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Author Topic: FT4 activity seems to be picking up  (Read 421 times)

W2IRT

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Re: FT4 activity seems to be picking up
« Reply #15 on: March 18, 2023, 09:01:14 AM »

The FT8 watering holes are too crowded for weaker stations to be heard. I wish people would use the dial on their radios to move to other frequencies. There is plenty of space on the bands, no need for us to limit ourselves to a narrow 3kHz segment.
This is very much a double-edge sword, however, and something we've seen on the VHF/UHF bands. Years ago, local radio clubs set up their own repeaters and they were community meeting places. If you wanted to play radio on 2m you had maybe a half-dozen machines locally and .52 and that was it. Now we have D-star, DMR, and YSF, each with hundreds of talkgroups/rooms. There are no centralized community spots any more and local repeaters are essentially dead.

In DXing, for many years you knew where the DX windows were (14195, 21295, 28495 on phone, and usually somewhere around .025 to .035 on CW) and that's where to hang out to hopefully catch something. Now we have the designated FT8 "home" frequencies. I'm fine with this and a designated alternate (50.313 and 50.318, for example), but not really a fan of spreading the digital modes all hither and yon.

Now with that said, I do like the idea of discrete, separate FT4/FT8 windows for DXpeditions, and I'd also support a discrete frequency for 6m long-haul only for when that band opens up. With the advent of MSHV I admit it might be tempting to go 2 or 3 streams when the band opens to Japan and further into Asia, or into the middle-east, and that wouldn't be a fair thing to do on .313.
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KE8KMX

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Re: FT4 activity seems to be picking up
« Reply #16 on: March 18, 2023, 09:29:33 AM »



Now with that said, I do like the idea of discrete, separate FT4/FT8 windows for DXpeditions, and I'd also support a discrete frequency for 6m long-haul only for when that band opens up. With the advent of MSHV I admit it might be tempting to go 2 or 3 streams when the band opens to Japan and further into Asia, or into the middle-east, and that wouldn't be a fair thing to do on .313.

There already is a DX only freq for 6M ft8.     50.323


Gino  - KE8KMX
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WO7R

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Re: FT4 activity seems to be picking up
« Reply #17 on: March 18, 2023, 12:06:07 PM »

Quote
There already is a DX only freq for 6M ft8.     50.323

Exactly right.

Unfortunately, the problem has been getting anyone to actually use it.  It's the same pattern as with CW on the band.

The band opens.  50.313 gets crowded.  Europe would like to work someone besides the six strong east coast stations they worked last time.  They move to .323 (announcing it as possible, including on .313).

They go there.  Nobody follows.  They go back to .313 before the opening goes away.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

I don't know what to do about it. The "watering hole" effect of 50.313 threatens to consume the entire 6m band at times.  Maybe some real F2 prop will change this?
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VE3VEE

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Re: FT4 activity seems to be picking up
« Reply #18 on: March 18, 2023, 01:35:50 PM »

Perhaps one day the technology comes to rescue. Perhaps we need radios capable of receiving FT8 signals on a much much much wider segment of a band.

Marvin VE3VEE
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WO7R

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Re: FT4 activity seems to be picking up
« Reply #19 on: March 18, 2023, 01:50:14 PM »

SDR radios can already do this.  It's a question of enablement and propagation of the technology.  Filtering via software in SDRs is one of the strong points.  So, in principle, even older ones could do it if you could upgrade the software and/or the interface

A lot of radios have SDR under the covers now; will they expose increased bandwidth?

Also, will WSJT-X be willing to process the bandwidth increase?  That's the least of it, but it will be a question.

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