Giovanni Rossi

So ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR dongle for about a year now, mostly just listening to NOAA weather and poking around the local repeaters, and im starting to hit the limits of it. The noise floor is pretty bad above like 500MHz and i cant transmit obviously which sometimes i wish i could for testing purposes. Been looking at either grabbing a HackRF One or stepping up to an SDRplay RSP1B or maybe the RSPdx. The price gap is real though. HackRF is around 300-350 for a legit one and the RSPdx is similar but the SDRplay stuff seems way more focused on receive quality from what ive read. The HackRF does TX which is appealing but the ADC resolution is only 8 bit which apparently matters a lot for weak signal work. Mostly want to use it with SDR++ or maybe HDSDR, pick up some utility stuff, maybe decode some satelite signals, and eventually do some passive radar experiments ive seen people do. Anyone gone through this decision and have thoughts? Did the SDRplay actually make a noticeable difference in what you could hear vs a decent RTL-SDR with a good LNA in front of it?

yeah the 2N2222 stack thing sounds appealing because you already have them but honestly getting 5 watts clean out of paralleled small signal transistors on 40m is more work than its worth imo. the IRF510 is like a dollar and the datasheet is well understood at this point. just go with it

yeah i went through this exact thing about two years ago. ended up putting up a 9 element M2 yagi for 2m on a separate mast pointing northeast toward the beacon cluster, and kept the colinear on the original mount for everyday use. honestly the yagi completely changed what 2m meant to me — i was suddenly hearing stations id never even known existed, tropo openings that before just sounded like noise floor suddenly had actual callsigns in them. the gain difference between a halfway decent colinear and even a modest yagi is not subtle on weak signal. you're also swapping receive noise figure considerations — a good preamp at the yagi feedpoint makes even more difference than the antenna gain itself sometimes. i run an SSB Electronics preamp right at the mast and that was probably the single biggest improvement i made to the whole station. if your shack is more than about 15 feet of coax from the antenna you are losing more than you think on 2m. switching between the two is pretty painless with a coax relay, i have mine on a footswitch which sounds silly but its actually great when youre in the middle of a qso. if your mast situation can handle a second mount even a small one, id say just do it. the X50 is a solid everyday antenna but for weak signal work it aint gonna cut it once you know what youre missing.

i just got my ticket in april and honestly hadnt even thought about nets until i read your post. is there a good place to find schedules? like an online list or something? i have my technician so i can do 2m and i've been kind of just listening around not really sure when anything is happening

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i check into the local 2m net pretty regularly but i still feel kind of awkward about the whole thing. like i know you wait for net control to call for check-ins and you say your callsign once clearly, got that part down. but what about when theres an open discussion topic or someone asks a question on the net and i actually have something useful to contribute? do i just key up when theres a pause or do i wait for net control to specifically ask for comments? i dont want to be that guy who steps on someone or comes in at the wrong time. also kinda related — is it rude to check in and then leave early if something comes up? like last week i had to leave about halfway through and i just kind of disappeared without saying anything. felt weird but i wasnt sure what the right move was. nobody said anything but still.

welcome to the dark side haha. seriously though this is exactly how it happens for most of us, you make that first QRP contact and suddenly your linear amp starts collecting dust. i built a little 40m CW rig back in 2011 from dead bug parts just to see if i could and that was basically it for me, been chasing QRP ever since. for the antenna question -- honestly a dipole is not leaving nearly as much on the table as you might think, the issue is usually height and orientation more than anything else. if you can get it up 30 feet or more and cut it to resonance for the band youre on youre going to do fine. where people really start squeezing extra performance out of QRP setups is with end fed half waves and a good tuner because you get a bit more flexibility for portable ops. there are some great threads over on the QRP-L mailing list if you haven't found that yet, old school but theres a ton of knowledge archived there.

