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Author Topic: Tough times for True Blue  (Read 2613 times)

AI5BC

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #75 on: January 27, 2023, 08:04:38 AM »

Hams are such a diverse, accepting, and inclusive group of Boomers, they cannot even get along with themselves.
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W2IRT

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #76 on: January 27, 2023, 08:23:17 AM »

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going into the "shack" now to play "Whac-a-Mole" on FT8.  Europe is booming in on 10M here in CA, in the morning hours.  Love that automation!  Took some REAL engineering skill to make that happen
Yes, I am on 10 meters now also, hastening the death of ham radio.

And meanwhile I just saw a spot for Vlad Bykov, operating as SU9VB in Egypt CQing on 15 CW with only a very few takers. One-called him for two Marathon points. His pileup, if you wanted to call it that, was simplex and not very deep and despite a few spots, he ran out of callers in about a half hour. DX IS.
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Night gathers and now my watch begins. It shall not end until I reach Top of the Honor Roll

Great times are at hand, and soon there will be DX for all—although more for some than for others.

KJ4Z

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #77 on: January 27, 2023, 08:25:53 AM »

So - should hams learn CW as young operators, or is it more useful to learn to install use, take apart software/firmware and learn how fundamental digital comms algorithms work?  You already know my opinion.  You've already seen the overwhelming trends.  Where do YOU think this is going?

The only thing that gives me pause is, I'm not sure people turn to their hobbies for more of what they get at work, and I'm not sure that what we enjoy with our hobbies necessarily leads linearly to general applicability.  In my case, enjoying CW led to working in software.  What mattered was the enjoyment and inspiration.  It does not necessarily follow that having worked in digital modes would have prepared me any better (or worse) for that career path.  And I get plenty of screen-clicking in at work.  I like the fact that CW is something entirely different.

WO7R suggested some similarities between FT8 and gaming.  I think there is some possible merit to that but it is probably at the "casual gaming" level.  People eventually get bored with simple games and move on.  If other hams follow my arc, they may eventually get bored with FT8 because it is very repetitive.  At some point you very well may find you are bored, regardless of how much fun you are having with it now.  When that time comes, will a new digital successor be waiting in the wings?  CW and Phone have both survived for a century now.  RTTY was always a bit of an obscurity.  I don't think any other digital mode has had more than 10 years in the sun.  I think we need at least one solar cycle to determine if FT8 was lightning in a bottle or something more.
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NI0C

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #78 on: January 27, 2023, 10:06:17 AM »

Quote
And meanwhile I just saw a spot for Vlad Bykov, operating as SU9VB in Egypt CQing on 15 CW with only a very few takers. One-called him for two Marathon points. His pileup, if you wanted to call it that, was simplex and not very deep and despite a few spots, he ran out of callers in about a half hour. DX IS.
I saw several spots for SU9VB too, but the call I positively identified at 21027.0 was IU0HMB, whose name is Vlado. Maybe Vlad, SU9VB was in there too, but I didn't hear him.
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W2IRT

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #79 on: January 27, 2023, 10:23:27 AM »

I saw several spots for SU9VB too, but the call I positively identified at 21027.0 was IU0HMB, whose name is Vlado. Maybe Vlad, SU9VB was in there too, but I didn't hear him.


I think you might be right. I did hear him give his name as Vlad, but didn't hear him send his call, so it was WFWL, etc. Makes sense since Zone 34 is always a tough catch from here and this op was strong. Also Vlad is a fast and precise CW op, this person was a bit sloppy with a lot of extra dits. Bugs Gone Wild. Skimmers were picking up the SU call, however so I just "assumed."
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Night gathers and now my watch begins. It shall not end until I reach Top of the Honor Roll

Great times are at hand, and soon there will be DX for all—although more for some than for others.

WO7R

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #80 on: January 27, 2023, 10:35:44 AM »

The DX Marathon has records in 2022, at least, showing Vlad's Egyptian call as a piracy target.

