Bottom Line Up Front: The reason we do not allow FT8 and other "WSJT modes" is because they do not pass emergency traffic effectively.
If that's good enough for you, you can stop reading. The rest is for people who need more than that.
Our exclusion of these modes is NOT because FT8 does not support the WFD exchange. It's true that FT8 does not support the WFD exchange. There's a lengthy conversation about that in a forum archive somewhere on the Internet. The gist is there's a technological limit to how many special exchanges those modes can support. Either way, even if FT8 did support the WFD exchange, we still wouldn't allow FT8.
Yes, we know about TX5. I've heard every variation of the TX5 macro argument. It's an ineffective way to convey more than a few letters and numbers.
There's no one watching FT8 decodes for anything other than standard exchanges. You can hammer out any message you want - send 13 characters for 15 seconds, receive for 15 seconds, send another 13 characters for 15 seconds, receive for another 15 seconds (and over and over and over) - and there's no reason to believe any of those hundreds of people on 20m FT8 will notice.
I've read dozens of paragraphs from people steadfastly ignoring the reality of FT8 to advocate for its use in Winter Field Day. People have accused me and other WFDA board members of having a personal beef with Joe Taylor himself. We've been accused of having a bias against digital modes in general. We've straight up been called names and told we're not real field operators. We've seen it all.
If you made it this far and you still disagree with us, cool. We can just disagree. Want to boycott WFD over this? That's also a completely acceptable option.
Check out JS8Call instead of complaining to us about FT8. It'll be a better use of your time.
73
Mike, KY4LV
Winter Field Day Association
