Nicole Larsen

im also building a superhet right now actually, single conversion 9 MHz IF for 40m SSB, totally different thing but the filter impedance thing bit me too. i just assumed they were drop in and spent like two weeks wondering why everything sounded muddy. turned out i needed matching pads on both sides. once i got that sorted it was night and day difference honestly. also the cardboard tube thing made me laugh because i did something similar with a biscuit tin and some foam tape in my first build and it was a disaster. real shielding is worth it, just tin plate from a hobby store or even a metal project box you cut up.

congrats on the first activation, 44 contacts on your first go is solid. for the logging question -- the reference goes in the header of your ADIF file, there's a field called MY_SIG_INFO and that's where your KFF reference number goes. every contact doesnt need it individually as long as the header is set correctly. most logging apps handle this automatically if you tell it upfront what park you're activating. and yeah activator and hunter totals are tracked separately on the WWFF side. you get activator awards for successfully activating parks and hunter awards for working activators. they dont cross over but some people find the hunter side almost more addictive honestly because you can chase from home. check the wwff.us site for the award tiers, i think its 44 unique parks for the first hunter award but dont quote me on that. anyway sounds like a great first outing. the 40m wire in a tree setup is honestly hard to beat for portable ops like this.

so ive been noticing the last few days that 10 meters has been absolutely alive compared to what it was even a month ago. worked a few south american stations yesterday afternoon with just my dipole and 100 watts which i honestly was not expecting at all. checked the solar flux index and it was sitting around 190-something which feels high to me but im still learning how to read all that stuff. been lurking on dxmaps and pskreporter and seeing spots all over the place. my question is basically how do you guys interpret the solar flux numbers and know when a real DX opening is coming versus just kind of random short skip? like is there a threshold where you go okay today is worth spending some time on 10 or 15 and actually calling CQ? ive been licensed about two years and propagation is still honestly the thing i feel most lost about

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. my 7300 is working perfectly on 40m and 20m, receive is clean, sensitivity seems normal, no complaints. but on 15m and 10m the receive just falls off a cliff. like i can still see signals on the waterfall sometimes, barely, but they're way down compared to what they should be and actual audio is almost nothing. noise floor looks weird too, kind of flat in a way that doesnt seem right. TX still works fine on all bands, power output is normal, swr is fine, i checked it with an external meter. so it's definitely a receive path issue and it seems band-specific which is what's really confusing me. antenna is a fan dipole that's worked fine for years, and i swapped to a dummy load and a separate known-good receiver to rule that out — same result, the fan dipole is receiving fine on 15 and 10 with the other radio. anyone had something like this with a 7300 or similar rig? im wondering if it's a bandpass filter issue or something in the preamp switching. i havent opened it up yet, kind of hesitant since it's still sort of under warranty i think, but i might be past that window honestly.

the bandpass filters are not optional, full stop. i learned that the hard way when i tried running both radios on 20 and 15 simultaneously with just a basic diplexer and the 7300 was basically deaf the whole time the other rig was transmitting. youre talking S9+20 of garbage across the passband. the 4O3A filters are expensive but they hold up and the insertion loss is minimal, ive also seen guys use the Array Solutions ones or even homebrew the W3NQN design which can cut the cost way down if you have time to build. your antenna situation is actually more of the problem than the radios. sharing a yagi between two rigs gets complicated fast because you need a way to switch antenna assignments on the fly and keep everything isolated. some guys run a separate wire antenna on the second radio just for mults — like a simple 40m extended double zepp or something — and only use the yagi for the run radio. its not optimal but its a real SO2R setup without needing a second tower. N1MM+ handles SO2R fine honestly. the SO2R box support is solid and the keyboard shortcuts for toggling between radios become muscle memory pretty quick. give it a shot on a smaller contest first, like a state QSO party where the pressure is lower, before you try it in sweepstakes.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state forest about 45 minutes from my house, K-4857 if anyone's been there. i was honestly pretty nervous going in because ive heard people say the first one is always kind of chaotic and yeah it kind of was but in a good way i guess. set up my buddistick on a small tripod, ran about 30 feet of coax to my ft-891 in the car, and just started calling CQ POTA on 40 meters around 10am local. i wasnt expecting much but within maybe 3 or 4 minutes i had my first contact and then it just kind of snowballed from there. ended up with 23 QSOs in about an hour and a half which i know isnt huge but for a first activation i was pretty happy. my question is about the logging — i was using hamrs on my phone and it seemed fine but i noticed when i uploaded to the pota website it flagged a couple contacts as duplicates even though i dont think they were? like same callsign but different bands. does the system count those separately or does it just count one toward your 10 minimum? and also when do hunters actually see your spot if you self-spot through the app, is there a delay?