yeah what he said, the nerves are totally normal. i've done probably a dozen activations over the years and the first one always sticks with you. just trust your training and follow your EC's lead, they'll tell you where to be and what to do and you just execute. the EOC folks are usually pretty patient with the radio side of things too, they just want the comms to work and they're not judging your technique. one thing that helped me early on was keeping a simple paper log even when i was also doing Winlink, just so i had something to fall back on if the laptop decided to do something weird. which it will at some point, always does

yeah part 97 is rough to read cold, dont feel bad. the short version for tech on HF is you get CW privileges on 80, 40, 15 and 10 meters, and then on 10 meters specifically you also get phone and image modes between 28.300 and 28.500 MHz. so yes you can do SSB on 10m but only in that segment. digital modes fall under different emission type designators but for practical purposes if youre running something like FT8 youre using a data mode and your privileges there depend on what the band plan allows for tech class at that frequency. the ARRL has a frequency allocation chart thats way easier to read than the actual Part 97 text, i'd just google arrl technician privileges and you'll find a color coded chart that makes it pretty clear. that said its worth eventually actually reading 97.301 and 97.305 because those are the actual rules that matter if you ever get questioned about it

wait you worked germany at 5 watts with a dipole in trees?? thats crazy i didnt think QRP could actually do that. im just getting started and have been nervous that low power would mean i cant contact anyone. maybe i should look into those QRP Labs kits, they seem pretty well regarded from what ive read. how hard was the build really, im ok at soldering but not like super experienced

so ive been licensed for about three months now and i finally feel comfortable enough to try getting on some of the local FM repeaters but im running into something i dont fully understand. i programmed in the frequency and offset for the repeater listed in the repeaterbook app and i can hear people just fine, but when i key up nobody seems to hear me. or at least nobody responds. i looked it up and i think it might be a CTCSS tone issue? the listing shows 100.0 Hz as the tone but i wasnt sure if i need to encode that, decode it, or both. my radio is a baofeng uv-5r and i honestly have no idea what i set it in the menu, there are so many options and the manual is terrible. is there like a standard way most repeaters work with these tones? or could there be another reason nobody is responding — like maybe im just not making it into the machine

the mixed total is basically your best of all modes combined for each entity, so if you work Namibia on SSB that goes in your mixed AND your phone totals. then if you later work them on FT8 it bumps your digital total but your mixed stays the same since you already had it. the totals are separate trophies/endorsements but mixed is just the umbrella. LoTW and paper QSL are equal weight for credit purposes, ARRL doesnt prefer one over the other as long as the QSL is valid. that said LoTW confirmations come back way faster and you dont have to wait for cards to arrive or deal with the buro. on the WAS question — honestly do both at the same time. a lot of the states you need for WAS you'll work anyway just calling CQ or in contests, might as well log them properly and upload everything. i finished WAS before i hit 100 entities on DXCC just because domestic stuff is easier to confirm.

so ive been doing morse code practice for about 3 months now and im stuck around 8-9 wpm and it just feels like im hitting a wall. i started with just the Koch method using the G4FON trainer and it was great at first, letters came pretty quick, but now i feel like im just... treading water i guess. i can copy most characters fine but when i try bumping the speed up even a little i fall apart. what i really want to know is how long did it realistically take people to get to 20wpm because everything i read online sounds either super encouraging (like 6 weeks) or super discouraging (like years) and i cant tell which is closer to the truth. im putting in maybe 20-30 minutes a day most days. also is there a point where it just kind of clicks and you stop counting dits and just hearing words? because right now i feel like im still processing individual letters and its slow

yeah the LM386 is notorious for being finicky, it'll oscillate or pick up garbage if you're not careful with the bypass caps. the thing that helped me most on a similar build was putting a 0.047uf cap directly across pins 1 and 8, that limits the gain a bit but cuts down a lot of the instability. also 10uf from pin 7 to ground, some people skip that one and it makes a difference. the other thing i'd check is whether your audio ground and your RF ground are connected at the same single point. on perf board its really easy to accidentally end up with ground loops because you're just running wires wherever they fit. i had a hum on my 80m DC receiver that turned out to be exactly that, had two separate ground returns coming back to the power supply at slightly different points and the difference in potential was enough to cause trouble. running off battery and still getting hum is interesting though. if it persists on battery id start wondering if its actually 60hz or something else at a similar frequency, like maybe the VFO has a spur or something. worth checking with a scope if you have access to one.

