Mike Thompson

I went to that one two years ago but skipped last year. Honestly the vendor tables were getting a little thin, lot of the same old stuff you see every time. Still worth going for the people watching and catching up with folks you only see at these things. The fox hunt is new though, might make it more interesting. What time does it start, do you know?

the EU2200i is actually really clean, honda's inverter output is about as good as you're gonna get without going to a pure sine inverter battery setup. ive run my 7300 off one for a full weekend at a hamfest and the noise floor was fine, S1 at worst on 40m and that was probably more from the other vendors nearby. just keep the generator downwind and as far from the antenna feedline as you can manage, like 30-40 feet if the extension cord allows it. ferrite on the power cable going to the radio helps too, i run a couple of snap-ons near the radio end. for the dipole, honestly a linked dipole on a single rope between two trees is hard to beat for fast deployment if you already know your tie-off points. i use the sotabeams band hopper and it goes up in maybe 15 minutes once youre comfortable with it. the buddipole is fine but yeah it takes longer to tune and if someone bumps it youre back to square one. if trees are available just go with wire.

honestly its just feel and experience. on a local repeater where everyone knows your call there's no real reason to phonetic the whole thing every time, most guys just say their call sign normal and move on. HF is a totally different animal especially when band conditions are rough or you're working a pileup, then you pretty much have to use NATO phonetics or you're just wasting everyones time including your own. the way i think about it is, use phonetics any time there's a real chance of confusion. DX, noisy band, weak signal, working someone you've never talked to. otherwise use your judgement. and yeah whiskey yankee is a real trap, i've said "Whiskey Yankee" when i meant "Yankee Whiskey" more than once, usually around midnight during a contest. the brain just stops working after a while

the ALC going nuts on one band but not another is a pretty classic sign that something in the PA stage took a hit. on the 7300 the finals are band-switched and there's driver circuitry that's not entirely shared across all bands, so a partial failure can absolutely show up like what you're describing. the increased fan activity tracks too — if one of the transistors is running hot or biased wrong it'll generate more heat at lower power than it should. honestly before you ship it anywhere i'd pull the top cover off and just look. you're not going to fix it without a scope and signal generator but you might see a scorched component, a cracked board trace near the PA area, or a burned resistor. sometimes lightning damage is obvious once you look. also check around the antenna connector on the board itself, not just the coax — the center pin connection on the pcb can arc internally and look totally fine from the outside. if you do end up sending it in, Icom's service network isn't terrible but it's not fast either. there are a couple of independent shops that specialize in Icom gear and honestly might be a better bet depending on where you are. either way get a repair estimate first because sometimes on a rig that's taken a surge hit the repair quote comes back ugly.

Dont stress too much, the 44 QSO minimum is the real deal for a valid activation but honestly if you set up on a decent band during a reasonable time of day and spot yourself on the WWFF spotter page youll get there faster than you think. The hunters are out there and they jump on new references pretty quick. Definitely announce the reference on the air, something like your callsign then portable and the KFF reference after each contact or every few contacts at least. That way people logging the hunters side can confirm it. The WWFF log submission is just a standard ADIF file so whatever logging software you use should handle it fine, just make sure youre capturing date time frequency mode and callsign at minimum. 14.244 is a good choice for a weekend, thats kind of the informal WWFF and nature activation gathering spot on 20m SSB. Have fun with it, first activation is always a bit chaotic but thats part of it.

yeah the net control thing is basically your answer right there. when propagation is rough or theres noise people really do struggle to copy individual letters and having those specific words just cuts through better. i still mess up occasionally and say something random like Victor for V when im tired but mostly muscle memory kicks in. theres a printable reference card on the ARRL site if you want something to stick near the radio while youre still learning it

so ive been messing around with an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now, mostly just scanning around on SDR# and doing some ADS-B stuff, and i keep seeing people talk about the SDRplay units like they're some massive upgrade. the RSP1A is like $120 or so right now i think, and my RTL dongle cost me like $30. is the difference really that noticeable for general HF/VHF use or is it more of a niche thing where it only matters if youre doing specific stuff. i mostly listen around 40m and some shortwave broadcast stuff, and the RTL with the upconverter has been okay but not great. noise floor seems high and i feel like im missing weak signals that i should probably be hearing. not sure if thats an antenna problem or the SDR itself. running it into SDR# with the standard settings, havent really dug into the gain staging much tbh. anyone gone through this same upgrade path and have an honest take on it

