New report shows 84% of contacts on the 50 MHz band are via the digital FT8 mode

A new report by Michael, G7VJR of the popular  ClubLog website shows that an amazing 84% of contacts on the 50 MHz band over the last 13-months have been via the FT8 digital mode.

The data is taken from the almost 1.8 million QSO's logged on the site in the last 13-months.

This is bound to stir some controversy with a lot of people having misgivings about how this digital mode seems to be replacing the traditional SSB and CW means of communication.

As can be seen from this previous post, FT8 has enjoyed an explosion in popularity since it was released in 2017.

It does look though as if the pendulum have swung a bit too far in the digital direction. During the Summer Sporadic-E season, there are many times where signals are reasonably strong and a SSB contact could be completed in a much shorter time frame than say a FT8 contact with its 15-second transmission cycles going back and forth.

There is also the advantage of SSB and CW users being spread out over 100 or so kHz where as the FT8 users are all gathered at the 50.313 MHz watering hole.

How to get more of a balance though might be easier said than done.

Links...

1) G7VJR Blog

Latest stats from ClubLog website show over 50% of contacts in 2020 were via FT8

 

The latest stats from the Clublog website suggests that the FT8 digital mode now accounts for over half of all contacts made on the amateur radio bands in the year 2020.

The chart below from July 2017 to March 2021 shows how FT8 has grown to dominate the bands since its release in the second half of 2017.

Surprisingly, the newer and faster FT4 mode doesn't seem to have made any inroads on the popularity of FT8 since its introduction in late 2019.

Tens of thousands of logs are uploaded to the Clublog website every year and the data trends for 2020 are based on over 66.4 million contacts.

Links...

1) G7VJR blog post