
FT8 – Tipping Point for Ham Radio? - lightlyused
https://www.flexradio.com/ft8-tipping-point-for-ham-radio/?fbclid=IwAR3S90pJsOMx8xOc3W34IsAbw9x6skK48WHWrZ6ZTzW0UARl4snnIEQzqqQ
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AWildC182
This has one unspoken bonus feature: Not having to talk to an octogenarian
about politics.

I know it sounds silly, but I suspect this is one of the huge features driving
it's success. Amateur radio is plagued by bad actors and grumpy old men, along
with the general age imbalance that makes it fairly unpleasant for young
people and extremely unpleasant for anyone who sounds vaguely feminine...

~~~
silman
As someone who went from nothing -> Amateur Extra when i was 23 (25 now) from
a random spurt of inspiration to learn ham radio and then promptly did nothing
with the license i agree with this.

I don't know exactly what i was expecting from getting the license but i will
say that i didn't expect it to basically just be dominated by old conservative
men who don't appreciate younger folk stepping in on their air space. I have
yet to actually speak to anyone because i don't feel like there is anything i
would want to say.

Part of me was excited to do things like decode ISS transmission or send
digital packets around the world; but i wanted to ease into the higher cost HF
equipment with a simple and cheap as chips baofeng UHF/VHF radio (i know, its
garbage but i like i said i wanted to ease into the hobby) and when i
discovered there was nothing to do but listen to old men rant i just shelved
the radio.

I considered getting the bitX40 but never ended up doing it because i don't
own the house i rent and putting an antenna up seems like a lot of work for a
place i might move from soon. Admittedly maybe my problem was getting a
baofeng UHF/VHF instead of something that i can plug into my computer and do
digital modes with. But no one was really around to help me decide what to
choose or give me insight into what i may want to do with my new AE powers.

~~~
mmaunder
Guys, no one is forcing you to listen to that stuff. Get off the voice bands,
get on digital and you'll have a blast.

Here's a fun talk at Defcon from Balint Seeber, a ham who focuses on security,
to get you in the right headspace. I attended this and the group of 6 of us
that hung out afterwards with Balint was some of the most impressive people
I've met at Defcon. One had built a bug sniffer. Another was intercepting
satellite comms over Iraq. And Balint had a prototype SDR board he shared with
us. So much fun.

[https://youtu.be/cHtHBqSZE4k](https://youtu.be/cHtHBqSZE4k)

Yes, there is a community of rag chewers who use the voice bands, especially
lower HF, to keep in touch with friends. That's a tiny part of the hobby and
community.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Exactly this.

Too many people get funneled into this trap by the ARRL who understandably
push "get on the air today!" type articles which haven't been updated since
the 80's and have people getting HF radios and hunting for repeaters on the 2M
band. And the grumpy old guys who are pissed off it isn't the 80's (or 70's or
50's, few seem to be nostalgic for the 60's) anymore.

In the digital radio space its a lot more open, and just being able to work
with radio has become pretty easy these days. I've got a bunch of SDRs now,
and I agree the ADALM-PLUTO ($100) is the most cost effective way to get a
nice xmit and receive SDR. The RSP2 from SDRPlay is another one that is good
for the low bands through 2G (its like $200) then the next step up is the
HackRF-1 ($300) or LimeSDR ($300) or LimeSDR Mini ($170). Above that you start
getting into the Ettus/National USRP radios ($3000 and up).

Small WHSPR (whisper) radios like the article mentions are inexpensive to
build and fun to play with as well, not a lot of chatting but tagging beacons
and getting tagged. Or putting lightweight radios in a balloon and flying it
around the world
([https://www.mchsarc.com/?page_id=13](https://www.mchsarc.com/?page_id=13))

~~~
sliken
I've searched this space looking for a decent RX/TX SDR that does a few watts.
It's surprisingly hard. Seems like the 5 watt $30 HTs (that are SDR based) are
extremely common, but as soon as you add any flexibility it's $1000s.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Those two constraints are easily separated. Radio and separate power
amplifier. You will find that a really wide band power amp is expensive so a
lot of people will have two to five PAs and an RF switch to select between
them

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MisterTea
Interesting. But as a non-ham I find the article chock full of ham jargon
which leaves me completely lost.

> What happened to take an esoteric mode designed for multi-hop E skip on VHF
> and overnight turn it into a worldwide phenomenon across all bands from
> 2200m through 70cm? In other words, what makes FT8 a killer app?

Indeed. What does make FT8 the killer app? Anyone care to break this down in
layman's terms that an EE with basic radio knowledge can understand?

~~~
sevensor
So, multi-hop E-skip is a way that the signal can propagate through the
ionosphere. (E-layer skip:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporadic_E_propagation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporadic_E_propagation)).
2200m and 7cm are wavelengths. FT8 is a digital mode that can transmit a very
restrictied amount of information -- basically your callsign and where you
are. Exchanging this information is enough for a contact, or QSO. The debate
is about whether it's still about communication when you can't really talk to
people using FT8.

