A couple of days, I witnessed this exchange on Twitter (names have been changed to protect the guilty):
Think the thing I never get with ham radio is if you disagree even slightly with an aspect of a mode your a basher. FT-8 is a part of ham radio just like DStar, Fusion, DMRand CW. I do find it interesting though the lengths they will do to say it can’t be automated etc.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this since this Twitter conversation took place. I think the problem is that most hams have their own conception of what ham radio is based on what they do. The result is that what others do, then, is not real ham radio.
I empathize with Ham #1. I see the relative inactivity in the CW portions of the bands and how crowded the stations are on the FT8 frequency and sometimes think to myself, “What the heck is going on here?” Complaining about it, though, is not going to turn any of them into CW ops. A Yogi Berra quote comes to mind. He is purported to have said, “If people don’t want to come out to the ball park, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.”
Ham radio is just a hobby, after all. I’m going to continue to have fun with it in my way, and I hope that others might follow my lead. If they have other ideas, I’m still happy to help them have fun with ham radio in whatever way they choose.
sinclair says
I don’t understand all the hate FT8 is getting. It’s just another digital mode. I personally stick to voice myself as I’ve never been able to learn CW (If the CW requirement had never been dropped, I wouldn’t have ever been able to join the hobby.), and I’m a slow typer so digital modes aren’t my thing. If they are communicating over the airwaves on frequencies that match their license, then it’s ham radio to me. It meets all the other requirements of ham radio too, promotes innovation and fosters international goodwill. In this day and age I’m surprise that the bands haven’t been remapped to give more frequencies to digital modes.
Bob K0NR says
We all have our religious beliefs and some of them concern frequency and modulation type (mode).
Chuck K4RGN says
As if no hams running CW are using computer-based keyers or even computer-based DSP to extract ASCII on a screen from CW audio.
I wonder if people said “that’s not Morse!” when bugs were invented.
FT8 is not all I do, but it’s a lot of what I do — and it’s likely to stay that way, until sunspots improve or I move to the countryside where I can erect a big antenna farm.