I have been concerned for some time about the lack of interest in the new modes, even though some of us try and promote them. Very few hams have any interest in digital modes to begin with. About half the hams here in the U.S. can not operate below 10 meters since you need at least a General Class license, and the great majority of General and higher class licensees do not ever operate, nor do they have any interest in operating digital modes, particularly keyboard digital modes on HF. Not only because it is not interesting to them, but many of them do not have typing skills.
Because my interests are a bit narrower than most of you with a focus on accurate message capability particularly what works for practical emergency communication, there are exceedingly few who have the slightest interest in this. I sent out a request for some testing of these modes to a two county area. I have received responses back from just a couple of hams who I already knew had interest in this and have done a few tests in the past and one ham outside the two county area who monitors the list. That is very telling! Going back to about 1980, when I was relicensed as a ham, I found RTTY (both HF and VHF) to be interesting and built some simple TU equipment. But when Amtor and later Pactor and Clover II became available, I never wanted to go back to receiving scrambled, incorrect data. Circumstances caused me to discontinue all digital modes in the mid to late 1990's when I put all my resources into a defective HAL product, which as returned and ended any further interest in proprietary modes. Then when the sound card modes became available, we had a sea change in digital operation and I found it quite interesting. The newer modes often do not offer enough difference from PSK31, the first sound card mode, for most users. They want a narrow, casual, easy to tune, understandable modulation and they are not as concerned about accuracy, errors, resistance to interference, doppler, etc. The two modes I least like to operate today are RTTY and PSK31. Too many errors, inability to handle weak and changing conditions on HF and I would rather use newer technology that works better, especially the ARQ modes. But almost no one else wants to do this unless we make a sked to be on a certain mode on a certain frequency at a certain time. That is OK for initial testing, but is not acceptable for most of us who want to throw out a CQ and get a response within a reasonable short time. We can do that on most any open band and get results with SSB phone and CW. I have watched Andy's sked pages and there are often huge gaps in time from the last post for the digital modes. But go to the SKCC list and there much more activity, often from the past few minutes. And that is a special subset of CW! Again that tells you what hams are interested in and just is not digital modes. The modes that I find the most enjoyable and most practical are MFSK16 for narrow, good speed for keyboarding, deep into the noise capabilities, even though not an ARQ mode. Of course it can be ARQ with NBEMS. Then FAE400 due to the superior quasi-duplex ARQ capabilities that work fairly well down into the noise with memory ARQ (I still wonder how well it works against Pactor but I have no equipment to do a comparison). And finally, maybe the faster Olivia modes, if they are at least 30 wpm. Anything slower and I find it frustrating and impractical. But that is just my perspective and others will have very different goals and interests. 73, Rick, KV9U Andrew O'Brien wrote: > I tried calling CQ numerous times in the TARA Skirming using various > "exotic" modes, but ZERO respondents. No one answered Olivia CQ's, no > one answered DominoEX CQ's, no Hell, and even no MFSK16 ! > > The only three modes that produced a response were PSK31, PSK63 and RTTY. > > > Several months ago, I saw Dave AA6YQ make some comment about Winwabler > not adding additional modes because (paraphrasing) RTTY and PSK31/63 > are effective and the others too under utilized to warrant inclusion. > While I have really enjoyed many experimental modes and had lots of > fun testing, I think if I added up the time I have spent endlessly > trawling the digital bands without results, I could have built a few > more antennae, or added a few thousand more QSO via other modes. > Heck, my CW could be even more practiced. > > > So, for the next few months I am going to detox, and consolidate > around the following modes. > > PSK31/63 (125/250 on VHF/UHF) > RTTY > MEPT-WSPR (passive operations) > Narrow SSTV/Digital SSTV > HF JT65A > ALE 400 > > > Time to put MFSK16,Hell, standard ALE, Olivia , Contestia, RTTYM, > DominoEX , etc, in to the virtual junk-box. They can join their > counsins from the non-virtual world...Betamax ,8 track tapes, and > cassettes. All good applications, but no one uses 'em anymore. > > > Andy K3UK > > >