Edit: And contacts are basically how hams keep score. You used to send
postcards to the people you'd talked to. Old hams have binders full of them.

~~~
MisterTea
Ah, I think I understand. I remember hearing the term, "shooting skip", which
I understand as slang CB users used for talking to people past the horizon
using the ionosphere to bounce the radio waves.

So if I understand correctly this is a game hams play where you try to skip
your signal as far as possible and see if you get a ping?

If I am understand this properly, this successful exchange earns you a point
and the old timers used post cards as score keeping, as once the ping was
established they could each mail each other.

I assume FT8 is text only?

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HowTheSausageIs
The FT8 developers have an amazingly strong knowledge of information theory as
well as the many practical considerations of communication over an RF channel.
Feature addition and bug fixing are slow because the developers don't believe
in abstraction, and instead code as if the only option were a direct carryover
of FORTRAN 77 conventions into C++. There's no longer a public repo but
[https://sourceforge.net/p/wsjt/wsjtx/ci/master/tree/mainwind...](https://sourceforge.net/p/wsjt/wsjtx/ci/master/tree/mainwindow.cpp#l7380)
is representative of current code.

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bjt2n3904
I've yet to use FT8, but it's wonderful seeing the ham community invest in
newer protocols that incorporate things like forward error correction!

Many of the popular protocols, like PSK31 and AX.25 are getting long in the
tooth. There's a beauty to their simplicity, but it leaves much to be desired.

Though SDR is a bit of a misnomer, extracting data out of an audio signal with
DSP on commodity hardware is becoming the new way to do radio. It certainly
will never replace analog voice in terms of simplicity and availability, but
it's definitely breathing life into the hobby!

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oakwhiz
“Is FT8 damaging amateur radio?”

It seems to be achieving the goal of global communications while making better
use of limited spectrum to do so. I can't see that as being damaging as it
really is an advancement in the state-of-the-art.

~~~
jquinby
Exactly so, and moreover, during a solar minimum, when HF propagation is sub-
par even in OK conditions. The weak-signal stuff is what got me interested in
upgrading from tech to general, and then extra. Every new thing over the
decades has been met with the same "this is killing ham radio" response.

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pongo_000
I was listening to some CW last night on 40m while working on compiling WSJT-X
2.0. What struck me is that of the several QSOs they were slow enough for me
to follow in my head, the total exchange of information was about the same as
with an FT-8 contact. Oh, there were the “filler” items like name and QTH and
“73 73 es CUL” and human error corrections, but the information payload in the
CW QSOs was not significantly higher than an FT-8 QSO.

The typical CW QSO took about 5-10 minutes to complete. The FT-8 QSO (with
essentially the same data payload) took one minute. If anything, FT-8
represents a more efficient way of exchanging information than CW. It’s
doubtful the “death” of ham radio will cone about at the bits of a more
efficient mode than CW.

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mmaunder
JT65 is amazing for weak signals. So this is quite exciting. More data on the
specs:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSJT_(amateur_radio_software...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSJT_\(amateur_radio_software\)#FT8)

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zokier
I feel like I'm missing some context here; why is FT8 controversial in the
first place?

~~~
Custardian
Global communication in amateur radio was previously only been possible using
high power transmissions (which requires a full license).

FT8 makes global communication achievable for beginner amateur radio folk.

Some amateur radio practitioners think if you want global communications
without learning radio theory, use your ISP or SIM provider.

~~~
someguydave
But knowing “radio theory” isn’t enough to have global SSB conversations on
HF. You need a high antenna and reasonably high power, something which most of
the population will never be able to have because of how harshly antennas are
judged by others in the real estate market.

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hexo
But wait. What it actually is? Modulation? Radio? I just didn't get it from
the article, so please explain (explanatory article is ok too).

~~~
vidanay
Isochronous Twitter for ham radio except only 13 characters.

It's great!

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wbl
As someone about to start working HF after a long time with a technician
license I didn't use I think low power digital modes are a valuable addition.
But there is something to be said for PSK31's conversational nature.

~~~
GlenTheMachine
There's a variation of FT8, JS8CALL, that allows for text chat and data
transmission.

[http://js8call.com](http://js8call.com)

Seems to me that, especially for EmComm, this could be a total game changer.
Field radio with small antennas, low power requirements, and nearly worldwide
reach.

~~~
kawfey
I feel like in an emergency situation, voice would still be the preferred mode
since ARES and other HF radio organizations are dispatched to fill in coverage
gaps that would have been there otherwise. You also need a working computer
with the latest software, a digital interface, and have practiced digital mode
operating skills.

~~~
geofft
In an emergency situation I'll probably have my cell phone, too. What I'd love
to have is an app (or packaged web app using WebAudio) that encodes/decodes
PSK31 so I can plug in an audio cable from my iPhone to my Baofeng and start
typing.

~~~
GlenTheMachine
I agree. So, why not a JS8CALL app?

As I understand it, the _real_ go-to mode for EmComm is still CW. Which
implies very experienced operators. At some point in the future, you'll have
more operators experienced with digital modes than Morse code. So...