good news - you can apply for a vanity call pretty much right away, no waiting period after getting licensed. the FCC dropped the application fee for vanity calls back in 2022 i think, so that's one less thing to worry about. you just do it through the ULS like everything else. the tribute call thing is really nice by the way. for a call that belonged to a silent key there is typically a waiting period before it becomes available in the vanity pool - i believe it's around 2 years after the license expires, though that can depend on a few things. you'll want to look up the specific call in the ULS and see what the expiration date was and what status it shows. AE7Q.com has a really good vanity call lookup tool that shows you exactly when a call becomes eligible and even lets you track applications. honestly just go there first, saves a lot of guesswork. the actual application process once a call is eligible is pretty straightforward. you submit through ULS, there's a filing window, and if multiple people apply for the same call during the window it goes to a lottery of sorts based on license class preference rules. general and above get priority over tech for some call formats so your new general ticket might actually help you there depending on the call district and format.

35ah battery running 4 hours sounds about right depending on how much you were transmitting. one thing i added to mine that i wish id done from the start was a small battery monitor that shows voltage and estimated remaining capacity, just a cheap one off amazon, but it takes the guesswork out when youre mid-deployment and wondering if you need to start conserving. also threw a solar panel charge controller in the lid of the case so i can trickle charge off a small folding panel if i need to extend operations, havent actually needed it in a real activation yet but the one drill where we did a 12 hour exercise it came in handy. one other thing, and this is just me being paranoid probably, i keep a laminated card in the kit with my call sign, my served agency contact info, and the ICS check-in procedure for my county. sounds dumb but when its 2am and someones asking you questions youre glad its written down somewhere.

yeah i upgraded from tech to general last spring and the thing that caught me off guard was the operating procedures and regulations section more than the theory honestly. like there's a fair amount of stuff about which frequencies are phone vs cw only, and the band plans matter on the exam. i kept mixing up the sub-bands for a while. but once it clicks it makes sense. also just fyi once you get general you can actually get on 40 meters at night and it's kind of wild, you can work stations really far away just with like 50-100 watts and a decent antenna. totally worth doing the upgrade, i wish i hadnt waited as long as i did

might be a dumb question but did you check if aprs.fi is filtering by last 2 hours vs all time? theres a dropdown on the station page that i always forget about. caught me off guard once when i couldnt find myself after a road trip and it turned out i was just outside the default time window they show

so ive been putting this off for like two years but i finally cracked open the 857D and did the mars/cap mod to open up the TX range. went smoothly actually, just the one jumper on the main board, took maybe 20 minutes including reassembly. running fine on all the bands now with no issues on the regular ham allocations. while i had it open i also recapped the finals area because one of the electrolytics looked a little puffy, nothing dramatic but it was 12 years old so figured why not. grabbed a set of nichicon caps and swapped them all out in that section. hard to say if it made a measurable difference but i feel better about it. the thing i actually wanted to ask about though — has anyone done the display brightness mod on the 857? the display on mine is barely readable in daylight even on max brightness, and ive seen some vague references to swapping out the backlight LED or adjusting a resistor somewhere but cant find a solid writeup. would appreciate any pointers if someone has been down that road.

