Michael O'Brien

yeah the split workflow is basically what most serious contesters do, dont overthink it. N1MM for the contest, export the adif when youre done, import into your main logger. ive been doing it this way for years with no real issues. the dupe checking is a non-issue because youre running them as separate logs anyway — the contest log is its own thing and your main log is the master record. just make sure you dont have overlapping qso times causing confusion if you do any casual operating between contest sessions. the WSJT-X thing is a valid concern though. if you have N1MM open and you also want to log FT8 via WSJT-X you'll need to think about the UDP ports. N1MM can actually receive UDP broadcasts from WSJT-X i believe, theres a setting in WSJT-X under reporting to enable that. so you can run FT8 and have it log directly into your N1MM contest log which is actually pretty slick for contests that allow digital modes. but if youre doing FT8 outside of the contest just close N1MM and let it go back to Log4OM, its not that complicated once you set it up once.

honestly you're way overthinking it, which is totally normal. the technician exam is 35 questions, multiple choice, and you need 26 right to pass. it covers a little bit of everything — some basic electronics, band plans, operating procedures, safety stuff, FCC rules. nothing crazy deep. the best thing i can tell you is just go to hamstudy.org and start hammering the question pool. the whole pool is public so theres no surprises on test day, every question on the actual exam comes straight from it. some people study for like two weeks doing 20-30 minutes a day and pass no problem. as for the fee yeah the FCC started charging $35 for new licenses a couple years back, but the VE session itself most clubs do for free or like $15. find a local club through arrl.org and they'll have test sessions listed. your neighbor can probably point you to one nearby too. just go do it, the test is genuinely not that bad

The new pool has 409 questions compared to 412 in the prior pool - 27 new, 30 removed, and about 155 modified. One key update is that Technician class operators can now use digital modes like FT8 on 10 meters, 6 meters, and 2 meters. Definitely worth studying those digital mode questions!

yeah what he said about the monitoring idea is solid. i actually run my old FT-897 as a dedicated second receiver during contests, just toss a random wire out the window and let it sit on a different band. obviously it picks up a bunch of noise and the antenna is terrible but it's enough to tell you if there's activity. kind of surprised how often i catch an opening that way. one thing nobody talks about enough with SO2R is the mental load. ive tried it a few times with borrowed gear and honestly my rate went DOWN at first because i kept making mistakes — sending the wrong callsign, logging on the wrong radio, stuff like that. you basically have to unlearn how you operate and build new reflexes. so even if you had the perfect station setup tomorrow id say budget like 3 or 4 contests just to get the workflow down before you expect any improvement in numbers

I use these on phone too! Saying "73" instead of "best regards" is just ham tradition now. GA/GM/GE for good afternoon/morning/evening are handy. Even though we're not tapping keys anymore, these abbreviations are part of our ham culture and make communication more efficient.

so we have a fairly big county-wide ARES exercise coming up and i've been tasked with putting together a portable field station that needs to run for about 18 hours straight, possibly outdoors with no shore power. been going back and forth on whether to bring the Honda EU2200i or just go all-in on LiFePO4 batteries and skip the generator noise headache entirely. the planned load is an IC-7300 running at maybe 50-60w most of the time, a SignaLink for digital, laptop, and a few accessories. i did a rough estimate and i'm looking at somewhere around 15-20ah per hour depending on duty cycle which honestly seems like a lot when i write it out. for antennas i'm leaning toward the Chameleon MPAS 2.0 on a push-up mast since i can get it up fast and work basically any band, but part of me wants to just throw up a resonant dipole for 40m since that's what we'll be using 90% of the time for the nets. anyone done a long-duration field setup like this and have opinions on the generator vs battery question? i keep going in circles on it.

not a dumb question at all, this stuff confused me for probably my first two years on the air honestly. so the short version is LoTW is run by the ARRL and it's what most people use for DXCC credit — it's the gold standard for awards if you care about that kind of thing. the whole TQSL setup is annoying at first but once you get your certificate loaded and figure out how to sign your ADIF files it becomes pretty routine, just takes a few minutes after a contest or a good DX session eQSL is more casual and a lot of people use it but it doesnt count for DXCC unless they're in the authenticity guaranteed program, which not everyone is. that said i still use it because some guys only do eQSL and it's nice to have the digital card to look at paper cards are kind of a tradition and some people really love them. i always send one back if i get one, just feels like the right thing to do. you can use the bureau through your national society if you dont want to pay direct postage for every card, saves a ton of money especially for DX

im kind of in the same boat as you so take this for what its worth but one thing somebody told me at a hamfest that stuck with me — your go-kit is only as good as how often you actually test it. like dont just pack it and leave it in a closet. actually set it up in the backyard every couple months and pretend you're deployed. you'll figure out real fast what you forgot or what doesnt work anymore. batteries especially, they can sit fine and then surprise you at the worst time.

so ive been at this for about three months now, finally passed my general and jumped straight into trying to learn CW because honestly thats what got me interested in ham radio in the first place, all those old movies with guys tapping away in the dark lol. anyway i picked up a used Bencher BY-1 paddle off ebay and hooked it into my IC-7300's built in keyer and i just... cant get it to feel natural. i keep squeezing both paddles at the wrong time and getting these weird extra dits or dahs that totally mangle whatever i was trying to send. i've watched probably every youtube video on iambic mode A vs mode B and i think i understand the theory but when my hands are actually on the paddle my brain just goes blank. im currently practicing at like 12wpm with a 20wpm character speed (farnsworth method i think?) and people keep telling me different things. some say slow everything way down, some say keep characters fast. also my paddle tension is probably off, i have no idea what im doing with that adjustment screw. has anyone else gone through this learning curve and actually come out the other side? feels like ill never get it

