Catherine O'Brien

oh man dont tease me with 10 meters being open, i just upgraded to general last month and havent really had a chance to work any DX yet. been mostly hanging out on 40m doing some slow ragchews to figure out the radio but maybe ill actually try tuning around 28mhz this week. what time were you getting those south american contacts roughly?

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and keep telling myself im going to put together a proper go-kit but never actually do it. well after the storms we had last month knocked out power for almost 4 days i figured it was time to stop procrastinating. the thing is i dont really know what the "right" way to do this is. like do i build around HF or just VHF/UHF, do i need a separate power setup, how much gear is too much gear. i want it to be something i can actually grab and go in a hurry but also be useful if i end up at an EOC or something for a few days. anyone been through this process and have thoughts on what they wish theyd done differently

so i've been doing SO2R for maybe 4 or 5 years now and honestly i think i was just going through the motions for most of that time without really getting the rate benefit people talk about. ran CQWW phone last weekend and something finally kind of clicked and i wanted to write it down while its fresh. the thing i was doing wrong — and i suspect a lot of guys do this — is i was treating the second radio like a backup instead of a weapon. like id have it parked on 15 while i was running on 20 and only really pay attention to it when the run dried up. total waste. what actually works, at least for me, is using radio 2 aggressively to S&P on the mult band while radio 1 is running, and you have to actually LISTEN to radio 2 with one ear the whole time. sounds obvious when i type it out but doing it under contest pressure is different than knowing it intellectually. the other thing that helped was getting my footswitch situation sorted. i had this cheap dual footswitch and the latching on it was flakey so id sometimes key the wrong radio. switched to a proper setup with the microHAM and the difference is real. less mental overhead means i can actually think about strategy instead of worrying about the hardware. anyone else have a moment where SO2R suddenly made sense? curious what clicked for people. also wondering if anyone has thoughts on how aggressively to chase mults on radio 2 vs just leaving it parked on a weak band hoping for a run to develop there.

linked dipole is the right call for that kind of portable setup, way faster than trying to tune a random wire and you're not fighting the tuner when band conditions shift. i'd make sure your mast separation gives you at least a half wave on your lowest band though, people squeeze them together and then wonder why 40m is weird. one thing i'll throw out there — if the noise floor ends up being bad regardless of what you do with the genny, an end-fed halfwave with a good 49:1 unun can sometimes be easier to get away from the noise sources just because you only need one feedpoint and you can orient it differently. not saying the dipole is wrong just something to consider if you end up in a tight space.

so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, W4T/SU-001, been wanting to do this one for a while since its only like a 2 mile hike and nothing crazy elevation wise. packed the KX2 and a linked dipole i made from some instructions i found, took forever to tune but eventually got it sorted on 40m. anyway the wind up top was insane, like i couldnt keep my antenna up for more than a few minutes without it blowing down. ended up just holding the feedpoint with one hand and keying with the other which was... not ideal. managed to get 4 contacts before my fingers went numb and i packed it in. does that count as a valid activation or do i need more than 4? i thought it was 4 minimum but now im second guessing myself

so ive been playing around with a few different tools lately trying to get a better handle on chasing DX and i feel like im probably doing this the hard way. right now i have QRZ open in one tab, DXwatch in another, and im also running DX4WIN but honestly the cluster feed in there feels like its always a few minutes behind compared to what i see on DXwatch directly. my workflow is basically — i see a spot on DXwatch for something interesting, i flip to QRZ to check the entity and see if ive worked it before, then go back and try to find the frequency. its clunky and i keep losing my place. is there a better way to tie all this together or is everyone just kind of doing the same thing with a bunch of tabs open? also does anyone actually use the AR-Cluster network directly through the radio software anymore or is the web stuff basically replaced all of that

idk maybe its just my area but 40m has been dead quiet the past few weekends. used to be able to tune around and find a ragchew pretty easy but lately its just static and the occasional digital signal i cant identify. maybe everyone moved to FT8 and i just missed the memo lol. still love just spinning the dial though, theres something relaxing about it even when nobodys out there.

so i finally picked up a used IC-2300H and im ready to do a proper install in my F-150 but honestly the part thats got me nervous is running the coax and power leads through the firewall. ive watched like a dozen youtube videos and everybody does it differently and now im more confused than when i started lol the main thing i cant figure out is whether to use an existing grommet or drill a new hole. there IS a big rubber grommet on the passenger side that already has a few factory wires going through it but i dont want to mess anything up. also not sure if i should run the coax and the power cable through the same spot or keep them separated. the radio is going in the center console area, antenna will be a NMO mount on the roof that i havent installed yet either. any advice from people who have actually done this on a truck would be great. i dont want to regret any of this six months from now

