FT8 on VHF and grid squares…

After a 6m intercontinental opening with USA East Coast, that happens quite often in June/July, I received an email message from one of the OM I had FT8 QSO with.
He said “Hello, our QSO is complete but I can’t add the QSO in my log because you never sent your gridsquare.”

Sometime the people make their own rules based on nothing, fortunately there are common rules discussed and approved by international organisations like IARU and applied for decades by several generations of radio amateurs.

The most recent document I found about this topic is VHF Handbook (V 9.01), Part4 Chapter 2.1 “Minimum requirements for a valid QSO”. The same concept is reported in many other publications and they all say the same thing:

A valid contact on VHF and higher bands is one where both operators during the contact have:

– mutually identified each other, and
– received a report, and
– received a confirmation of the successful identification and the reception of the report.

The QTH-Locator is not even mentioned, it’s a completely optional info that is sent to help the correspondents in turning the antenna in your direction.

It cannot be otherwise because on VHF+ usually the propagation conditions change fast and may happen that a S9 signal suddenly disappears at the next “over” so there is no time to wast in sending unnecessary data.

If interested the gridsquare can be recovered in several ways, databases, qrz.com or email message…

In the light of this I never send my grid for VHF DX QSO and in particular for FT8 QSO because FT8 is much slower than other modes. Without the gridsquare message, a FT8 QSO is reduced of 30 seconds, and can be completed in 45 seconds giving more chances to other operators to make the same contact.

If you decode me in FT8 and you’re a DX, call me with the report!
I’ll give priority to the callers with report over the callers with grid.
If you are not a 6m DX, e.g. you transmit from EU, don’t call me at all because we could easily have a CW/SSB QSO instead.

The funny part of this history is that I went to qrz.com to search who is this genius of the no-grid-so-not-in-log nonsense and I found in his online log that he logged a QSO without grid!!!
A master of coherence, LOL!