The PACCdigi contest is tomorrow. It is organized by the VERON which is also organizing the famous yearly dutch PACC contest. Of course it is nice to have another digital mode contest and the mixed mode FT4/FT8/RTTY section has some interesting challenges to setup. I've participated the first time this was organized in 2021. I faced the challenges to get WSJT-X and MMTTY working together with the N1MM+ contest software. It worked, I did make contacts. But it was not really my thing and I didn't even bother to make a report of it on my blog.
I considered to take part this year. I was especially interested in the FT4 part of the contest since the QSO rate with FT4 could be twice as high compared to FT8. But then I read in the rules that for FT4 the standard frequencies will be used, while for FT8 there are special frequencies.
I get the impression that the organisation did not really do any research. The FT4 frequencies are full of activity lately and much too crowded to have contest stations doing their thing.
Above a map from a few hours FT4 last week. Including a contact with T30UN (Western Kiribati) who is very active on FT4 all bands since last week. Certainly I see FT4 is gaining popularity at the moment.
I hope the PACCdigi rules will be changed next year so they use FT4 on separate contest frequencies. If so I will consider to participate again. For those that will participate, good luck!
4 comments:
Good morning Bas, that is very unfortunate that the contest committee did not clue into that. It is going to make a mess of the FT4 section and a lot of upset operators. I do a lot of CW contesting and I personally stay away from the QRP watering holes. With FT4 contesting just starting out this is not going to make a good impression on FT4 ops.
73 and have a good weekend Bas,
Mike
VE9KK
Well Mike, I stayed on FT4 practically the whole day to monitor. Till now I saw only one station calling CQ PACC on the FT4 freqs. I think most ops understand that it is useless to call with FT4 this way. Despite that I think FT4 has a lot of potential for contests because it is fast, twice as fast compared to FT8.
73, Bas
Just take part in the rtty only section. Normal frequenties in use hi.
RTTY is so slow. Not my prefered mode. 73, Bas
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