the internet and VHF/UHF. Everything is linked now over the internet so that you don't know if you are talking to someone down the street or the other side of the world. They might as well cut out ham radio and just go all internet. LOL!

Mike

 

Mike--

"The secret is out" and the band is in shambles. 6M is a major problem which all but a few are ignoring.

What should we do with all but a few KHz (for digital) of band on 6M? We sure as heck aren't using it...

I've removed the 6M amp and beam. Season never opened in W1 for CW and SSB. It all went to JT65. Which I am not on.

Next year I will dedicate an FTDX1200 for 6M digital--if there is a plan beyond dumping on 50.276..