Developer Expresses Puzzlement over FT8 Contest Use
/WSJT-X co-developer Joe Taylor, K1JT, recently expressed puzzlement over the use of FT8 in contests -rather than FT4, which was designed for contesting
“I fail to understand why anyone who uses FT8 in a contest would fail to use FT4 for much of the time. FT4 is about 3 dB less sensitive than FT8, but it’s twice as fast.”
Taylor offered the comment in the Mt. Airy VHF Society's October 2020 Cheese Bits, regarding the September ARRL VHF Contest. Taylor said a large fraction of stations that are worked with FT8 are much more than 3 dB above the FT4 decoding threshold.
“With FT4, you can still work anyone that can be worked with CW, and near the CW threshold, you’ll do it faster using FT4. And with FT4, you can work stations that are far weaker (by ~20 dB) than what’s necessary for SSB. When I did work other stations with FT4, I did it by transmitting the FT8 message ‘K1JT FT4 318. I’ve moved to 50.318 MHz FT4, and several contesters followed me there. Many more would have made it much more fruitful.”
“For speed, flexibility, and ease of running the bands, yes, you should use SSB and CW when there are stations to work. When you run out of those, use FT8 and especially FT4.”
Taylor also remarked, "In my 80th year, I can no longer call on my past stamina for contesting."
ARRL Letter October 22 - http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter
Download the free WSJT-X software which supports FT4, FT8 and other digital modes - https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/K1JT/wsjtx.html