WFWL, (that's what I do, too), but keep in mind that for some reason, some calls are an attractive piracy target. Vlad's is one of them, I don't know why.  (Who knows the mind of a pirate anyway?).

If people knew or suspected, rightly or wrongly, that this was another pirating, that might explain the size of the pileup.

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K6BRN

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #81 on: January 27, 2023, 10:47:01 AM »

The only thing that gives me pause is, I'm not sure people turn to their hobbies for more of what they get at work, and I'm not sure that what we enjoy with our hobbies necessarily leads linearly to general applicability.  In my case, enjoying CW led to working in software.  What mattered was the enjoyment and inspiration.  It does not necessarily follow that having worked in digital modes would have prepared me any better (or worse) for that career path.  And I get plenty of screen-clicking in at work.  I like the fact that CW is something entirely different.

Understood.  We each have our own perspective and motivations.  In my case, very early fascination with electronics and later digital electronics, then signal processing, helped shape the career I went into.  I've been lucky in that I've always enjoyed this - at home and at work - so much so that a group of co-workers became friends, had families, grew our careers and still meet in retirement on a regular basis.

But, probably like you, I have diversionary hobbies which do NOT align so much with my profession and provide a welcome change.

Regarding CW, it's the original, manual "digital comms" mode with signal processing by the Mark I human brain.  Nothing to sneeze at and a wonderful hobby and skillset enjoyed by many of my friends.  Very well supported in the ham community, still.  But the code bug never really "bit" me, though I qualified when I earned my first call.  Even then, decades ago, the majority of my contacts were with AMTOR, RTTY and packet radio, which I did some amateur development work in.  What we need and gravitate to is a very personal thing, and we're lucky that this hobby accommodates a broad variety of modes and interests, from Moon Bounce to Wires-X to FT8 to SSTV and Hellschreiber.  Plus more.

WO7R suggested some similarities between FT8 and gaming.  I think there is some possible merit to that but it is probably at the "casual gaming" level.  People eventually get bored with simple games and move on.  If other hams follow my arc, they may eventually get bored with FT8 because it is very repetitive.  At some point you very well may find you are bored, regardless of how much fun you are having with it now.  When that time comes, will a new digital successor be waiting in the wings?  CW and Phone have both survived for a century now.  RTTY was always a bit of an obscurity.  I don't think any other digital mode has had more than 10 years in the sun.  I think we need at least one solar cycle to determine if FT8 was lightning in a bottle or something more.

There's plenty of merit to a gaming interpretation of FT8.  After all, it's development criteria were heavily influenced by contesting.  And it can accommodate serious competition OR casual accumulation of QSOs, almost like the card game "Solitaire".  Will it be THE mode of the foreseeable future?  I sincerely hope not.  I hope that the trend Joe and his team has set continues and that the amateur digital modes evolve to cover nooks and crannies we haven't really thought about.

Believe it of not, when the first PCs (Altair 8800, IMSAI8080, SWTP6800, SOL = there were so many) came out, the primary use for them was believed to be for holding a ready database for cooking recipies.  Seems INSANE now.  Then came Electric Pencil (first S-100 based word processor) and Visicalc, then PWB routing programs and dBase.  DEC went bankrupt.  And everything changed.  We're about at that tipping point with amateur radio.  At some point the real, meaningful digital comms modes for data, voice, etc. will resolve itself and major growth will start.  DSP has already invaded HF radios, and it's here to stay.  So maybe it already has started with FT8 and Pactor (critical to MM users worldwide - but a niche), too.  We'll see.  It'll be fun to watch and learn - in that way, we're VERY lucky to be in the ***once again dynamic period*** of amateur radio.  But to enjoy it, you have to be comfortable with change/evolution.  I still have my PK-232MBXs - hard to let them go even though they're never used anymore.  And I still have an Altair 8800 and IMSAI8080.  And my CW keys (straight and Iambic).  Hard to let go of the past.

