[ADXA] VHF contest

Mon Jun 14 10:02:27 EDT 2021

 I only operated 6m, don't have tower space for my 2M antenna. My impression was that people were wasting propagation with FT8. Throughput is much too slow. I only operated part time, and missed some of the better band opening time, but my rates were decent (up to 70/hr) on phone and CW, and about 15/hr on FT modes. Harder to make contacts on FT too. If a station calling CQ was less than 00, they didn't seem to be able to decode me at all. WSJT operation is also somewhat clunky in N1MM, sometimes it would send 73 message, sometimes it would go out of auto sequence after exchanging grids, which would be ok if the other ops knows that exchanging grids is all that's necessary.
Basically, this contest was more fun before FT8.
FUV

    On Monday, June 14, 2021, 7:51:24 AM CDT, w5zn at w5zn.org <w5zn at w5zn.org> wrote:  

Dennis,

Sorry to be so short with my original reply. Obviously my focus was elsewhere over the weekend and I never look at email during a contest however I needed to do a quick check for something and saw your post.

As you noted in your email, in the "old days" in VHF contesting when we worked a station it was very simple to ask, as you note, "what other bands to you have" and then zip off and work the station if possible. That is virtually impossible today with proliferation of digi modes in VHF contesting (a good thing for activity) interspersed with SSB and CW. I don't know if you subscribe to any of the VHF reflectors but as I said in my quick response this is one of the topics over the past two years that almost starts WW III.  The proposals have suggested to put some short coded note in the TX6 msg block but this can be problematic during a busy band as you don't know who is being requested to move (since no callsigns are attached to TX6 and the msg length is very short) and if you don't know the other stations capabilities there is no way to ask what other bands they have. So it remains an issue that needs resolution.

I apologize for not knowing you had 432 on the air for the contest. We could have easily worked but then again, on SSB/CW we could have quickly assessed that.

Another topic of fierce debate on the VHF reflectors is another topic you note below, separating digi from SSB/CW for VHF contests.

I'll cut this off, because I could go on and on for another several pages talking about FT8 -vs- FT4 (the contest mode that no one used this weekend except K5FUV!!!) but will save it for the in-person meeting this fall (not yet scheduled) and go into it more.

73 Joel W5ZN

On 2021-06-13 20:27, Dennis Schaefer wrote:

Thanks to Jay, Joel, and Rory for good info.  This was my first time to have capability to operate on 432 and I was disappointed to not work anyone.   

I did have fun, though.  I worked about 25 stations on 2M FT8, mostly in neighboring states, but also IL, AL, KS, etc, with a total of 11 grids.    The highlight was making 21 CW contacts on 6 meters.  I even got on 6M FT8 for a few minutes and worked John (BHS) and Joel.   6M SSB was  active and I made a handful of contacts there.

I checked 432.100 from time to time and called CQ on 432.174 FT8, covering 360 degrees.  Never heard anything or got a response.  Maybe the issues on moving from band to band will be resolved somehow.  

Maybe we need a separate weekend for digital ops and one for SSB and CW.   Then a standard messaging system for moving stations on digital modes.  I’m sure all this has been exhaustively discussed.  

The setup here:   6 meters - 100 watts to 3 element yagi at 15 feet.
2 meters - 100 watts to 8 elements up 18 feet
70 cm - 80 watts to 22 elements up 12 feet.

Not a world beater, but it lets me get my VHF/UHF fix every once in awhile.  I’m surprised it works as well as it does at these heights.

73,
Dennis
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