Ahmed Hassan

so ive been doing SS phone and CW for about four years now and keep finishing in the middle of the pack for my section. decent rate in the first few hours then it just dies off and i end up S&P-ing for the last six hours which is painful. a buddy of mine keeps telling me SO2R is the answer but honestly setting it up looks like a nightmare and im not sure my antennas are spaced far enough apart to even try it without everything bleeding into everything else. current setup is a K3 and an IC-7300, so the hardware is theoretically there if i add a second amp and sort out the interlocking so i dont key both at the same time. but like... does the rate improvement actually justify rebuilding basically my whole station? i've read the N6TR and K1ZM stuff on SO2R and it sounds great in theory but those guys have serious stations. anybody running SO2R from a suburban lot with compromise antennas actually seeing a meaningful rate bump or is it mostly diminishing returns unless you're already running a kilowatt into a stack?

Been testing this exact question with my HP signal generator. Real threshold varies by 2-3dB depending on band conditions and adjacent signal activity. The -21dB figure assumes clean lab conditions with no QRM. In practice, FT8 significantly outperforms PSK31 and RTTY for weak signal work, but don't expect miracles in high-noise urban environments.

ok so ive been listening to nets and reading logs and people throw around stuff like QSL and QRZ and QTH constantly and i get the gist of some of them but then someone will say something like QRM or QSB and i have no idea what theyre actually communicating. is there like a standard list somewhere or do people just kind of learn these over time by hearing them enough also are there ones that are basically never used anymore or ones that only certain modes use? i feel like CW guys use way more of them than phone operators. my elmer just says learn as you go but honestly i'd rather understand them now before i embarrass myself on a net

so i finally got out and did my first SOTA attempt last weekend, W4T/SU-001 up in the smokies. packed my elecraft kx2, a 20m EFHW, and a trekking pole to hang the antenna from. hiked about 3 miles to the summit and by the time i got there the clouds had rolled in and i was getting light drizzle. spent like 20 minutes trying to get the antenna strung up between some trees but the branches were too high and i kept tangling the feedline. anyway i did manage to get 4 contacts on 20m SSB so technically the activation counts but it was kind of a mess. also my log sheet got wet and half of it was illegible by the time i got back to the car. anyone else have a rough first activation? feels like i need a better system for field logging or something

The psychological aspect is huge. Koch gives you constant positive reinforcement because you're succeeding at full speed from day one, just with fewer characters. When I tried building from 5WPM I got frustrated and quit twice. This time I'm sticking with it!

For emergency communications, that integrated phone/radio concept could be game-changing if done right. Being able to do APRS messaging and voice on the same device would simplify our go-kits significantly.

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF stuff, some VHF contesting, but EME has always been this thing in the back of my head that i keep putting off because it seems like you need a small country's budget to do it right. but lately ive been reading more into it and i'm wondering if im overestimating what you actually need to get started, at least on 2m EME. my current setup is a pair of long yagis for 2m that i use for weak signal work, i think each one is around 12 dBd gain. i've got a good LNA right at the feedpoint, sequencer, the usual stuff. my question is basically — is this anywhere near enough to work EME or am i going to need to go full dish route before i hear anything at all. ive read about people working stations with 4 yagis and decent power but i genuinely dont know what the minimum viable setup looks like these days now that JT65 and Q65 are so common. the old EME2 software era seems like a totally different world. also just curious if anyone here has actually done an EME contact and what that first one felt like, because honestly it sounds like kind of a wild thing to do

careful with the TX mod if youre not already authorized for those freqs, just saying. i know youre doing it for emcomm and thats fine but ive seen guys do that mod and then wonder why they got a letter from the FCC. not accusing you of anything just worth mentioning since this thread might get read by people who dont have the full context. i did a different kind of upgrade on my 7300 — added a proper Bonito antenna splitter on the panadapter port so i can feed the raw RF to an SDRplay at the same time. not a hardware mod exactly but it changed how i use the rig completely. being able to see a wide chunk of spectrum on the laptop while operating is really useful for contesting, you can spot openings way faster.

yeah same here in the midwest, been dead as a doornail. I'm still pretty new to hf so wasnt sure if this was normal or what but good to know its not just my setup. when it does open back up how quick does it usually happen? like do you get any warning or does it just suddenly come alive

yeah the duplicate spots thing is totally normal, thats just how the cluster network works — different nodes around the world propagate the same spot and they dont always deduplicate cleanly before it hits whatever interface youre viewing. dxwatch and similar aggregators do filter some of it but not perfectly. nothing wrong on your end. for tying it all together on android, look at DX Toolkit or DroidCluster, both are decent. DX Toolkit in particular will let you check your logbook against incoming spots so it flags stuff you still need, which is the killer feature really. some guys swear by the web version of DX Summit over dxwatch, just personal preference mostly. and if you ever get into logging software on a PC, most of them like Log4OM or even WSJT-X for FT8 have built in cluster windows that handle a lot of this automatically. but honestly for just getting started what youre doing isnt wrong, just a bit more legwork than necessary

honestly you're overthinking it a little but also not entirely wrong to think about it. the baofeng thing is real — they do have some issues with transmitting on frequencies they shouldnt and the build quality is kind of all over the place depending on which batch you get. that said plenty of people learned on them and they work fine for basic stuff on repeaters. if budget is tight the ft-65 is probably where id point you. yaesu made it pretty bulletproof, the audio is noticeably cleaner than the baofengs ive heard, and its not complicated to program. the menu isnt as annoying as some of their older radios either. for just hitting local repeaters and chatting with your brother it'll do everything you need for years probably. the wouxun is fine too but i dont have as much personal time with it so cant really say. the main thing is just get something and get on the air, you'll learn way more in a month of actual use than another month of reading reviews

yeah it's still on, my buddy in the Tri-County ARC said they confirmed the date last week, think it's the second saturday of next month. they moved it to the new fairgrounds location which is actually way better parking than the old VFW hall. usually a decent swap meet turnout, last time i grabbed a whole box of PL-259s for like three bucks so worth the drive

the stock hand mic that comes with most radios is kind of mediocre, not terrible but not great either. i swapped mine out for an Heil PR-781 and the difference was pretty noticeable, more presence and the elements just seem to match better with how icom rigs are voiced. that said i know guys who got great audio out of the stock mic just by fixing their mic gain and technique so probably start there before spending money. one thing i dont see mentioned a lot is the TX monitor — turn it on so you can hear yourself on the air while transmitting. its a little weird at first but you can actually hear exactly what you sound like which makes it way easier to dial things in without needing someone else on the other end. found a processing artifact in my own signal that way that i never would have caught otherwise

yeah 40m at night is something else. i do the same thing, just tune around and see what i can find. you get all kinds on there. heard a couple guys last week doing a sked they've apparently been keeping for something like 20 years, same time every thursday. thats the kind of thing you dont really see in a lot of other hobbies

Your 30-40W average reading is actually correct for SSB! SSB mode will only indicate about 30W or so while speaking if the mic gain is properly configured, with peak to average ratios between 6:1 and 3:1. The mistake is cranking up gain to see 100W average - that creates distortion and splatter.