[NLRS] The New (AB)Normal?

[John Kalenowsky]

Didn't you hear, Rich, Microphones and Keys are now banned on 6 meters! The
radio manufacturers have recently announced that they will no longer be
including Microphones with their radios and removing the Key jacks. As
well, there will only be ONE frequency which can be used on 6 meters,
50.313 MHz.
*J*ust *K*idding - but my experiences are similar, Rich.
I was pleasantly surprised to make 101 Qs on 6 meters in the recent Spring
Sprint and ALL were on SSB. Admittedly, about half of those Qs (49) were
with other rovers who were out locally and even the fixed stations were
predominantly local (39 of 52) but I *did* manage to get two new states for
my 2019-2020 States Above 50 MHz from among those 13 stations contacted
that were beyond EN51, 52, 61, 62 (Maine and Nebraska and I did work a few
other New England states).

Sadly, I am starting to feel that a 'side effect' of the spotting networks
is to 'amplify' the interest in FT-8 (and other new 'digi-modes') as a
result of the ability to 'autoreport' digi-mode QSOs to the spotting
networks while an SSB QSO has to be manually reported. This leads to
resources like dxmaps making it appear that the ONLY activity on 6 meters
is now FT-8. Another frustration is that, even though there are MANY FT8
QSOs reported with negative s/n, many ARE reported with POSITIVE s/n
(double digit positive, even) which should easily support an SSB QSO to
completed over the same path.

Is there a solution? I don't know.

- Get on and constantly call CQ on 50.125?

- Try and establish a time of day (top of every hour? top of every even or
odd hour?) to check the 'analog' part of the 6 meter band? And NOT JUST
during contests. This would be like the "FM Activity Times" that I think
have been effective up around the Twin Cities during contests (or am I
mistaken on that?).

- Other ideas?

73, JK (K9, that is)