What IS a QSO?

Earlier I had an interesting email from a friend in the village about what was a QSO. To him, unless there was a 2-way voice contact it was not really a QSO. He did not like FT8 contacts because these could be done PC-PC without a human even being present. These days, using systems like Echolink, one can talk to handheld stations on the other side of the world.

His email got me thinking. I use FT8 mainly because I use QRP and my voice is poor these days. I can still use voice modes, but it is hard work both for me and those at the other end!

Having said that, I like being able to assess conditions with WSPR and FT8. These systems work with weak signals and are far better aids to seeing if a path is open than SSB or CW can ever be. For a start, using the internet databases, there are lots of people monitoring and they are all monitoring the same small chunks of spectrum. Last night, for example, there were 17 FT8 QSOs on 160m in just 2kHz of spectrum. Being weak signal modes, brief openings are caught. On 2m FT8 I can be consistently copied at great range with 2.5W to a simple omni antenna. On 2m QRP SSB I struggle to work over 200km. With FT8 double or more distance is possible with QRP irrespective of conditions.

To me, Echolink QSOs are not "real" QSOs as most of the way the internet is the bearer.

I guess all we can conclude is a QSO is different for different people. Old timers (like me?) still like DX contacts by "real" radio, whereas these days this is arguably unimportant. To me, the challenge is propagation. For some it is the joy of just talking to people.

500kHz WSPR 2-way QSOs

This evening a few stations have been having 2-way QSOs using WSPR. I'm not exactly sure what the procedure is for this, but it is something I must try! This was a summary of the exchanges for a couple of QSOs:

213202  13   0 -0.5    -6  0  CQ G4WGT IO83
213602  10  -2 -0.3    -5  0  M0BMU S1
213602  16   4 -0.2     6  0  G7NKS IO92 20
214002  13   4 -0.3    -5  0  M0BMU S1
214402  16  -1 -0.5    -5  0  M0BMU R S6
214402  17   5 -0.5     6  0  G7NKS IO92 20
214802  13   0 -0.3    -5  0  73 DE G4WGT IO83

And Jim:
221002  10   4 -0.4    31  0  M0BMU S2
221402  10   4  0.0    31  0   G7NKS RRR
221802   9   5 -0.5    31  0  73 DE G7NKS IO92

What constitutes a QSO?

Having been experimenting with WSPR beaconing, and having a LOT of fun too, I started to ask what constitutes a QSO?

For example, this evening on 160m I both sent and received callsigns, locator grids, frequencies, power, date, time and reports with G8IHT and G4BOO using WSPR. You KNOW the other station has received it from the on-line WSPR database. This was in WSPR MEPT (beaconing) mode and not using WSPR QSO mode, which I've yet to try.

Now, is this a QSO formally? My feeling is no, yet all details were exchanged and received by both parties. Certainly as much detail as would be exchanged in an EME or MS QSO using modes like JT6M, although no RRRs were sent.

Views please?