Although VUCC and the Fred Fish Memorial Award do not distinguish between modulation modes, I thought it might be interesting to tally my list of 488 QSOs.
The first QSO in my log on six meters occurred in 2010. Then there was a long hiatus until the June 2014 VHF Contest. After that, my enthusiasm for six meters took off.
Those first QSOs were CW, with a very light sprinkling of SSB. In 2015, I made my first FSK441 QSO, and then I took up JT65. Even so, the vast majority of my six-meter QSOs remained CW and SSB.
This morning, I decided to walk through my official Logbook of the World list of FFMA QSOs. Many of these are QSL cards, and all of them were recorded in LoTW as soon as I had a batch of 25 to add a sticker to the VUCC certificate. So, it’s a good historical record of how I built my list of 488 grids.
Here’s how the numbers worked out.
| Mode | QSOs | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| FT8 | 178 | 36% |
| CW | 111 | 23% |
| SSB | 77 | 16% |
| JT65 | 63 | 13% |
| MSK144 | 40 | 8% |
| FSK441 | 9 | 2% |
| JT9 | 5 | 1% |
| Q65 | 5 | 1% |
I was very surprised by the number of CW/SSB QSOs, which accounted for a combined total of 39%. It was also interesting to see how JT65 ranked. I started using it on HF when it first appeared and readily moved it to six meters.
The overall perspective is that from 2010 to 2026, I used whatever worked to log new grids. That makes sense. Good luck on your journey toward 488.
