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FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

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Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#61

Post by setquk »

howard941 wrote: post #33
platz wrote: post #25

So is FT8 is to ham radio as WebAssembly is to the internet?

From the balance of comments on this article you'd think FT8 was saving ham radio from itself. /death of ham radio predicted, film at 11

It’s been dying for about 30 years I understand. Kenwood, Yaesu and Icom all went bankrupt 20 year ago. Home owners associations stopped all antennas being erected and power lines and ADSL finished the charred smouldering remains off.

Now I’m going to lock myself in the basement with my guns and cans of beans.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#62

Post by AWildC182 »

tormeh wrote: post #48
AWildC182 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're definitely right that there are a lot of really cool people out there. I had a similar experience joining an EAA chapter to discover that a whole bunch of them had worked on Hubble. That said, the FCC in my experience has been pretty lax about policing the amateur bands. You can go to any online SDR and tune around to find obnoxious, toxic, and illegal behavior within minutes. I've also found that if you're lu…

> You can go to any online SDR and tune around to find obnoxious, toxic, and illegal behavior within minutes Ah, so 4chan for old people.

This...is strangely accurate. Minus the anonymity since some of them will still ID with their callsign which links to a public database with their name and address.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#63

Post by setquk »

silman wrote: post #24
AWildC182 wrote: post #4

This has one unspoken bonus feature: Not having to talk to an octogenarian about politics. I know it sounds silly, but I suspect this is one of the huge features driving it's success. Amateur radio is plagued by bad actors and grumpy old men, along with the general age imbalance that makes it fairly unpleasant for young people and extremely unpleasant for anyone who sounds vaguely feminine...

As someone who went from nothing -> Amateur Extra when i was 23 (25 now) from a random spurt of inspiration to learn ham radio and then promptly did nothing with the license i agree with this. I don't know exactly what i was expecting from getting the license but i will say that i didn't expect it to basically just be dominated by old conservative men who don't appreciate younger folk stepping in on their air space.…

QSX is coming soon. https://www.qrp-labs.com/qsx.html

Just google like any other technology. Answers are all out there. I never went to any amateur radio clubs. I paid up to do my exams, bought a radio and just wobbled into the bar like a drunk.

Also you don’t have to talk to someone past exchanging RST etc. If they start going off on one just tune away.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#64

Post by silman »

setquk wrote: post #63
silman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who went from nothing -> Amateur Extra when i was 23 (25 now) from a random spurt of inspiration to learn ham radio and then promptly did nothing with the license i agree with this. I don't know exactly what i was expecting from getting the license but i will say that i didn't expect it to basically just be dominated by old conservative men who don't appreciate younger folk stepping in on their air space.…

QSX is coming soon. https://www.qrp-labs.com/qsx.html Just google like any other technology. Answers are all out there. I never went to any amateur radio clubs. I paid up to do my exams, bought a radio and just wobbled into the bar like a drunk. Also you don’t have to talk to someone past exchanging RST etc. If they start going off on one just tune away.

can you explain how QSX is different from the other SDRs being mentioned (ADALM-PLUTO, HackRF One, etc)? Is it just more transmit power than those other SDRs? I feel like i'm missing something.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#65

Post by wbl »

kawfey wrote: post #17
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a variation of FT8, JS8CALL, that allows for text chat and data transmission. http://js8call.com Seems to me that, especially for EmComm, this could be a total game changer. Field radio with small antennas, low power requirements, and nearly worldwide reach.

I feel like in an emergency situation, voice would still be the preferred mode since ARES and other HF radio organizations are dispatched to fill in coverage gaps that would have been there otherwise. You also need a working computer with the latest software, a digital interface, and have practiced digital mode operating skills.

An embedded processor should have the horsepower for the mode. Kit idea?

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#66

Post by ianburrell »

silman wrote: post #64
setquk wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

QSX is coming soon. https://www.qrp-labs.com/qsx.html Just google like any other technology. Answers are all out there. I never went to any amateur radio clubs. I paid up to do my exams, bought a radio and just wobbled into the bar like a drunk. Also you don’t have to talk to someone past exchanging RST etc. If they start going off on one just tune away.

can you explain how QSX is different from the other SDRs being mentioned (ADALM-PLUTO, HackRF One, etc)? Is it just more transmit power than those other SDRs? I feel like i'm missing something.

It is a SDR-based HF transceiver instead of wide-band SDR. SDR is implementation detail and extra feature. Most SDRs are receive only, and the ones that can transmit, like ones you listed, are limited in power.

The other difference is interface. The QSX, and other SDR-based transceivers, work like other regular transceivers. They have USB port for computer control and sound card output. Some newer radios provide I-Q input and output which can be used for more advanced modes. But the bandwidth is limited compared to the SDRs which can monitor an entire band.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#67

Post by jimhefferon »

resters wrote: post #39
AWildC182 wrote: post #4

This has one unspoken bonus feature: Not having to talk to an octogenarian about politics. I know it sounds silly, but I suspect this is one of the huge features driving it's success. Amateur radio is plagued by bad actors and grumpy old men, along with the general age imbalance that makes it fairly unpleasant for young people and extremely unpleasant for anyone who sounds vaguely feminine...

I feel the need to clarify AWildC182's comment because I think it reflects poorly on amateur radio as an inviting place for younger people. There are some "scenes" in amateur radio that are dominated by older, somewhat conservative leaning discourse. Some VHF and UHF repeaters are like this, and there are many groups of people who chat with the same group every night on 80m SSB. Some newcomers start out on VHF/UHF re…

> dominated by older, somewhat conservative leaning discourse

You put it in the very kindest light. It is often simply appalling.

> I recommend CW and FT8 as less conversational ways of getting on the air.

Yes. I do slow speed CW a couple of nights a week, just as a way to relax. I can't speak to FT8 but CW people tend to pride themselves on manners.

Learning the code is a question of downloading an app, or listening to a graded set of steps in the car or while walking the dog, for a month. If you can do 5-10 wpm (which just means you recognize the letters, digits, and a few punctuation marks) then you will not have much trouble finding people interested in talking to you. Me, for one.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#68

Post by ianburrell »

MisterTea wrote: post #36

Interesting. But as a non-ham I find the article chock full of ham jargon which leaves me completely lost. > What happened to take an esoteric mode designed for multi-hop E skip on VHF and overnight turn it into a worldwide phenomenon across all bands from 2200m through 70cm? In other words, what makes FT8 a killer app? Indeed. What does make FT8 the killer app? Anyone care to break this down in layman's terms that a…

FT8 and other weak signal modes can work with more noise and less signal than conventional modes. Which makes possible to communicate with the current poor HF propagation, or with lower power devices and longer distances. It does this by using low bandwidth (50 Hz), low bit rate (6 bit/s), and error correction.

The other special thing about FT8 is that it only does contacts, with binary messages for doing the exchange.

Re: FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio?

#70

Post by pongo_000 »

I was listening to some CW last night on 40m while working on compiling WSJT-X 2.0. What struck me is that of the several QSOs they were slow enough for me to follow in my head, the total exchange of information was about the same as with an FT-8 contact. Oh, there were the “filler” items like name and QTH and “73 73 es CUL” and human error corrections, but the information payload in the CW QSOs was not significantly higher than an FT-8 QSO.

The typical CW QSO took about 5-10 minutes to complete. The FT-8 QSO (with essentially the same data payload) took one minute. If anything, FT-8 represents a more efficient way of exchanging information than CW. It’s doubtful the “death” of ham radio will cone about at the bits of a more efficient mode than CW.

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