I'm pretty sure the hard core contesters will eventually "glom onto" whatever mode makes them most competitive.  After all, that's what STARTED this thread.  And like the old Colt .45 Peacemaker in the old west, FT8 and its variants is a kind of equalizer among operators.  Definitely upsetting the applecart.  Definitely offering new opportunities for those willing to stand up and grab them.  Technology changes - but humanity remains the same.

BTW - 10M/12M operations were fun today.  Lots of new European contacts.  Incredible propagation.

And one thought on "casual gaming" trends...  The card game "Solitaire" is going on 300 years old.  Hmmm.

Well, back to "Whac-a-Mole" on FT8  :).

Best Regards,

Brian - K6BRN
« Last Edit: January 27, 2023, 10:56:25 AM by K6BRN »
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NI0C

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #82 on: January 27, 2023, 10:59:35 AM »

Quote
I did hear him give his name as Vlad, but didn't hear him send his call, so it was WFWL, etc. Makes sense since Zone 34 is always a tough catch from here and this op was strong. Also Vlad is a fast and precise CW op, this person was a bit sloppy with a lot of extra dits.
I heard IU0HMB give the name "Vlado" not "Vlad" but as you say he was not as fast or accurate as SU9VB. Vlad is easy to identify by his crisp CW style with his keyer weighting somewhat on the light side, always giving "real" signal reports, not the standard "5nn."

Quote
The DX Marathon has records in 2022, at least, showing Vlad's Egyptian call as a piracy target.

WFWL, (that's what I do, too), but keep in mind that for some reason, some calls are an attractive piracy target. Vlad's is one of them, I don't know why.  (Who knows the mind of a pirate anyway?).

If people knew or suspected, rightly or wrongly, that this was another pirating, that might explain the size of the pileup.

I don't think this one was a case of piracy, just incorrect call sign copying, sprinkled with a little wishful thinking.

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WO7R

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #83 on: January 27, 2023, 11:04:23 AM »

Quote
I don't think this one was a case of piracy, just incorrect call sign copying, sprinkled with a little wishful thinking.

That is also possible, maybe probable in this case.

We get one bad spot, where someone posts what their wish-fullfilling brain thought it heard and the next thing you know, there are five more spots just like it, surrounding spots that say, "no, IU0HMB not SU9VB".
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N4UFO

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #84 on: January 27, 2023, 11:40:25 AM »

I had my high school's PDP-8. 

My first high school (sophomore and part of junior year) We had a PDP-8e with a 'pizza oven hard drive' and a PDP-8m with a reel to reel tape. I was a sysop geek with the round coke machine key that got to flip the switches to dump Octal number addresses in to boot the things up. The 8e took 4, the 8m was like 7 or more. Ran EDU25 time share to two paper terminals & one VT. Wrote so many games in BASIC, laid awake at night coding in my head.  :)

When the Altair 8800 came out and Bill Gates founded Microsoft, I considered building a career around microcomputers

My sophomore year of college I switched over to a BS in comp sci... learned ForTran, Assembler, and those other silly business languages (COBOL) - School had a VAX 11/70 mainframe, but I was only a user. The following summer I got a job installing CP/M systems (pre Microsoft DOS)... no run to Walmart and buy a cable. I had to get DB25 connectors and cable and then solder it all together... my time building my HW-101 suddenly became very useful.