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i jump on the local repeater sometimes but ive also been trying to listen to some HF stuff and people are throwing around all these abbreviations and i can barely keep up. like QSL, QTH, QRM, QSB... i get that QSL is like a confirmation card thing but people also say it during a QSO to mean they understood? and whats the difference between QRM and QRN because i see both and i thought they were the same thing. also sometimes people just say 73 and sign off and i know thats goodbye but where did that even come from, is it a Q code too or something different entirely. i tried googling it and got a bunch of different pages that all say slightly different things so i figured id just ask here. theres also QRP which i see a lot on this forum, is that just low power operating or is it more specific than that

im the same way honestly. sometimes i just leave the radio on in the background while im doing other stuff and just listen. caught a really cool dx station from somewhere in eastern europe last week just by doing that, wasnt even paying attention and suddenly there he was coming in loud and clear. so yeah keep the rig on you never know

9 QSOs on your first activation is actually solid, dont be too hard on yourself. the chaos feeling never fully goes away honestly, especially on popular summits where people are already waiting for you before you even finish setting up. you'll get a rhythm after a few activations. on the repeat thing — absolutely just ask for it. most chasers are very patient and would rather you get the callsign right than log a busted one. a lot of the regulars know the drill, they're used to marginal conditions and will slow down if you ask. i usually just say 'please repeat' or 'say again last letter' and nobody ever minds. for the database logging, when you go to add your activation log there should be a specific field for the summit reference that you fill out once for the whole activation, not per QSO. the QSO entries then all get associated to that summit automatically. just make sure youre entering it in the activator log section and not accidentally trying to do a chaser log, i've seen people get turned around on that before.

okay so ive been trying to get Winlink going for a few weeks now and im at my wits end with this. running Winlink Express on a windows 10 machine connected to a Yaesu FT-857D through a SignaLink USB. the gateway connection works sometimes, like ill get a full session in and messages come through fine, but then maybe 30 minutes later ill try again and the RMS node just drops the session partway through the handshake. doesnt matter if i switch to a different gateway either, same behavior. my AX.25 packet settings are probably wrong but i honestly dont know where to start looking. baud rate is set to 1200, using Vara HF mode not packet, forgot to mention that. the frequency matching looks right to me — im hitting the gateway on whatever it lists in the RMS gateway list. audio levels i thought were dialed in but maybe not. also slightly confused about the difference between a Telnet session and an actual RF session in Winlink Express because when i do Telnet it works every single time no problem. is that just going over the internet and bypassing radio entirely? i want to do this over RF obviously since the whole point for me is emcomm backup comms when internet is down. if anyone has actually set this up end to end and has advice on where to look first id appreciate it.

so i've been thinking about getting into CW for a while now and i keep putting it off because i dont even know where to start. i tried looking some stuff up online but there's like a million different opinions and i honestly cant tell whats good advice and what's just outdated stuff from 20 years ago. like do people still do the whole Koch method thing or is there something better now. i downloaded one of those apps a while back but i kind of gave up after a few days because it felt like nothing was sticking. not sure if i was doing it wrong or just not being patient enough. my goal is just to be able to have basic QSOs eventually, nothing crazy like contesting or anything. anyone been through this recently and have thoughts on what actually worked for them

hamstudy.org is honestly the way to go, just use that. the question pool for tech is public and hamstudy has the current one loaded. you can see exactly which questions are on the actual exam and it tracks what youre getting wrong so you can focus there. i passed mine last spring and barely touched a book, maybe 2 weeks of doing practice questions at night for like 20-30 mins and i was consistently hitting 85-90% so i just went and took it. the electronics theory stuff in those books is way more than you need to pass. its good to know eventually but for the exam you really just need to recognize the right answer, a lot of it is memorization more than understanding. dont stress too much, the tech exam is genuinely not that hard if you put in a little time with the practice pool.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and just starting to get into chasing DX a little more seriously. a buddy at my club mentioned DXwatch and i've been poking around on it for a few weeks but honestly im not totally sure im using it correctly or getting the most out of it. like right now i just kind of load it up and look at whatever spots are showing up and then go tune around on those frequencies. sometimes i find the station, sometimes i dont. i dont really understand how to filter it down to just stuff that would actually be workable from my QTH. im in the midwest, running about 100w into a dipole up about 30 feet so nothing fancy. also on QRZ i see there's a logbook and spotting stuff but i cant figure out how it ties in with the cluster. are these all pulling from the same underlying network or are they separate things? and is there a phone app that's actually worth using for this because i tried a couple and they all seemed kind of clunky. thanks in advance if anyone has any thoughts