In celebration of my 74th birthday, I'll try not to seem to be
an old curmudgeon.
There are several issues that might be affecting the number of
CW signals heard. One is the relative lack of CW skills in the
general ham population. I'm a poster child for that lack of
skill. I passed the 5 WPM test when I got my extra. Did that
mean I could play in the 15 to 40 WPM world we see on the bands?
Of course not.
I've been trying to improve my CW. I started by chasing some of
the big DXpeditions. I got so I could recognize my CQ, call
sign, and TU, which let know whether to press the AE6JV key or
the 5NN TU key. My vocabulary expanded to recognize things like
CQ EU etc. and avoid being a complete boor. I also started
running contests in S&P mode, learning how to decode call signs
and exchanges, usually only after many repeats. Now I even try
checking into the weekly Elecraft net. Thanks for putting up
with me Kevin.
I still like the digital modes. I fell in love with PSK31 after
operating it a Field Day. It was a lot like computer chatting,
which I had done as a part of my job in my last job before retirement.
Another is the kind of QSO operators want to have. I was quite
surprised when one of the younger members of our club -- in his
30s -- said he liked contesting because he didn't have to listen
to old men talking about their medical problems. He is a good
contester and regularly outscores me in contests. This kind of
operator will be quite happy with FT8, or canned exchanges in CW
and digital modes. I've met many of them on PSK, even when I try
to indicate I'm up for a bit of a chat.
I got to really like the automatic features when I was in the
depths of side effects from my cancer treatment. I could sit
back in my chair and make contacts without having ot expend a
lot of the energy I didn't have.
I do think the advertised 20-24 dB below the noise floor is a
bit of crock, but not entirely wrong. If I understand the
situation correctly, the noise is measured in a 3KHz band width
while the signal is 50 Hz wide. That factor of 60 should be
responsible for 17.8 dB of the advertised noise immunity of the
mode. The other 2 to 6 dB is a real advantage over CW with the
tightest K3 DSP bandwidth. (APF can do better, but dies when
other signals, like DQRM, are near the desired signal.)
When I was operating portable with a barefoot KX3 in New
Hampshire a month ago using FT8, I had real problems getting all
that juicy DX in EU to answer me. Finding an open space in the
band was hard. Finally I tried finding an open transmit window
and calling CQ. The DX came to me, and I contacted a few ATNOs.
I had to move frequently as other stations started transmitting
in the same window I was using. It's always worth pausing to see
if you still have the window. Here full break in CW has a real
advantage. SSB has some of the same advantage because
transmissions aren't synchronized, as they are in FT8.
To try to answer Wayne's question, perhaps setting up schedules
using the Internet would help. Also calling CQ can help a lot. I
was asked to test how 15M was holding up in preparation for
Field Day. I found the band dead until I tried calling CQ. I
didn't make many contacts, but calling CQ brought stations out
of the woodwork including some DX.
I agree with Jim's comments about LotW. My truly spectacular
LotW success was with the 5 FT8 out of state 6M DX contacts I
made last new years eve. All are LotW confirmed. Out of 88 FT8
contacts logged in this last trip to New Hampshire, 55 or 62.5%
have been confirmed with LotW. Compare that with the CQ WPX CW
contest last weekend. I logged 255 QSOs and have 80 LotW
confirmations 31.4%). Of course, the WPX contest was quite
recent, and more confirmations should trickle in. It is also
almost certain that I blew copying some of the calls which would
push down the number of confirmations.
73 Bill AE6JV
On 6/1/18 at 8:46 AM, [email protected] (Wayne Burdick) wrote:
At first I thought it was my receiver. Or my antenna farm,
limited in scale by a pre-nuptial clause. Or noise caused by
the zomboid army of switching power supplies oozing inexorably
into my personal space.
Nope.
It turns out the dearth of CW and SSB signals on 6 meters at
the height of 2018 Spring Sporadic-E season can be traced to
one factor: the 24-hour intravenous rave that is FT-8.
Yeah, I get the whole
sub-noise-floor-and-not-automated-(wink)-QSO thing. But I’d
like to figure out how those of us who enjoy the occasional
gear-grinding manual-transmission contact can find each other
on this brave new highway. Ideas?
Wayne
N6KR
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz | Airline peanut bag: "Produced | Periwinkle
(408)356-8506 | in a facility that processes | 16345
Englewood Ave
www.pwpconsult.com | peanuts and other nuts." - Duh | Los Gatos,
CA 95032
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