Robert Martinez

the arrow handheld thing is totally workable, ive made a bunch of contacts that way on AO-73 and even FO-29. the doppler on the linear birds is manageable once you get a feel for it. with the 9700 and gpredict the CAT connection can be flaky, make sure youre using the right port settings and that rigctld is actually running before gpredict tries to connect, thats usually the issue in my experience. also check that you have the transponder passband entered correctly in gpredict's satellite config, if those numbers are off the tuning will seem weird. what you probably heard was real, 145.950 is right in the AO-73 downlink range. the signals fade fast on a low elevation pass especially with a handheld antenna since youre not tracking perfectly. try a pass that gets above 30 degrees or so, way easier to work. and yeah you basically tune both vfo's together, gpredict handles the math if the CAT link is working. if its not working just manually tune the downlink and accept the uplink will be slightly off, you can still get on there and listen at least.

yeah what he said about the alert, seriously just post one even if its rough like 'ill be there sometime saturday morning' - chasers are really forgiving about timing. i did my first activation last spring and was terrified nobody would call me and i ended up with like 11 contacts in 20 minutes once i spotted myself on the cluster. the community around SOTA is genuinely one of the friendlier parts of ham radio imo. one thing i'd add - double check that your summit actually has a valid reference on the sota database before you hike up, not every high point qualifies. the prominence requirement trips people up sometimes. looks like you're in Tennessee area maybe? there's a bunch of good ones in that region.

Finally completed the sound card interface modification on my IC-745 for FT8 and PSK31 operations. Used the ACC connector method with audio from Pin-4 wired directly to sound card Line IN. The tricky part was the audio input - had to sum the mic preamp and MODE wire through resistors at the high side of the mic gain pot. Results have been excellent - working all states on FT8 with this 1980s rig. The narrow band digital modes really care about frequency shifts and drifts of a few Hertz, but after adding some styrofoam peanut insulation around the crystals, drift is minimal.

I'd recommend sticking with LoTW confirmations if possible - so much easier than mailing cards around! No tedious requesting or answering QSL cards, nothing to distract from the on-the-air thrill of the hunt. For those last few states, try working contests like the ARRL RTTY Roundup or North American QSO Party.

not a dumb question at all, everyone starts somewhere. honestly for your use case — hitting repeaters and doing some local simplex — you really cant go wrong with the FT-65. yaesu build quality is noticeably better than the baofengs in my experience, the receiver is cleaner, and the menu system is actually somewhat logical once you spend an hour with it. i gave one to my nephew when he got his ticket and he was up and running on our local 2m repeater same day. dual band is nice to have just so you have access to 70cm repeaters too since a lot of areas have more activity there than you'd expect. the FT-65 does both so that boxes that in. if you can stretch to maybe 110-120 shipped you should be able to find one, sometimes even new. chirp software makes programming it way less painful too, definitely download that before you start manually entering frequencies.

i was in exactly the same spot about a year ago and ended up getting the yaesu ft-4xr which is even cheaper than the ft-65 and honestly been really happy with it. does everything i need for local stuff. the audio is decent and i havent had any issues programing it with chirp. one thing nobody told me when i was starting out — get chirp set up before you do anything else, programming these things from the front panel is kind of a nightmare on most HTs. makes loading in your local repeaters way easier

welcome to the dark side haha. CQ WW is genuinely one of the best contests to start with because the exchange is dead simple, your call sign and your CQ zone, thats it. for North America youre almost certainly zone 3, 4, or 5 depending where you live, worth double checking on a zone map before the weekend. dont stress about the setup. i worked my first CQ WW with a G5RV and a 100w radio in a suburban backyard and still managed a couple hundred contacts. the bands are absolutely packed that weekend so you'll hear plenty to work. my suggestion is just to start by search and pouncing, meaning tune around and answer other peoples CQs rather than sitting on a frequency and calling yourself. way easier when youre learning and you still get the points. once you feel comfortable with how the pacing works you can try running a frequency but honestly for a first time just chasing contacts is plenty fun. no pre-registration needed, just get on the air. N1MM Logger or even just a paper log works fine. have fun with it

yeah the cluster feed can be a firehose when you first look at it, totally normal to feel that way. what helped me a lot was filtering by band in DXwatch — theres a filter option so you can just see 20m or whatever youre working that session and it cuts the noise way down. once i started doing that it became way more usable. for the QRZ lookup thing you're doing, thats actually a pretty solid habit. some guys use the DX spots that are built right into logging software like Log4OM or even the free version of HRD and those can show you the spot plus auto-fill the DXCC info at the same time, which saves the tab switching. might be worth looking into if youre logging contacts anyway. as for phone apps i use DX Toolbox on android, different from the one you mentioned i think, and it pulls from the main cluster network just fine. been reliable for me. just make sure whatever app you use is connecting to a real telnet cluster node and not just some cached feed that's 20 minutes old, that'll drive you crazy when you tune to a frequency and the station is long gone

