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So I'm thinking about casually working the ARRL Int'l Digital contest this weekend to try to pick up (hopefully they'll confirm!) a couple of new DCXX entities so I can get my DXCC (almost there).

While I have done some SSB contesting I have never done an FT8 contest. I have gotting the N3FJP contest logger for the event set up and talking with JTAlert so that's all good.

What I am wondering, though, is if FT8 contests (and this contest in particular) happen in "regular" mode or in fox & hound mode. I did read the ARRL's rule for this contest and the sample exchange does look like a "regular" exchange. But since the rules say all you have to do is exchange grid squares maybe fox & hound is allowed too?

I wouldn't be doing fox myself but I am wondering if I should make sure to understand hound before the contest starts or if I don't have to worry about it for this.

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    $\begingroup$ For those following along at home, I found onallbands.com/… for starters that gives a little more insight/context into this "fox & hound" mode. $\endgroup$
    – natevw - AF7TB
    Jun 9, 2022 at 22:41

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Regular (please).

Fox and Hound mode is intended for the scenario where everybody on frequency (the "hounds") are working one station (the fox). It's optimized to max out the fox's QSO rate so that as many hounds as possible can get through to a DXpedition. But there isn't enough room in the FT8 sub-band for more than a couple stations to "run a frequency"; instead, everyone works everyone. Enabling fox mode in a digi contest would make a mess and be a generally unfriendly thing to do.

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Turns out the answer is more like "neither". As the other answer says, Fox/Hound should not be used for this contest. But "regular" shouldn't be used either.

What should be used is (what WSJT-X calls it anyways) the "WW Digi Contest" special operating activity. You can find it on the "Advanced" tab of the "Settings" page if you are using WSJT-X. (I don't know what JTDX uses since I don't use that one).

When this mode is activated WSJT-X will use a different, abbreviated set of messages. (The ARRL rules document for the contest shows what those are in the simple exchange that it listed.)

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