FT8 - was "On Second Thought, I'll Take The Stairs"

[P.B. Christensen]

>"And I have one that says "RTTY" but it's now a Digital DXCC.  I had to
resort to FT8 to work Monaco to get on the Digital Honor Roll, with the
other 330 having been on RTTY."

Just to quickly add my input before the topic is canned.

I'm not enamored with FT8 but just for grins, I conducted an FT8 experiment
a few months ago to see how many countries I could work with no antenna
terminated at the end of a broken open-feeder transmission line.  That's
right - no antenna, just a hunk of balanced open feeder line that sits
unterminated on my backyard fence.  Using a 100W rig with output power
turned down to 20W, SWR is off-scale.  I work on my own gear.  If I blow it
up, so be it.  

Over a few weeks I worked about 35 countries on 20m and 11 countries on 40m,
all FT8 of course.    No antenna and sky high SWR.  By now, folks are
thinking."yeah no antenna, but your line is the antenna, balanced or not."
That's right.  There's just enough imbalance between the two conductor
feeders that the line has some radiation.  The imbalance is caused by the
usual culprits like proximity to aluminum gutters and some inherent
imbalance between the rig and feeder.  However, it just goes to show that
skill to make FT8 DX contacts rests largely with the algorithm.  Frankly,
most of the skill needed is in learning to install and configure the WSJT-X
software - which isn't difficult.  As such, I find it amusing that anyone
considers FT8 an accomplishment - and a semi-automatic one at that.  But for
those who feel it is an accomplishment, there's no point in denying their
satisfaction.

Paul  W9AC




______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to [hidden email]

[Jim Rhodes-2]

Sure wish I could put up such a "no antenna" antenna from my apartment
where the noise level is often 20 or more dB over S9. Working any DX on
even FT8 is a real rare occurence from here where I have a mobile antenna
working against an iron railing on my second floor balcony.

On Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 12:05 Paul Christensen <[hidden email]> wrote:

> >"And I have one that says "RTTY" but it's now a Digital DXCC.  I had to
> resort to FT8 to work Monaco to get on the Digital Honor Roll, with the
> other 330 having been on RTTY."
>
> Just to quickly add my input before the topic is canned.
>
> I'm not enamored with FT8 but just for grins, I conducted an FT8 experiment
> a few months ago to see how many countries I could work with no antenna
> terminated at the end of a broken open-feeder transmission line.  That's
> right - no antenna, just a hunk of balanced open feeder line that sits
> unterminated on my backyard fence.  Using a 100W rig with output power
> turned down to 20W, SWR is off-scale.  I work on my own gear.  If I blow it
> up, so be it.
>
> Over a few weeks I worked about 35 countries on 20m and 11 countries on
> 40m,
> all FT8 of course.    No antenna and sky high SWR.  By now, folks are
> thinking."yeah no antenna, but your line is the antenna, balanced or not."
> That's right.  There's just enough imbalance between the two conductor
> feeders that the line has some radiation.  The imbalance is caused by the
> usual culprits like proximity to aluminum gutters and some inherent
> imbalance between the rig and feeder.  However, it just goes to show that
> skill to make FT8 DX contacts rests largely with the algorithm.  Frankly,
> most of the skill needed is in learning to install and configure the WSJT-X
> software - which isn't difficult.  As such, I find it amusing that anyone
> considers FT8 an accomplishment - and a semi-automatic one at that.  But
> for
> those who feel it is an accomplishment, there's no point in denying their
> satisfaction.
>
> Paul  W9AC
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Elecraft mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:[hidden email]
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
> Message delivered to [hidden email]
>

______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:[hidden email]

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to [hidden email]