Steve Wilson

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up going with the Wouxun KG-UV9D and honestly have no regrets but i think if i was doing it over i might just grab the FT-65 like the previous reply said because finding accessories for the Wouxun is kind of a pain sometimes. the radio itself has been rock solid though and the audio is noticeably better than my friends UV-5R so there's that. the APRS thing - just a heads up that most basic HTs dont do APRS natively, you'd need something like a TinyTrak or a radio with a built-in TNC like the Kenwood TH-D75 but that's way out of your budget right now. you can do APRS later with a cheap phone app and a cable if you want to mess around with it before spending big money on a dedicated rig

honestly for contests just use N1MM, theres really no debate there. the dupe checking is solid, the bandmap works great, cabrillo export is painless and the super check partial is hard to beat when youre running a pileup. i tried to use Log4OM for a contest once and it just felt clunky compared to N1MM for that specific use case. what i actually do is run Log4OM as my main everyday logger and then when a contest weekend comes around i spin up N1MM and after its all done i import the ADIF into Log4OM to keep everything in one place. takes maybe 5 minutes and ive never had a problem with it. WSJT-X i just have pointed at Log4OM via UDP all the time since thats where i want my FT8 contacts to live anyway. during a contest i switch the UDP target to N1MM temporarily and then switch it back after. bit of a workaround but once you do it a couple times its second nature

tangentially related but if you end up wanting to do more automation stuff, a raspberry pi alongside the arduino is a nice combo — let the arduino handle the real-time motor control stuff where timing matters, and the pi handles the higher level logic, logging, maybe a web interface. i built a little antenna switch controller that way and its been solid. the pi runs a flask app so i can control it from my phone which is honestly the main reason i did it.

yeah the mast situation took me forever to figure out too. i ended up getting one of those cheap painters poles from the hardware store and cutting it down, works pretty well and doesnt rattle because its solid. 12 contacts is a solid first activation honestly, i think i only made 7 on mine and was panicking the whole time trying to get to 4 lol

so ive been lurking around this hobby for like two years now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and he keeps telling me to just get licensed already. i finally decided to do it but i dont even know where to begin. like do i need to study a certain book or is there an app or what. i heard there are three levels of license? and also how hard is the test actually, im not great at math and i remember someone saying theres some math involved which kind of worries me. any help appreciated, i dont even own a radio yet just trying to figure out the license part first.

yeah what he said on the CMS routing, that part tripped me up too at first. one thing worth adding — if you're doing Vara FM make sure the gateway you're hitting is actually running Vara FM and not just Vara HF or packet, the mode has to match. i spent an embarassingly long time one afternoon wondering why i couldnt connect and it turned out the closest gateway on the map had switched to packet only and i just didnt know. for HF 40m gateway stuff, propagation is gonna be your friend and your enemy depending on time of day. i'd maybe look at 80m too for regional coverage during evening hours, our local ARES group runs both and 80m honestly gets more traffic in our area just because the skip works out better for nearby stations during nets. just something to think about before you commit to a band for the gateway.

they do pull from mostly overlapping sources but DXwatch has some filtering options that are genuinely useful once you dig into them — you can filter by band, mode, and even set it to only show spots within a certain distance from your grid which is nice if you're specifically after path-relevant spots. QRZ's cluster is fine but i always felt like the interface was a little cluttered with everything else going on on that page. for phone apps the one i keep coming back to is DX Toolkit, its not fancy but it loads fast and the spot list is clean. there's also Clublog which isnt really a cluster tool but if you're working toward DXCC it's worth having an account there, the tools for tracking your progress are pretty solid. i think the honest answer is none of them are dramatically better, it just depends on what your workflow looks like when you're actually at the radio.