In the end, after my junior year, the languages were all changing... ForTran aficionados like me were no longer going to be needed. The students coming up a year or so behind me were going to get all the jobs. So I quit. I decided to go for the easiest degree I could get to simply graduate and hush my mother... after changing twice, I ended up with a BA in Sociology. (that and a buck might get you a soda from the cheap machine) But what stayed with me through the entire time? My skills and knowledge I gained while "playing" with ham radio. I garnered an overall technical knowledge and an ability to look at things 'outside the box' and adapt... unlike techs I know that only understood what they were taught and only followed book procedures. Years later when I decided to take the FCC GROL exam to help a local two way shop... I only missed one question on the entire exam; the rest of his staff, didn't even pass. 8)


So... FT8, CW, TTY, SSB... whatever. What ham radio is, is a quest to overcome technical challenges in order to achieve some goal. Whether that be an award, contesting, roving, etc. You have to consider radio gear, computers, antennas, propagation, logistics, etc. And have FUN while doing it!!! After 45 years, I have absolutely no regrets that I chose ham radio over that geeky computer club... ;)  And I like chasing DX and I couldn't give a rats behind whether it's me tapping my CW paddle or instructing my computer which sequence to call on. Because what nobody seems to get is that the computer doesn't give a crap. Finds no joy whatsoever and wouldn't sent bit or dit one without my complete and utter control over it. After all... I know where the damned electric plug is. :D

Ham radio... a hobby... if you aren't having fun, you aren't doing it right. And if you are whining because all the neighborhood kids are playing soccer instead of 'football' (remember that?) stop yer b!tching and either get used to you and your buddy only passing the ball back & forth or learn how to kick that stupid round ball instead. Yeah... I got a concussion playing junior varsity football as a full time center & nose guard my sophomore year. (Me and a guy connected helmets so bad was told the crack was heard up at the gym.) So the next year, I played intramural soccer... fullback, fill in goalie. Was it as much fun? No... but it WAS fun and my brain cells still work well enough that I can talk about it. (Although the two concussions I got in 2014, three months apart don't help. I say a lot of the wrong words these days. People look at me weird and I have to ask what I said and correct it. Did you know an 'SUV' is what you drive around town and an 'RV' is what you vacation in? - Oh, yeah I ramble a lot more, as well.) ;D

Gonna go see who's on 10m FT8... chase some SA prefixes and/or look for a station from OK for some awards. Hey, it's something to do... :)

73, Kevin N4UFO
« Last Edit: January 27, 2023, 11:57:40 AM by N4UFO »
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N0UN

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #85 on: January 27, 2023, 12:08:36 PM »

I said the bulk of operators and money contributors are not FT8 users.

I agree with that.

FT8ers 'round here don't even want to pay for OQRS confirmations - we see them crying almost daily/weekly 'round these parts when somebody doesn't provide real-time online logs or FREE LoTW uploads. Life is tough, but it's much tougher when you're too frugal and have to wait 6 months or a year for that FREE automated upload, bwahahaha.

N0UN
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WO7R

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #86 on: January 27, 2023, 01:53:13 PM »

Quote
FT8ers Hams 'round here don't even want to pay for OQRS confirmations - we see them crying almost daily/weekly 'round these parts when somebody doesn't provide real-time online logs or FREE LoTW uploads.

Fixed that for you.

Get serious; there's nothing special about FT8 users in this regard.  I'd say 2/3 of DXers -- whatever modes they use -- think DXpeditions get rich off of 3 dollar QSL card fees and bitch about paying that much.

In other words, mode is no barrier to not knowing the score about expeditions and their costs.
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WO7R

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #87 on: January 27, 2023, 01:56:19 PM »

W5HVV posted earlier in this thread:

Quote
FWIW, I wrote a script to take the list of donors from FT8WW's website (of which there are several hundred, with plenty of "big names" included) and cross-check it against ClubLog. It turns out that the majority of those individuals worked him on FT8 and CW. A smaller minority worked him on FT8 only, and an even smaller minority worked him on CW only. To me, this exercise suggests that many serious DXers (and actual donors) are at least willing to take the pragmatic approach ("work the DX how the DX wants to be worked") to work a rare DX entity, even if doing so involves using that "lazy computer text messaging" or whatever you guys are calling it.

Until someone can impeach this finding, can we please stop pretending that FT8 users have a different profile as far as contributions (or not) goes from the rest of us?