i ran SO2R for the first time last NAQP and kind of gave up on it halfway through lol. not because it doesnt work but i realized my logging software keyer integration wasnt set up right so every time i switched focus between radios N1MM was sending on the wrong one. spent like 20 minutes fixing it during the contest which was just dumb, should have tested more beforehand. the actual SO2R when it worked felt great though, found a couple mults on 15 while holding a run on 40 that i definitely wouldve missed otherwise

log4om is great dont get me wrong but if you care about contesting at all just keep n1mm. log4om contest support exists but its not really in the same league, at least not for the bigger contests. i tried using it for a state qso party once and the exchange handling was just awkward compared to what im used to.

so ive been chasing 3Y0 for like three years now, always missing it or getting buried in the pileup and just giving up after an hour of nothing. last month there was a smaller DXpedition on a pacific island i wont name yet (still waiting on the log upload to confirm) and i finally figured some stuff out that i think actually made a difference. the big thing was listening way more than i was transmitting. i know everyone says that but i really wasnt doing it. i spent probably 20 minutes just watching where the DX station was actually picking people out of the pile before i even keyed up. he was clearly favoring callers about 2-3 khz up from his announced split, not at the top of the spread like most people were camping. so i parked about 2.2 up and within maybe 6 or 7 calls i had him. also timed my calls to start just as his last dit finished on the previous contact. not during, not half a second after — right on the tail. took some practice reading his rhythm but that seemed to matter too. anyone else doing this kind of thing systematically or am i just getting lucky here

so ive been playing around with dx spotting networks for a few months now and i think i finally have a workflow that makes sense but wanted to see what others are doing. basically i have qrz.com open on one tab with the logbook and the dx spots they show there, and then dxwatch open in another tab because the filtering on dxwatch seems a little better to me? like i can narrow down by band more easily without having to scroll through a ton of ft8 spots when im trying to work ssb. also been messing with the cluster on hamspots and a couple android apps, one called dxsummit i think but it might just be a wrapper for the website. my question is really whether theres any advantage to connecting to an actual telnet cluster versus just using these web interfaces. feels like the web stuff refreshes often enough but idk if im missing spots or if theres a lag i cant see. been on general class for about 8 months, hf setup is an ic-7300 and a dipole in the attic so im not chasing rare dx or anything, mostly just trying to find activity on 40 and 20.

honest answer is yeah it's a rabbit hole but a worthwhile one if contesting is your thing. I spent about two years messing around with SO2R before i felt like i was actually using it effectively rather than fighting it. the interstation interference thing is very real and it depends a lot on your antenna situation — your tribander and 40m wires might actually be okay depending on how they're oriented relative to each other. the minimum viable setup question is a good one. a lot of guys start with just a second radio into a simple wire and use it mostly for S&P while they're running on the main radio. you dont need full two-radio transmitting capability right away, just having a second set of ears on another band while you hold a frequency is already a big deal. i used an old FT-1000D as my second radio for like three years before i bothered with any serious filtering, and yeah i had some interaction issues but nothing that killed the concept. the rate improvement is real but your instinct about operator skill is also right. the guys posting huge SO2R numbers are usually also just really good at working splits and keeping a run going. hard to separate the variables. i'd say add maybe 15-20% to your expected rate once you're comfortable with it, not 40%.

so ive been running FT8 for about a year and a half now and yeah its great for racking up contacts and all that but honestly it feels more like a video game than actual ham radio sometimes. you click a callsign, exchange signal reports, done. theres no... conversation happening. i know thats kind of the point but still. anyway i started messing around with JS8Call a few months back and its a pretty different experience. the whole relay/store-and-forward thing is interesting and you can actually type messages back and forth to people which feels way more like actual operating to me. but the signals i'm seeing on 40m are way more sparse than the FT8 segments and sometimes i'll sit there for 20 minutes and nothing happens. i guess my question is whether anyone has found a way to work both without it feeling like you're splitting attention too much. right now i'm running WSJT-X and JS8Call on two different rigs which works but its kind of a mess on the desk. also curious if anyone still runs PSK31 seriously because i fired up fldigi the other day and found a few guys ragchewing on 20m and it honestly reminded me why i got into this hobby in the first place. the mode feels ancient now but theres something about watching that waterfall and having a real back and forth that FT8 just doesnt give you.