the random disconnect thing with the zero is almost definitely the USB power situation, those boards are notoriously fussy especially if you have anything else hanging off them. i had the exact same problem running wsjtx headless on a zero and the fix was adding a powered hub between the rig and the board. also worth checking your hamlib version because there were some bugs with the 991A CAT handling in older builds that caused timeouts. the arduino for the keyer is actually a smart call, i run a similar split setup here where the pi handles logging and the macros and a pro micro does all the keying through iambic paddles. you can keep it simple with just a few bytes of serial protocol between them, something like sending a dit or dah command and an acknowledgment back. dont overthink the comms layer, plain serial at 9600 works fine for that kind of latency.

not to derail but did you do anything about the fan noise while you had it open? i keep meaning to swap mine out for something quieter, the stock fan on my 7300 is driving me nuts during long digital mode sessions. figure if im already in there might as well do both at once but havent pulled the trigger yet

omg i didnt even have my radio on yesterday i was at work, gutted to hear about that 10m opening. im still pretty new to all this and havent actually worked a dx contact yet so every time i hear about a good opening i feel like im missing out. is there a good way to know when these are happening ahead of time or is it just kind of random luck? i check dxmaps sometimes but im not always sure what im looking at honestly.

that thermal pattern is a real clue honestly. on the 7300 specifically there was some talk on the icom reflector a while back about the PA driver stage having issues when warm — i cant remember if it was a known batch problem or just a few units but worth searching. first thing id do is pull the top cover off and run it while watching for anything that looks like a cold solder joint near the PA board. sometimes you can see them if they're bad enough, little grey ring around the joint. also check the finals arent running unusually hot. if somethings on its way out thermally the output can get flaky before it fails completely. you could try setting power to like 30 watts and see if the dropout still happens — if it clears up at lower power thats pretty telling.

okay so ive been trying to get into DX chasing more seriously and everyone keeps telling me to use the cluster but honestly i find the whole thing kind of confusing still. like i have qrz.com open and i use the logbook there but i only recently noticed there's a bandscope and spot stuff built in too? and then someone at my club mentioned dxwatch.com separately and i didnt want to look dumb so i just nodded along. so basically im using both now and they seem to show similar info but not identical. dxwatch feels a little more raw i guess, like just a list of spots scrolling by, and i can filter by band which is helpful. the qrz one looks nicer but im not always sure if im seeing the same spots or if theres a delay or what. also does anyone use the phone apps for this? i downloaded dx toolkit a while back but never really figured it out. mainly wondering if theres a faster way to see when something rare pops up without having to stare at a screen all day. my radio is an ft-991a if that matters at all.

our club has a table there every year, we do a license exam session in the morning too if you know anyone who needs to test. come find the Ridgeline ARC table and say hi, we usually bring some stuff to sell off from the club shack too lol

so ive been putting off learning CW for probably three years now and i finally just ordered a cheap dual paddle and a MFJ keyer to go with my old FT-817. got it all hooked up last night and i was messing around with the iambic mode and honestly im a bit confused. like i get the concept, squeeze both paddles and it alternates dits and dahs, but when i actually try to use it my letters come out completely garbled. does it just take a ton of practice or am i missing something with the timing? i set the speed to like 12 wpm thinking that was slow enough to learn on but maybe that's still too fast. also someone told me to learn with the keyer in mode A vs mode B but i have no idea what the difference even matters at this stage. any advice from folks who went through this would be really appreciated, im kind of starting from zero here

so ive been wanting to get my technician license for a while now and finally decided to just do it. my brother in law has been a ham for like 20 years and he keeps telling me to just memorize the question pool but that feels like cheating somehow? i dunno. i picked up the ARRL technician manual from the library and its honestly kind of overwhelming, theres so much in there that feels like it doesnt matter for the actual exam. anyway i guess what im asking is, do people actually read through all that stuff or do most folks just use one of those practice test websites and call it good. i found hamstudy.org and it seems decent but im second guessing myself. also some of the electrical theory questions are pretty confusing to me, like i get the basics but ohms law and stuff starts to make my head spin when they start combining it with other formulas. is that a big chunk of the test or can i kind of skim that section

