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

Has anyone noticed significant frequency drift on AO-73's linear transponder during high temperature passes? I've been tracking the passband shift with my SDR and noticed it can be up to 15 kHz higher than nominal when the satellite is in full sun illumination. According to the documentation, low temperatures give higher frequencies, but I'm seeing the opposite behavior during my passes. Using a FUNcube Dongle Pro+ with the dashboard software, and my manual Doppler correction seems off by several kHz during peak thermal cycles. Anyone else experiencing this? Would love to compare notes on thermal behavior vs transponder frequency stability.

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and mostly did local stuff, some nets, a little contesting here and there. but lately ive been getting really into DXing and i think i want to actually go for DXCC. i've got maybe 60-something confirmed entities on LoTW right now which i know isnt much but it feels like a real goal to work toward. my question is kind of about strategy i guess. like should i be focused on getting to 100 confirmed on LoTW first before i even think about applying, or is there a reason to apply earlier? also does it make sense to chase WAS at the same time or is that going to split my attention too much. someone at the club mentioned WAZ too and now im wondering if i should be thinking about all three kind of together or just focus on one thing. im running an IC-7300 into a dipole at about 30 feet so nothing fancy. bands have been pretty decent lately which helps. just want to make sure im not going about this the wrong way before i get too deep into it

ok so ive been going through the question pool and theres this question about repeater frequency pairs and im totally lost. it asks about which frequency is used for input vs output on 2 meters but i dont really understand how repeaters work in the first place. the study guide i got just gives the answer but doesnt explain WHY. anyone know a good way to remember this stuff or should i just memorize the frequencies?

The certificate process seems scary but it's really not bad! I did mine last year and it was worth it. The system automatically matches your contacts with other stations - much faster than waiting for paper cards. Watch the ARRL tutorial videos, they help a lot.

I'm a General class holder planning to tackle the new Extra exam that went into effect July 2024. The question pool changed significantly with 82 new questions and 101 eliminated ones. I've been using HamStudy.org app and Gordon West's book for my previous upgrades, but the advanced theory sections look pretty intimidating this time. What study methods worked best for you Extra class folks? Should I focus more on understanding the theory or just memorize the question pool? Any tips for the tougher circuit analysis and antenna modeling questions?

so i've been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to build my own rotator controller and honestly its gotten a bit out of hand. started simple enough, just wanted to replace the old green heron controller that died on me, figured how hard could it be right anyway im using a stepper motor with a hall effect sensor for position feedback and writing position data to an eeprom so it survives power cycles. thats all working fine now. the part thats killing me is the azimuth calibration, i can get it close but its drifting maybe 3-4 degrees over a full rotation and i cant figure out if thats the sensor placement or just noise on the analog pin. running a 10k pulldown and even tried adding a small cap to filter it but still getting the drift. also started looking at throwing a raspberry pi 4 in there to run hamlib and talk to my ic-7300 at the same time so i could do some basic skimmer stuff and auto-point the yagi at spotted dx. pi is doing fine for that side of things but now i have two separate systems that dont really talk to each other well yet. thinking about using i2c between them or just serial over USB, not sure which makes more sense for this application. anyone done something similar or have thoughts on the sensor drift thing, thats the most annoying bit right now

yeah i had the same situation in my truck for way too long, mag mount hanging off the cab, coax in the door jamb... worked but looked terrible and my wife hated it lol. finally did the proper install and honestly wish id done it sooner. the NMO makes such a cleaner install i cant really answer the clearance question specifically but i just used split loom on basically my whole run and havent had any issues in like 3 years now

just to add to what the other guy said — i spent probably two months frustrating myself before i finally just hooked up a second receiver to monitor my own uplink reflected back down. once i could actually hear myself it all clicked. if you have a second radio or even an SDR dongle you can run it as a dedicated downlink monitor while you operate, makes a huge difference. also dont sleep on FO-29 if you havent tried it yet, the transponder on that one always seemed a bit more forgiving to me when i was starting out, though the pass windows are shorter and tracking it is a bit twitchier. AO-7 is a great bird but it can be moody.

yeah VARA is definitely the way to go if you already paid for it, performance is way better than Winmor especially on a noisy HF path. the free version of VARA is speed-limited but still works for basic stuff, the paid version just gets you faster throughput which matters if youre sending anything with attachments. one thing that got me when i first set this up — make sure Winlink Express actually has the right COM port selected for PTT if youre using that method. i spent like an hour troubleshooting a connection issue once and it turned out the software was trying to key a port that didnt exist anymore after i changed USB cables and windows reassigned it. also worth looking at the gateway activity log in the software, it shows you more detail about where exactly the connection is failing.

yeah the gateway selection thing confused me too when i first started. basically Winlink Express has a channel selection wizard built in if you go to the Vara HF session settings, it'll actually scan the listed RMS gateway frequencies and show you signal quality so you're not just guessing. that helps a lot. in practice though most people end up with 2 or 3 gateways they know work well from their QTH and just rotate through those depending on band conditions. the propagation piece is real -- in the morning 40m might get you to a gateway 800 miles away no problem, afternoon everything shifts. not that different from regular HF ops. just takes some time to learn your local pattern. i keep a sticky note on my desk with like 4-5 gateway callsigns and their primary frequencies that work well for me on different bands, kind of old school but it works. on the ICS-213 side -- if you open Winlink Express go to Message then New Message and look at the forms dropdown, there's a whole list of ICS forms built right in. when you fill one out and send it it does go as an attachment essentially, the recipient needs Winlink Express or compatible software to render it properly as a form. if somebody's just checking their email on a regular client they'll see a text blob which isnt ideal. most served agencies ive worked with expect the Winlink-formatted version so the form fields actually parse correctly on their end.