I'm planning my first EME station and trying to understand the absolute minimum requirements to make contacts. I have a good VHF location with clear moon windows from 5° to 45° elevation. Equipment I'm considering: Single yagi with at least 12 dBd gainAt least 150 watts outputGood low noise preamplifierLow loss coax like LMR400Planning to start with 50W SSB transceiver and directional antenna for JT65B. For small stations, should I focus on prearranged schedules rather than random operation?

so ive been trying to figure out if the local club is doing a group carpool thing again this year for Dayton, last year we had like 6 guys go together and split gas which was great. havent heard anything from the club email list in a while though. also not sure if the swap meet tables are already sold out or if theres still room to get one, i got a bunch of old gear id like to unload, mostly some older HF stuff and a couple handhelds that just sit in a drawer

so ive been doing CW practice pretty consistently since i got my general last year and i hit 13wpm pretty quick, like within the first few months. but now its been maybe 4 or 5 months and i just cant seem to get past this wall. i do about 20-30 minutes a day with the koch method on the lcwo site and sometimes i fire up the radio and try to copy actual QSOs but it just turns to mush after a few seconds. i started at 5wpm and honestly the jump up to around 10-12 felt pretty natural but something about that 13-15 range just feels like a brick wall. i read somewhere that this is common but nobody really explained WHY it happens or what to do differently. my character speed is set to 20 but my word speed is like 13 so maybe that mismatch is the issue? i dont know. anyone else gone through this and come out the other side?

yeah i had almost this exact debate with myself last year, ended up leaving the RG-8X in place and honestly cant tell any difference on the air. the connectors matter way more than people realize too, a poorly crimped PL-259 will hurt you more than the cable itself at those lengths on 2m. did you solder the center pin or just rely on the crimp? asking because i had a flaky connection for months that i blamed on the cable and it turned out to be a cold solder joint the whole time.

QRP is one i see a lot that trips people up — it means low power operation, like 5 watts or less. people also say theyre running QRP as kind of a badge of honor thing. and QRO is high power, the opposite. QRG is your exact frequency which comes up sometimes when you ask someone what frequency theyre on. oh and PSE and TU are not Q codes but youll see them constantly especially on CW, PSE means please and TU is thank you. theres also OM which means old man but its not an insult, its just how hams refer to each other, and YL is a woman operator. some of the older guys use those a lot. once you start doing CW contacts the abbreviations get even more intense but one thing at a time i guess

the inverting transponder thing tripped me up for a while too. basically means if you tune your uplink up in frequency your downlink goes down — so to track doppler you're moving them in opposite directions simultaneously. sounds annoying and it is until it becomes muscle memory. some radios let you link the VFOs with an offset and invert the tuning direction which makes it way easier but i dont think the 991a does that natively, might be worth checking if there's a CAT command workaround someone has figured out. also just as a side note — gpredict is great but i've been messing around with SatDump lately for some of the weather birds and its made me realize how much more is up there beyond the FM and linear transponder sats. totally different rabbit hole though.

I'm setting up a RemoteHams server with an Adalm-Pluto SDR for QO-100 operation and running into some latency issues with audio streaming. The remote SDR system handles web browser control with reduced bandwidth needs versus direct SDR data streams, but I'm still experiencing about 300ms delay between TX audio input and actual transmission. Currently running on a Raspberry Pi 4B with the latest RemoteHams software. Has anyone successfully optimized audio latency on this setup? I'm particularly interested in buffer size tweaks and network optimization settings that might help with real-time operation. Also curious about the claimed bandwidth reduction from 10M bytes/sec for raw SDR data down to less than 100k bytes/sec for processed audio and spectrum data - are these figures realistic in practice?

yeah that first one gets you for sure, i remember mine i was so stressed about the antenna setup that i forgot to log half my contacts properly and had to reconstruct it from memory later. the chasers on SOTA are super forgiving tho, theyre used to activators being a little scattered especially on a first run. 40m is a solid choice for a local summit, though once you start hitting higher elevations youll want to have 20m dialed in too, the pile ups can get pretty wild if you get spotted at the right time of day. whats your antenna situation, are you doing a linked dipole or just the efhw?

so ive been messing with APRS for a few weeks now and something weird is going on. my packets are definitely getting out because i can see myself on aprs.fi through the igate a few miles away, but the local digipeater about 8 miles away doesnt seem to be hearing me at all or at least not digipeating my packets. i'm running a TM-D710 into a mag mount on the car, path set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i thought was pretty standard. tx power is at 5w. the weird thing is when i drive closer to town i start seeing my packets getting digi'd fine, so i dont think its a config issue necessarily, just maybe terrain or something. my home QTH is in kind of a low spot. anyway the reason i care is i want to be able to hit the digi from the house too with a fixed station but right now its clearly not working and i cant figure out if its my antenna, the path, or just physics being physics. anyone dealt with something like this before? is there a way to actually tell if a digi heard you vs just an igate picking you up direct?

The Morse Machine setting really helped drive letters home with repetition at your own speed. Once you have characters, push yourself just past comfort level with lessons. I practiced during lunch breaks and it worked great with busy schedule.