~~~
geofft
A CW app should also be doable....

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hatsunearu
I think the FCC should remove the 300 baud limit for HF which is super
arbitrary and limiting for real digital modes. That limit makes modes that are
quite distant from modern day commercial digital modulations viable--FT8,
JT65, and so on being examples.

They are primarily asynchronous MFSK detectors with tons of symbols--pretty
weird design and a work around of the 300 baud limit. We can't get cool stuff
like QAM, high rate PSK, and other nice modes working because of this
arbitrary old rule.

~~~
ac29
Curious, what about the symbol rate limit limits you from using, say 8PSK or
16QAM? Is it that it also effectively limits channel bandwidth to something
that isn't practical to transmit and/or receive with higher order modulation?

~~~
hatsunearu
Super late but good question. I should ask some seasoned hams about this. I'm
curious as well.

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tibbon
I've got my technicians license, and have no idea what he's talking about. Can
someone explain? Even the AARL page on this that's the top google hit doesn't
jargon check itself at all: [http://www.arrl.org/news/ft8-mode-is-latest-
bright-shiny-obj...](http://www.arrl.org/news/ft8-mode-is-latest-bright-shiny-
object-in-amateur-radio-digital-world)

~~~
geofft
FT8 is a signal encoding mode. My impression is that it is much more robust
and therefore also reduces the required skill, luck, etc. in making successful
transmissions under unfavorable conditions.

"DX" is an abbreviation for "distance", generally used in the sense of "making
long-distance contacts." A "QSO" is a successful contact between stations, and
"working" refers to the process of making / attempting to make contacts.

"Multi-hop Es" refers to this atmospheric effect using the E region of the
ionosphere:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporadic_E_propagation](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporadic_E_propagation)

"CW" (for "continuous wave") typically refers to the use of Morse code over a
constant frequency wave that's just being turned on and off, which has
historically been one of the most robust modes, although it requires skill in
encoding/decoding Morse by hand.

"73" means "best regards" or similar; it's from very old telegraphy
abbreviations.

~~~
tibbon
Thank you so much!

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esaym
I'm trying hard to figure out what these "modes" are. Even after watching a
video[0] I'm still not sure what is really going on. Is the whole point just
to acknowledge 'pings' from other transmitters? Seems kind of pointless but I
assume I'm missing something....

[0]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzXkIvoqvAY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzXkIvoqvAY)

~~~
Steltek
"Modes" would be much better named as "protocols" (like "Ethernet" or "IP").
Originally it was rudimentary analog protocols: AM, FM, Morse/CW that were
decoded with simple circuits where "mode" might have been more appropriate.

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jjacobs0
"Zero sunspots but working DX on FT8!" I don't get it. I thought sunspots
killed radio communications?

~~~
topspin
> I thought sunspots killed radio communications?

They can. Sunspots can also _greatly_ enhance radio communications. Outside of
amateur radio this effect is rarely appreciated; ordinary radio service users
usually only become aware of sunspots when they interfere with communication.
Amateurs, however, operate on many different frequencies, and they achieve
communication under unusual, rapidly changing conditions. They often use solar
activity to their advantage.

The story mentions "10m DX." This is ham speak for the 10 meter or 30
megahertz band (the high end of the 3-30 MHz "high frequency" or HF band,
which is extremely low frequency by today's standards) long range (DX;
multiple "hop", frequently international) communication. Using traditional
modes the 10 meter band is presently "closed" to long distance communication,
meaning you get nothing but static when you listen and no one detects your
transmissions. The lack of solar activity is the reason the band is closed.
When solar activity is high (lots of sunspots) one can use a low cost
transceiver, a small antenna and an easily obtained license and reach people
thousands of miles away.

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hanoz
Is there any way I can pick this up using an RTL-SDR dongle?

~~~
BenjiWiebe
Yes. Make sure you are using direct sampling, attach a long wire, string it
up. Use an audio pipe to pipe the audio from your SDR software into the WSJT-X
software, which also lists the default frequencies for a given mode. Enjoy!

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Jemm
By FT8 do they mean FT8 Call?

~~~
bigjimmyk3
FT8Call has been renamed to JS8Call (and also mentioned upthread).

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hexo
But, what is FT8???? :(

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platz
So is FT8 is to ham radio as WebAssembly is to the internet?

~~~
howard941
From the balance of comments on this article you'd think FT8 was saving ham
radio from itself. /death of ham radio predicted, film at 11

~~~
setquk
It’s been dying for about 30 years I understand. Kenwood, Yaesu and Icom all
went bankrupt 20 year ago. Home owners associations stopped all antennas being
erected and power lines and ADSL finished the charred smouldering remains off.

Now I’m going to lock myself in the basement with my guns and cans of beans.