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K6BRN

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #88 on: January 27, 2023, 02:50:00 PM »

Hi Kevin (N4UFO):

My first high school (sophomore and part of junior year) We had a PDP-8e with a 'pizza oven hard drive' and a PDP-8m with a reel to reel tape. I was a sysop geek with the round coke machine key that got to flip the switches to dump Octal number addresses in to boot the things up. The 8e took 4, the 8m was like 7 or more.  :)  We ran EDU25 time share to two paper terminals and one VT. Wrote so many games in B.A.S.I.C. for the VT.

Heh!  Yes, my high school had a PDP-8E driving eight ASR-33 Teletypes.  No tape drive.  No hard drive.  12K of hand-threaded magnetic core memory.  Every memory module was loaded tiny toroidal cores with three wires threaded through each one.  Each core was a single bit.  Non-volatile, but still got corrupted sometimes and we then had to re-enter the bootstrap loader through the front panel.  Then another hour of so to load the operating system via paper tape.  The school district couldn't afford the tape or hard disk drives.  I started and lead the geeky "Computer Club" for three years.  We had fun and brought in a lot other students to build and run simple computer games solve math/physics problems, etc.  Somewhere along the way I switched from a Pickett circulat slide rule to a Texas Instruments SR50.  A time of great technology change.


My sophomore year of college I switched over to a BS in comp sci... learned ForTran, Assembler, and those other silly business languages (COBOL) - VAX 11/70 mainframe, but I was only a user. The following summer I got a job installing CP/M systems (pre Microsoft DOS)... not run and buy a cable. I had to buy DB25 connectors and cable and then solder it all together... my time building my HW-101 suddenly became very useful.

We have more than a few parallels.  I learned BASIC, FORTRAN (and later PASCAL and C, C++, etc.) and quite a few machine and assembly languages - of which the PDP-11's machine code was my favorite (source destination and operation all in one extended word - almost assembly code) and the RCA COSMAC 1802 my least favorite (clumsy addressing scheme).  And the usual stories of dropped FORTRAN card decks and the later blessing of using my first video terminals - heaven! - compared to DECWriters.

The first PCs I used were SBCs, then the Altair/IMSAI S-100s, later running CP/M and later a Mac 512K.  After that, it gets a little crowded.

In the end, after my junior year, the languages were all changing... ForTran experts like me were no longer going to be needed. The students coming up a year or so behind me were going to get all the jobs. So I quit. I decided to go for the easiest degree I could get to simply graduate and hush my mother... after changing twice, I ended up with a BA in Sociology. (that and a buck might get you a soda from the cheap machine) But what stayed with me through the entire time? My skills and knowledge I gained while "playing" with ham radio. I garnered an overall technical knowledge and an ability to look at things 'outside the box' and adapt... unlike techs I know that only understood what they were taught and only followed book procedures. Years later when I decided to take the FCC GROL exam to help a local two way shop with "an extra license"... I only missed one question on the entire exam... the rest of his staff, didn't even pass.

FB.  My XYL started out with an undergraduate degree in psychology - not super useful, then discovered she was pretty good at selling things, including opinions.  So she became a lawyer.  That worked.  Life has a lot of funny twists that way.  But if you're flexible and make the best of it, things can work out very well.

So... FT8, CW, TTY, SSB... whatever. What ham radio is, is a quest to overcome technical challenges in order to achieve some goal. Whether that be an award, contesting, roving, etc. You have to consider, radio gear, computers, antennas, propagation, logistics, etc. And have FUN while doing it!!! After 45 years, I have absolutely no regrets that I chose ham radio over that geeky computer club...  ;) And I like chasing DX and I couldn't give a rats whether it's CW or me instructing my computer which sequence to call on. Because what nobody seems to get is that the computer doesn't give a crap. Finds no joy whatsoever and wouldn't sent bit/dit one without my complete and utter control over it. After all... I know where the plug is.  :D

I think that's called "Being comfortable with yourself." and "Having nothing to prove."  A good place to be.