congrats on the first activation, 12 contacts is a solid start and yeah you're right that 4 is the minimum so you're well qualified. to answer your questions, chasers definitely watch sotawatch and the spots are huge, that's almost certainly why you got a pileup so fast. self spotting is the way to go especially when you're new and dont have someone to spot you. for the S2S thing, both activators log it separately in their own logs on the sota database, you log it just like a normal contact but when you submit your log there's a way to mark it as summit to summit and it shows up that way in the system. the other activator does the same on their end. it's worth a few extra points and people get a separate award for S2S contacts so chasers and activators both get excited about them. just make sure you noted their summit reference, should be something like W4C or W5N followed by the summit code. if you didn't catch it during the QSO you might be able to find it by looking at who was spotted active at the same time on sotawatch history. anyway sounds like you've got the bug now, western NC has some fantastic summits and a lot of them are accessible year round if you're willing to deal with some mud

yeah the timing thing is huge and most people never figure it out. i ran a small DXpedition to a fairly rare IOTA a couple years back and from the other side of the pileup it's honestly kind of amazing how much noise is just constant callers stomping on each other. the guys who got through cleanest were almost always the ones sending their callsign once, clearly, right after i sent my last dit. not half a second before, not two seconds after. right there in that little window. also worked split the whole time obviously but i'd shift my listening frequency around every 10-15 minutes or so, partly to spread the pileup out and partly honestly just to reward the guys who were actually paying attention to where i was coming back. the callers who just parked on 5 up and called forever, they were often the last ones i'd work. the ones scanning around and finding me, those guys got through. one more thing — if propagation to your region is marginal, sometimes the best move is just to wait. i know that sounds like giving up but ive seen guys work a rare one at like 0600z on 20m when the pileup had thinned way down. patience is genuinely a skill in this hobby.

dont sleep on a simple notebook and pen in that kit lol. like actual paper. when everything goes sideways youll want somewhere to write down frequencies, net times, traffic, whatever. also a laminated copy of your local ARES/RACES frequencies and the ICS forms you might need. i know it sounds old fashioned but my EC drilled that into us and hes been doing this since before i was born so i figure he knows something

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. picked up an 857d from a silent key estate sale, guy's family said it worked fine but honestly who knows. on VHF and UHF it hits full power no problem, measured it on my wattmeter. but on HF it just kinda... limps along. im seeing maybe 8-12 watts depending on band when it should be doing 100. audio receive sounds fine, SWR readings look normal, ALC seems to be doing something weird though — it's jumping around when i key up even into a dummy load. already reseated all the connectors i could find and reflowed a couple joints that looked sketchy on the PA board near the finals. no change. pulled the driver transistors and they test okay on the bench, or at least they arent shorted. not sure if im missing something obvious here. anybody been inside one of these for a similar issue? wondering if it's the pre-driver stage or something further back in the chain before it even gets to the finals.

honestly same situation when i was starting out. i used to practice them in the car just saying random letters to myself which sounds ridiculous but it helped a lot so i wasnt thinking about it on air. the hesitation is the worst part, like you blank on what foxtrot stands for mid transmission one thing i noticed is during nets they almost always go full phonetics for callsigns even on a perfectly clear repeater, i think because the net control is writing things down and it just removes any ambiguity. outside of nets though its pretty relaxed

not sure about the allstar angle since i've never tried that combo but the SDR integration thing caught my eye. i've been lookin at doing something similar with a kiwisdr at my remote location instead of fighting with the rtlsdr on a pi. the kiwi has its own web interface so you can just open a browser tab and youre looking at like a 30mhz wide chunk of spectrum, no integration required. might be worth looking at if the panadapter piece matters to you becasue it sidesteps the whole software compatibility problem entirely