On Mar 2, 2020, at 11:21 AM, Kermit Lehman via Groups.Io <ktfrog007@...> wrote:



Hi,

I've been following the FT contest high NIL rate discussion.  It affects me as I've never done an FT contest with less than a 5% error rate compared to a more normal 1-2% rate in CW, SSB and RTTY contests.  In my first FT8 contest, the 2018 FT8-Roundup, I had a 9.4% score reduction.

I took part in the recent FT4-DX-CONTEST partly to take a look at the problem.  Some thoughts:

Consider my usual plight as a mostly S&P contestant.  At the end of a QSO with a running station, I send an RR73 transmission.

 

WX6XXX AB1J RR73 

After that, I don't want any dead air time. 

I want the runner to immediately send something to someone.  It can be a 73 to me, a new CQ or a reply to a tail ending station (calling off frequency, hopefully).  It's his or her transmission frame.  Use it.

WX6XXX AB1J RR73

AB1J WX6XXX 73    or    CQ RU WX6XXX CM87    or    TU; WX6YYY WX6XXX R 599 CA

What I don't want is for the station to disappear for a while.

In the FT4 contest, the running station often disappeared for one or more cycles, so I didn't know what was happening after my QSO.  If I saw an immediate transmission, all was well.  If signals were good and there was no QRM, I assumed all was well.  Otherwise, who knows?

What I want is what happens normally with the legacy modes, CW, SSB, RTTY.  With those modes the running station doesn't disappear between QSOs or get out of the flow.  His continuous ongoing operation is confirmation that my QSO was good; otherwise he'd ask for a repeat.  He should  never go silent.  If he does, something went wrong (power failure) or he's stuck in an SO2R quagmire. (That's the reason folks hate to wait for a slow SO2R station - what happened?)

FT logging should not be done automatically.  Set WSJT-X to prompt logging, but manually click to log the contact when the QSO is satisfactorily completed.  This will prevent logging a contact prematurely or logging it multiple times (one for every RR73) when repeats happen.

There are lots of new FT contesters who don't know the legacy mode contest conventions, such as implied good QSOs if no one raises any issues during the QSO (no repeat requests) and the running station continues on his merry way.  They will need to learn the convention and realize they don't need a final 73 if some other transmission is sufficient.

73,

Ken, AB1J.

On Mar 1, 2020, at 10:24 PM, n6rsh <stevenpanattoni@...> wrote:

Bill,

Thank you for your reply. I uninstalled Dimension 4 and installed NTP. My clock is showing exact on "Time Is" as before - I don;t know enough about computers to know if all is well inside but lets say it is. Although I DID get to work VP8PJ tonite on 30 meters, I am started missing receive blocks shortly afterwords. I am now on 60 meters and am only receiving odd cycles (.15 & .45) - no even cycles. I switched back to normal mode from F/H with same effect. As I write this, VP8PJ is there on 60m. I am getting the blocks of everyone sending to them but not the blocks the VP8 would be xmting on. I don't know if I can hear them so I am not xmting.

I have been using DXLabsuite Commander for rig control. I thought that was the problem since you have to run most of the suite to use the bridge for automatic Logging. I switched back to the IC-7300 rig control and it makes no difference. I have turned JTAlert on and off with same result. Everything was working fine until I THINK mid January - I'm not sure when it started messing up but it hasn't been too long.

Again, Thank You,
Steve - N6RSH