so anyway i was in the same boat when i started and what finally made it click for me was just thinking of them as three totally separate systems that happen to overlap. LoTW is the one that "counts" for the big ARRL stuff, eQSL is its own thing with its own awards community, and paper cards are kind of... the original and still meaningful to a lot of people even if they dont count anywhere official unless you mail them to the ARRL desk with your application. dont stress too much about the 200 contacts in eQSL. once you get LoTW going you can upload your whole log history and a bunch of those same stations will probably already be in there and your confirmations will just appear. happened to me, it was kind of satisfying actually seeing all those confirmations pop up at once.

I went with the 891 as my first HF rig and love it. The internal tuner handles my 40m dipole and random wire just fine for most bands. Current draw is usually around 18-19A at full power. The Yaesu 710 Field is also worth considering as an HF-only option under $1000. Don't overthink it - both are solid choices!

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from home, K-4689 if anyone knows it. i had been hunting parks for a few months and thought i understood how it went but man actually being the one running the pile was a completely different experience. i brought my KX2 and a random wire i threw up between two trees and it actually worked pretty well, got signal reports ranging all over the place but most people seemed to copy me fine. the part that got me was just managing the flow of contacts. i kept forgetting to send the park reference in my exchanges and a couple hunters were asking me to repeat it. also had one guy who just would not stop transmitting over everyone else to get his contact in, not sure if thats normal or if i just attracted that one guy. ended up with 22 QSOs which i know isnt a lot but i was happy with it for a first time out. definitely going back to try for a higher count next time. anyone have tips for staying organized when the pile gets going?

might be worth just logging the temp readout from the menu while you're transmitting and watching if it climbs faster than it should. the rig does have internal temp sensing and if something is off in how its reading it you'd see it reflected there. i think its in the set menu somewhere, radio temp display. also dont rule out the power supply side either, if its a switching supply with some age on it and the voltage is sagging slightly under load that can do weird things. i chased a fault like this on an older TS-590 for two weeks before i noticed my astron was putting out 13.2 instead of 13.8 under load, not enough to cause obvious issues but enough to mess with the power output stability.

went through this same thing about a year ago, got my ticket and the sequential they gave me was just not great for anything. ended up snagging a 2x2 call on my first try which honestly surprised me, thought it would be more of a fight. the AE7Q site the other guy mentioned is really the key tool, i spent like an hour just browsing available calls in my region before i decided what to apply for. just pick something thats been sitting available for a while and you probably wont have much competition. good luck with it

so we ran a simulated disaster comms exercise last saturday with our local ARES group and honestly i wasnt prepared for how much went sideways even in a fake scenario. the whole premise was a major flood had knocked out all repeaters in the county and we had to coordinate shelter locations and resource requests using only simplex HF and VHF direct. sounded simple enough on paper. what we figured out pretty quick was that nobody had agreed on a common simplex frequency ahead of time and half the guys showed up defaulting to different calling frequencies. one operator was running an IC-7300 with a portable dipole and was hearing everyone fine but nobody could hear him because his antenna situation was just not working out. another guy's go-bag radio had a dead battery because he hadnt checked it in like 8 months. small stuff but it really adds up when you're simulating an actual emergency. the lesson i personally took away is that our net control training is way weaker than we thought. whoever was running net control that day — and i wont name names — kept acknowledging stations out of order and we ended up with like three people transmitting at the same time for a solid five minutes. just chaos. we do these drills and we think we're prepared and then you find out you're really not. curious if anyone else has done exercises like this, tabletop or actual field stuff, and what kind of things caught you off guard. feels like every drill teaches you something you couldnt have guessed before you did it.