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and just starting to get into actually chasing DX instead of just ragchewing on the local repeater. someone at our club mentioned using DXwatch and QRZ together and i set both up but honestly im not totally sure im using them the most efficient way like on DXwatch i can see spots coming in but sometimes the same station shows up 4 or 5 times and i cant tell if those are all different people spotting the same guy or if its like, network duplicates or whatever. and then QRZ has that little cluster tab but it seems to lag behind DXwatch by a few minutes sometimes? or maybe im imagining that also is there a way to filter out the digital modes on those lists because right now im seeing a ton of FT8 spots and im mostly interested in SSB. not that theres anything wrong with FT8 just not what im focusing on right now. any tips from people who actually use these regularly would be great

yeah same thing happened to me last week, completely missed it because I had the squelch set too tight and didn't notice until a buddy texted me. By the time I got on it was already fading. Ugh. One of these days I'll actually be ready when a good opening hits. On the IC-905 thing, I saw a review video on youtube from a guy who got an early unit and it looked pretty impressive but he was having some issues with the remote head cable or something, might have just been a setup problem though. I dunno, the price point is pretty steep for me right now.

so we have a county-level activation drill coming up in about 3 weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before we get out there. last time we ran everything off a honda eu2200i and it was fine but one of the other operators kept complaining about noise on 40m and i honestly couldnt tell if it was the genny or his radio or what. we never really figured it out. this time around i want to try running the HF station off a lifepo4 pack instead, got a 100ah battleborn that i use for portable ops, and just keep the generator for the VHF/UHF stuff and the laptop. but im not sure if 100ah is going to cut it for a full 8 hour deployment if were running an ic-7300 at maybe 50-75w most of the time. i did some rough math and it seems like it should be okay but i never trust my own math on this stuff. also the antenna situation — last drill we threw up a linked dipole on a 31ft jackite pole and it worked okay but takedown took forever when we had to move. anyone running something faster to deploy for HF field work? ive been eyeing those EFHW matchbox setups but not sure if the performance tradeoff is worth it for emergency use. want reliable not just convenient

yeah the dual antenna setup with a coax switch is actually pretty common and works fine, i ran that exact config for a while with an x300 and a homebrew 5el yagi on 2m. the switch itself isnt really the weak link as long as you get a decent one — i used a daiwa cs-201 and never had issues even at 50w. the SO-239 thing youre worried about is a non issue honestly. that said 55 miles on 2m with 50w and a decent collinear should work more days than not depending on the terrain between you and the repeater. have you checked what the path looks like on something like heywhatsthat or even just google earth with elevation profiles? sometimes its one ridge or a building cluster thats the culprit and a few more feet of height on the collinear does more than a yagi pointed at a slightly wrong angle. id check the path first before committing to the yagi route

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at it for maybe 4 months now and just got on the air for real contacts last month which was terrifying lol. one thing that helped me a lot was just listening to actual qsos on 40m even before i could copy everything. like just having it in the background while i was doing other stuff. your brain starts to pick up the rhythm without you even really trying. also the MFJ paddles have a bit of a reputation for the tension going loose over time but for learning its probably fine, mine works ok. good luck with it, it really is satisfying once stuff starts clicking

Both have their place! DXCC is by far the top certificate among DXers and most DX clubs require it for full membership. But WAZ gives you a better understanding of global propagation patterns. Why not chase both? Following the typical progression of WAS, WAC, then DXCC is still solid advice for new DXers.

cant speak to Log4OM specifically but just wanted to say N1MM really isnt meant for casual logging and i think a lot of people try to force it into that role because theyve already learned it. ive seen guys run like three different logging programs depending on what theyre doing and honestly thats not as crazy as it sounds as long as your master log is in one place. ADIF is pretty portable these days.

maybe its just me but ive been getting on 40 most evenings this past couple weeks and its just dead. like i remember a few years back youd tune around and find half a dozen ragchews going on no problem, now i spin the dial for 20 minutes and find maybe one guy calling CQ and nobody answering him. not sure if its the time of year or solar conditions or what but something feels off. been a ham since 98 and i dont remember it being this quiet in the fall usually