so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR V3 dongle for about a year now mostly just scanning around VHF/UHF and doing some APRS decoding with Direwolf, pretty happy with it honestly. but i keep reading about the SDRplay RSP1C and RSP2 and people saying the dynamic range and sensitivity is way better especially on HF. im running mine with an upconverter right now (the Ham-It-Up) and it works but the noise floor is kind of ugly below like 10 MHz. my actual question is whether anyone has used both and can say whether the jump to an SDRplay is actually noticeable in day to day use or is it one of those things that looks great in benchmark charts but you dont really feel it sitting there turning the dial. i mostly just want to monitor 40m and 80m when im not transmitting, maybe do some digidecoding with fldigi or WSJT. not doing anything serious just curious what the bands are doing. also is SDRuno still kind of a mess or have they cleaned it up, last time i tried it was like 2 years ago and i ended up just using SDR# because it felt less crashy

The DX advantage is real - many rare stations hang out in the Extra-only phone segments, especially on 20m during openings. Plus you can administer all three amateur radio license examinations which is rewarding for giving back to the community. I'd say it's worth the effort if you're serious about HF.

your setup is actually not far off for getting started on digital EME. 500w and a pair of 9el yagis is going to give you maybe 15-16dBd of antenna gain which combined with a good low noise preamp puts you in the range where JT65B contacts are genuinely possible on random. you wont be working every station you hear but the bigger stations will be able to pull you out. the preamp question is a real good one and yeah the path loss is brutal — something like 252dB on 2m — but the reason the preamp NF matters so much is because your receive noise floor is almost entirely set by that first stage. if you have a 0.3dB NF preamp right at the feedpoint versus even a 1.5dB NF preamp at the shack end of 20ft of coax, youre talking about several dB of system noise figure difference and on EME that is the difference between copying a signal and not. the moon isnt going anywhere but those fractions of dB really stack up. single yagi EME is a thing but mostly that means the station on the other end is running a huge array or a dish and they can pull you out even if you cant really hear them well. its called an asymmetric contact and its totally legit for EME purposes. check out the ON4KST chat, a lot of stations post their schedules there and you can sked with someone who knows your signal will be weak.

yeah the 40m thing trips up a lot of new generals. basically as a general you get 7.175 to 7.300 MHz for phone, and extra class gets the chunk below that down to 7.125. so there is a restriction there, your club guy was right. the ARRL band plan chart is honestly way easier to read than the actual part 97 text, i'd grab one of those and stick it near your radio. the band edge thing is important though and you're smart to ask. with SSB your carrier frequency is what you tune to but the actual signal is spread out — on USB your signal goes UP from the dial frequency, so if you're tuned to say 7.299 and you're running USB, your voice is putting signal above that and technically outside the band. most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, some say more. the FCC doesnt care about a few Hz of slop but being obviously out of band is a different story. just develop a habit of not parking right at the edge.

thermal intermittents are the worst to chase, you're right to suspect that. the fan test not fixing it doesnt rule it out entirely because the component that's failing might be getting heat from the board itself not ambient air. classic move is to use freeze spray in sections while it's in the failure state and see if receive pops back — if it does you found your neighborhood at least. i've done that on a couple HF rigs with dodgy preamp stages. on the 7300 specifically, ive read a few threads on other forums about the RF unit having some QC variation from icom on that generation. not saying it's a known defect exactly but some guys have had the rx amp section act up. if you're comfortable with SMD work it might be worth pulling the RF board and reflowing anything that looks even slightly cold. four years plus car heat is enough to stress those joints. also worth checking — does it do this on all bands or just certain ones? that would tell you a lot about where to look.

so ive been running a diamond x50 on my roof for about two years now and it works fine for local repeater stuff, but i keep wondering if i should throw up a yagi or two for weak signal work. problem is i dont really have a rotator setup and the idea of aiming a beam every time i want to work someone sounds annoying honestly. what i'm trying to figure out is whether a decent gain collinear like the x300 or maybe a comet gp-9 would give me enough of a signal boost over the x50 to actually notice a difference on 2m ssb, or if im basically wasting money and should just commit to a yagi with a rotator. my station is in a pretty flat area, southeast ohio, nothing too crazy elevation wise. i work into some of the local hills occasionally and it gets frustrating when i can hear someone barely but cant quite get the contact. anybody run both setups and have opinions? also open to the fixed yagi idea if someone can convince me the aiming thing isnt as bad as i think it is