In the pursuit of knowledge, I set my RX up as FOX with the callsign 3y0K. Of course I'm not receiving the same signals as they are, and not being able to hear them on 17 I don't know who they are sending rr73 to. . Most everyone that I received that did not jump to their frequency kept sending the R signal report over and over, indicating to me they weren't hearing a rr73. Those that were shifting to the 3Y0K frequency seemed to not need to resend the signal.
It is good to know that if you can get in the clear, or have a good enough TX signal to beat the pileup, that regular ft8 mode is OK.
In an aside to this, some may not know that if you have your settings right in F/H mode, if you set your TX and RX frequency on the DX frequency and transmit, WSJTX will auto assign you a TX slot up the band.
In this case I mainly was concerned about in hound mode and selecting the 3y0k station, as they transmitted, it did not show in the RX window, but did show my transmits to them.
More than likely my whole dilemma is caused by a "loose nut" on the radio.
Thanks for the help
Randy/W5ZJ