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

yeah the NCS bottleneck thing is real and it bites almost every group the first time they do a serious drill. what we ended up doing was splitting into tactical nets — basically one net for each geographic zone feeding into a coordination net at the top. it adds complexity but it also means no single NCS is getting buried. took us a couple exercises to get the handoffs smooth but it made a huge difference the ICS 213 thing is also something we deal with constantly. we actually started doing short standalone form-filling exercises at our monthly meetings, like someone reads out a scenario and everyone fills out the form and then we compare notes. sounds boring but it really does build the muscle memory. people freeze up on the sender/receiver fields more than you'd think, especially when they're also trying to manage their radio at the same time one other thing we added to our drills is what we call an inject — basically someone playing the role of a frustrated served agency rep who keeps asking for information that wasn't in the original traffic. it simulates the reality that the EOC is never just passively waiting for your messages, they're going to have follow-up questions and your operators need to handle that without breaking net discipline

So ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about nets like they're a big part of the hobby but honestly im still figuring out which ones are worth checking into regularly. Right now i only do the local 2m club net on tuesday nights and thats about it. I was poking around on netlogger the other night and there are just SO many nets running at any given time, like traffic nets, emergency prep nets, ragchew nets, dx nets — how do you guys even pick? Do most people just stick to a few they like or do you kind of rotate around depending on whats on HF that evening? Also im curious about special event stations, ive heard about them but never actually worked one. Is there a good place to track when they're happening? I saw something about a national parks one a while back and totally missed it which was kind of annoying.

I went through this last winter. ended up discovering a maritime mobile net I had no idea existed just from wandering around the bands. so now i check in to that sometimes. point being you might stumble onto something cool if you just keep listening

so ive been getting into nets lately, started checking into the local 2m club net on tuesday nights and honestly its become kind of a ritual now. grab a coffee, fire up the 706, call in my check-in and just listen for a bit. nothing fancy but there's something really satisfying about it especially when the net control is someone who really knows how to run things smoothly. got curious though and started looking into some of the HF nets. found a few on 40m that run in the evenings and the propagation has been pretty decent lately so ive been able to hit a couple of them from here in the midwest. the OMISS net has been fun, picked up a few states i needed for that too which was a nice bonus. also noticed there's a special event station coming up next weekend for some kind of anniversary, saw it on the ARRL site. W1AW/5 or something like that. anyone been chasing those? i grabbed a few last year during the portable ops event but never really went hard after the special event ones. wondering if its worth setting up early or if the pileups die down quick. anyway just curious who else makes nets a regular thing and if theres any good ones i should know about that dont show up in the obvious places

i had something similar happen when i put up a sloper for 80m, fought it for like two weeks before i figured out the coax shield was acting as part of the antenna because i didnt have a choke balun at the feedpoint. the current was coming back down the outside of the coax and depending on how the cable was routed it completely changed things. might be worth throwing a few ferrite cores on there near the feedpoint if you havent already, or winding a choke out of the coax itself, even a few turns can make a difference.

touching the cabinet changes the audio? thats almost always a shielding or ground loop thing in my experience. ive had that exact symptom and it drove me nuts for like a week before i figured out i had the audio ground and the RF ground going to different points and they were like 0.3v apart or something. DC receivers are super sensitive to that stuff because of all the audio gain you need.

im kind of in the same boat as you, just started a few months ago. the thing that helped me most for receiving was listening to W1AW code practice on HF, they broadcast at different speeds and annouce what speed before each session. something about hearing real transmitted code versus computer generated stuff clicked differently for me, i dont know why exactly. also dont feel bad about the brain shutting off thing. aparently that's totally normal and it gets better. i can do about 10wpm now which felt impossible like 8 weeks ago so hang in there

I went through the exact same thing last year and what actually helped me more than anything was listening to a LOT of CW, like just having it on in the background while doing other stuff. W1AW practice sessions are free and they do them at multiple speeds. My ear started getting better before my sending did and then the sending kind of followed, if that makes any sense. Also someone told me to record myself and compare it to W1AW or one of the practice MP3s and that was honestly a little painful but really useful haha. You can hear exactly where your spacing goes wrong.

That's awesome! Your first skip contact is always magical. 40 meters is great for that kind of medium-distance work during the day. Keep at it and you'll be working DX stations around the world once you upgrade to General. Congrats on the successful QSO!

what band are you trying this on? some of the gateways are super busy on 40 especially in the evenings and i've noticed some of them seem to silently drop connections when they get hammered. not saying thats definitely your issue but worth trying a less busy one or hitting it at a weird hour to see if behavior changes. also RMS express has a session log you can look at more carefully — like does it say anything after the transfer stops or does it literally just stop logging. theres usually a clue in there. if you can paste a few lines from around the failure point that would help narrow it down.