Is FT-8 Mode on Amateur Radio the Way Forward?

 

It is easy to see why FT-8 has become such a popular mode on the amateur radio bands, especially in these times of poor HF propagation and high man-made noise levels in urban locations. I have used FT-8 myself and worked 16 countries in an evening with low power and indoor antennas. This would have been a challenge using SSB, CW or PSK-31 but it was really easy on FT-8.

This did not take any great skill on my part. I tuned the radio, connected it to my computer via my Signalink sound card, started the WJST programme and waited a few seconds for calls to appear. A station was calling ‘CQ’ so I clicked on his call sign and the computer did the rest.

I question whether a FT-8 exchange really is a ‘valid’ QSO.  So let us examine a typical ‘QSO’ in detail. Exchanges on FT-8 are limited to 13 characters:

·         I see a ‘CQ’ call on the WSJT ‘Band Activity’ window from HA7xx. This tells me the station’s call sign and 4-charater Maidenhead grid (JN97). I click on his call and my computer automatically send a reply with my 4-charater Maidenhead locator (JO01).

·         He replies and sends me a signal-to-noise report (SNR). I automatically reply to this with his SNR report.

·         He acknowledges and the QSO ends, automatically. All that is left for me to do is to click ‘OK’ to conform the log entry that WJST has generated, automatically.

The information we have exchanges is:

• ·         Call signs
• ·         4-Charater maidenhead locator
• ·         Signal-to-nose ratios.

From this QSO, I know nothing about the other guy, name, where he is, type of equipment etc.  The 4-charater locator puts him (I don’t know if it’s him or her, but I will guess for the purposes of this post) somewhere in north-central Hungary. I only know he is in Hungary because I am familiar with the ‘HA’ prefix. Without this inference he could also be in southern Slovakia. FT8 does include a 'Free text' field of 13 characters so it is possible to send additional information during an exchange but I have seldom seen this feature used on the air. 

Surely, the Signal-to-Noise ratio is useful information as it is a very important property of any communications link? Actually it tells me very little about how my equipment is performing. For example, if a station tells me my SNR is +10db I know we have a good link and my equipment is performing OK. However, if a noise source, local to him, starts and raises his noise floor by 20db my SNR will degrade to -10db even though nothing at my end has changed.

SNR is only useful if it is used to manage a communications link, for example I could adjust my power, or bit rate to optimise use of the link. Unfortunately in standard FT-8 QSOs, SNR is sent right at the end of the QSO, just before ‘73’, so there is no opportunity, or reason, to adjust my equipment settings to optimise use of the link.

One thing that I am concerned about with FT-8 QSOs is: what would I say to a curious friend to whom I was demonstrating Amateur Radio? The friend might ask, where in Hungary is he? What’s his name? Etc.  and I would be unable to answer these or other reasonable questions, about the station I have just ‘worked’, and from this my friend might conclude that amateur radio is a waste of time.

It can be argued that FT-8, because of its increased sensitivity, identifies propagation modes that otherwise would not be seen (see Radcom March 2021). My QSO, which was automatically uploaded to 'PSKReporter', might provide a data point for academic research into propagation, but I doubt if anyone would be surprised that there is a path on 40m between UK and Hungary on a summer's evening.

I am not resistant to change in Amateur Radio, which must innovate to survive. I enjoy many older modes, particularly is they require a degree of skill, such as CW, PSK-31 etc, but I also enjoy innovative digi-modes, though not FT-8, as you will have gathered by now. I am not opposed to automatic quick-fire QSOs in appropriate circumstances. They have a place when transmission paths are short-lived or highly unstable, examples are EME or meteor scatter, but I see no useful place for these modes in main-stream HF communications.

I particularly like JS-8 mode. This uses a similar coding scheme to FT-8 and has some automatic click-and-work features. However it is not tied to FT-8’s 13-charater exchanges and so can do more; much more:

• ·         Unlimited QSO length so you can simply exchange reports or have a long chat
• ·         Work stations via intermediate stations (Relay)
• ·         Send, store and forward messages.
• ·         Adjust bit rate, transmit power etc. so you can actually make use of SNR information.
• ·         Beacon mode so you can see propagation changes in near real time.

Prior to FT-8, I was concerned about the move towards ‘Rubber Stamp’ QSOs, where we simply exchange fictitious ‘59’ signal reports and move on to the next QSO, started amateur radio down the road of irrelevance and FT-8 continues on that path. I would not go as far as to say it should be banned, but regular users might think about using other modes that permit substantive QSOs, require a higher skill level and are useful for exchanging real information such as could be used for emergency communications should the need ever arise.

As always, comments are more than welcome.