Just 6 meters for me, and only 5-6 hours. Ended up with about 120 QSOs. Spent more time than that over the weekend building a 6-element 6-meter yagi from wire, rope, and pvc, but that’s a story for another time...
I was determined not to let this be an FT8 contest for me, but ended up on 50.313 much of the time anyway. Had the most fun when there was coast-to-coast activity on cw and phone on Sunday.
Aside from all the other reasons not to like FT8, here’s another — call it dynamic range, for lack of a better term. When the signals are clean, a few big stations in the same town can coexist on the cw and phone bands. When W5ABC is 30 dB over S9 on 50.130, just move up to 50.140 and it usually becomes a non-issue. But on FT8, as it is practiced now, everyone is in your passband and it is very difficult to copy the weak signals (and isn’t that what the WS in WSJT is all about?) when the radio’s gain is reduced by the cross-town guy who is literally 50 dB louder. We need another 1 or 2 watering holes, spaced maybe 20 kHz apart. Maybe someone will get that going by the next contest.
73,
Bruce AA5B
Los Ranchos