so ive been chasing VP8 for about two years now and there was a small dxpedition active last weekend on 17m and 20m. spent probably six hours total across both days just throwing my call into the pile and getting nowhere. running about 400w into a 4-el yagi at 45ft so its not like im barefoot into a dipole or anything. what i eventually figured out, kind of by accident, was that when the dxpedition operator started working split and calling 'up 5 to 10' i kept watching where he was actually coming back to on the waterfall and just parking about 1khz above wherever that cluster was. seemed to work better than just picking random spots in the spread. got him on the third call after that. but im curious what techniques other people use. ive heard the whole 'dont call on top of the station hes already working' thing forever but it took me a long time to really understand the timing aspect — like waiting until hes clearly done with the QSO before you even key up. also i noticed some guys were just blasting continuously and getting nothing. is there a general approach people swear by or is it just feel at this point

the N1MM WSJT-X thing actually works fine if you set it up right, theres a config in WSJT-X to send the UDP log packets and N1MM can recieve them, i ran that setup during FD a couple years ago and it was pulling the FT8 QSOs right into N1MM without issues. might have been version specific though, i havent tried it recently since i mostly do CW in contests anyway so its kind of a non issue for me. one thing i will say is dont sleep on the N1MM interface, yeah it looks old but every single thing has a keyboard shortcut and once your fingers know where everything is you can log a QSO in like two seconds flat. thats kind of the whole point in a pile up. Log4OM is prettier but pretty doesnt help you when youre running 150 an hour on 40m phone.

just went last year for the first time and honestly had no idea what i was doing lol ended up wandering around for like an hour before i figured out the outdoor swap area was a totally different vibe from the inside. didnt buy anything but it was cool just seeing all the old equipment. might go again this year if i can get the time off work

oh man i had the exact same problem when i first started, spent like two days thinking my radio was broken lol. turned out i had the right frequency but the tone was wrong by like one step. 100hz instead of 100.0 — well actually those are the same thing but you know what i mean, i had some completely wrong value in there from when i was just guessing. one thing that might help — if you can find anyone from your local club on echolink or even just email the repeater trustee, they'll usually tell you the correct tone right away. repeater trustees love knowing new hams are trying to use their machine, at least in my experience. good luck, youll get it sorted

been running RemoteHams for maybe two years on a station at my cabin, IC-7610 plus an SDRPlay RSP1A hanging off the same coax via a splitter. the SDR side does actually track the VFO — not perfectly instantaneously but close enough that you can see signals pop up on the panadapter before you tune to them which is the whole point. there's a bit of latency obviously, probably 200-300ms behind the rig depending on your connection, but for casual use its fine. the reconnection stuff is genuinely better than rolling your own. when my ISP at the cabin drops out and comes back it usually reconnects without me doing anything. had maybe two or three times in two years where i had to actually log in and restart the server side service and one of those was after a power outage ate my config. the internet linking thing i think youre thinking of is their gateway/node system which lets other operators connect to your station, its not really echolink in the traditional sense. more like a shared remote access thing. i dont use that part so cant speak to it much.

im probably not the most qualified to answer the SO2R part but i'll say this — aggressive S&P with good logging discipline will get you way farther than most people think before SO2R becomes the limiting factor. like ive seen guys with one radio and a wire really clean up in the lower power categories just by knowing when to run and when to hunt. the rate optimization thing that helped me the most was just learning the bands better. knowing that 15 is going to open to europe at a certain time and having a freq ready to jump to rather than reacting to it. also keeping a second window open in N1MM to see where the cluster spots are piling up so you're not tuning dead parts of the band. none of that requires two radios.

i tried JS8Call maybe two years ago and didnt find a ton of activity but honestly that might have changed, the bands have been way better lately with the solar cycle picking up. one thing to watch out for is the different speed modes, normal vs fast vs turbo, faster modes obviously need better snr so if you're chasing the weak signal thing stick with the normal speed setting. i think the freqencies listed on the JS8Call website are still mostly accurate but 40m and 20m are your best bet.

yeah hamstudy is good but i'd also suggest grabbing the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual if you want to actually understand what you're studying. drilling questions can get you through the test but you'll be a better operator if you know why the answers are what they are, especially the safety stuff and the basic electronics. that said i know plenty of people who just did the online question drills and passed fine and figured the rest out on the air. either way works. just dont ignore the RF safety questions, they show up a fair amount on the actual exam and people tend to underestimate that section