Ham radio... a hobby... if you aren't having fun, you aren't doing it right. And if you are whining because all the neighborhood kids are playing soccer instead of 'football' (remember that?) stop yer b!tching and either get used to you and one other guy passing the ball back & forth or learn how to kick the round ball instead. Yeah... I got a concussion playing JV football as the full time center & nose guard my sophomore year. So the next year, I played intramural soccer... fullback, fill in goalie. Was it as much fun? No... but it WAS fun and my brain cells still work well enough that I can talk about it. (Although the two concussions I got in 2014, three months apart don't help. I saw a lot of the wrong words these days. People look at me weird and I have to ask what I said and correct it. Did you know an 'SUV' is what you drive around town and an 'RV' is what you vacation in? - Oh, yeah I ramble a lot more, as well.)  ;D

No worries - happens to me as well.  Am I rambling?  :)

Gonna go see who's on 10m FT8... chase some SA prefixes and/or look for a station from OK for some awards. Hey, it's something to do... :)

73, Kevin N4UFO

Good idea.  See you on the bands!

Brian - K6BRN
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K5GS

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Re: Tough times for True Blue
« Reply #89 on: January 27, 2023, 03:34:45 PM »

W5HVV posted earlier in this thread:

Quote
FWIW, I wrote a script to take the list of donors from FT8WW's website (of which there are several hundred, with plenty of "big names" included) and cross-check it against ClubLog. It turns out that the majority of those individuals worked him on FT8 and CW. A smaller minority worked him on FT8 only, and an even smaller minority worked him on CW only. To me, this exercise suggests that many serious DXers (and actual donors) are at least willing to take the pragmatic approach ("work the DX how the DX wants to be worked") to work a rare DX entity, even if doing so involves using that "lazy computer text messaging" or whatever you guys are calling it.

Until someone can impeach this finding, can we please stop pretending that FT8 users have a different profile as far as contributions (or not) goes from the rest of us?
W5HVV posted earlier in this thread:

Quote
FWIW, I wrote a script to take the list of donors from FT8WW's website (of which there are several hundred, with plenty of "big names" included) and cross-check it against ClubLog. It turns out that the majority of those individuals worked him on FT8 and CW. A smaller minority worked him on FT8 only, and an even smaller minority worked him on CW only. To me, this exercise suggests that many serious DXers (and actual donors) are at least willing to take the pragmatic approach ("work the DX how the DX wants to be worked") to work a rare DX entity, even if doing so involves using that "lazy computer text messaging" or whatever you guys are calling it.

Until someone can impeach this finding, can we please stop pretending that FT8 users have a different profile as far as contributions (or not) goes from the rest of us?

There is nothing better than having the real numbers:

Firstly, this is not a mode discussion, it's been a problem long before FT8 was mainstreamed.

In 2021, for two of our DX-peditions, I compared the number of unique call signs in the logs to the number of donors for each DX-pedition. This did not include clubs and foundations, just individual donors.

A donor is defined as any individual who made a donation through the website, directly to me in cash, by mailing a check / money order or sending me a PayPal. Any money above the OQRS fee was considered a donation.

The result surprised even me.

Of the total 45,000 unique call signs from both logs only 15% of those call signs made a donation to support the project. Individually, each project was at about 15% +/-.

I was surprised by this so I called the treasurers of a couple of other DXpeditions, about the same number, 15%+/-. It would seem the majority of people wait for the free LoTW upload.

One way to address this is to not upload the logs in 6 months as many DX-peditions do. Maybe 12 months is more appropriate, or, maybe not upload the logs at all.

There are a lot of moving parts to funding a DX-pedition, for the really expensive projects the process might have to change. It's already changing for the self funded projects. 

I see a lot of the same call signs supporting DX-peditions (Thank You), and I hear a lot of the same worn out excuses for not supporting DX-peditions.

Does this 15% number surprise you?

Cheers,
GS K5GS
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