Emily Davis

the single yagi thing does happen but yeah its really dependent on the other station running serious iron. if youre working someone with a big array and a kilowatt they can pull you out even with a modest setup on your end. its not really a two-way street though, you kind of rely on the other guy compensating for your deficiency if that makes sense. realistically for 2m EME most guys are running at least 500w to the feedpoint, a lot run 1kw or close to it with a good solid state amp or an older tube amp like a 3CX800. and the yagi situation, 4x9el or 4x12el is kind of the sweet spot where you start to be able to work average stations not just the giants. single long yagi plus high power will get you some contacts during good conditions especially around perigee when the moon is closest but it takes patience. the coax run is actually where people kill themselves and dont realize it. 100 feet of LMR-400 at 2m is already eating a dB or so, and every dB counts on EME more than anywhere else. a lot of serious EME guys put the preamp right at the feedpoint, like physically at the antenna, and the question of where the power amp lives matters too. its worth thinking about that early rather than retrofitting later. the moon windows, yeah youre right that you both need it above horizon but beyond that perigee vs apogee makes a real difference, maybe 2dB of path loss difference which is actually significant at these levels. the EME2 logger and the moon sked software most guys use will show you common windows with different parts of the world, europe tends to have good activity on 2m weekends.

yeah the keepalive defaults on the RRC boxes are kind of a mess honestly. i had almost the exact same thing happen and it turned out my router at the remote end was killing the UDP sessions after like 30 seconds of what it thought was idle traffic. the RRC uses UDP for the audio stream and some routers treat that differently than TCP and just drop the NAT table entry without warning. what fixed it for me was going into the RRC web interface and dropping the keepalive interval way down, i think i set it to like 20 seconds, and also making sure the SIP keepalive was enabled. also worth checking if your remote router has a UDP timeout setting you can bump up. some of the cheaper home routers are terrible about this. took me a weekend of poking around to figure that out, the documentation doesnt really make it obvious at all. also try switching to Opus if you havent, GSM is fine but Opus handles packet loss a lot better so even if you do get some hiccups it tends to recover cleaner instead of just dying.

i tried cobbling together a cheap SO2R setup last fall with my main rig and an old ft-950 i got off qrz classifieds for like 400 bucks and honestly the bandpass filter situation was more annoying than i expected even with the antennas on opposite sides of the property. 40 and 15 were okay but 20 and 10 running at the same time was rough, lots of desense on the older radio. ended up just using it mostly to spot mults which still helped but wasnt the full SO2R experience think i need to actually invest in a proper filter setup before trying again. or just accept that im a SO1R guy lol

i built almost the exact same thing last year, SA602 and LM386, and honestly the hardest part for me was just figuring out why there was so much hum. turned out i was grounding the audio side and the RF side at different points on my ugly-style board and there was enough of a ground loop to make it sound like a bad power supply even though the supply was fine. one ground point fixed it immediately which felt kind of embarasing after how long i spent poking at it. dont stress too much about the waveform before you even know if the thing receives anything. plug in a wire antenna and see what you hear first, then troubleshoot from there. 40m in the evening you should be hearing something almost right away if the circuit is basically working.

oh man i remember feeling exactly this way when i first got my general. the net directory is honestly kind of a mess for finding active nets, youre right about that. what worked better for me was just asking at my local club or on the local repeater if anyone knew of good weeknight nets on HF. for 40 meters there are usually a bunch of traffic nets running in the evenings depending on your region, the NTS nets and stuff like that. they can feel a little formal at first but people are generally pretty patient with newer folks. theres also just a ton of casual ragchew nets if you poke around 7.200 or so in the evenings, though those arent always announced anywhere they just kind of happen. the lighthouse thing is probably Lighthouse Weekend, they do it every August. special event stations are easy, you just tune around until you hear them calling CQ with their special callsign and then you call them back like any other contact. they usually send you a QSL card if you send them a self addressed stamped envelope. its a good way to get on the air with a purpose if that makes sense

yeah same boat when i started, i used to panic and say like "Q for... uh... Queen" and just hope for the best lol. honestly just tape a phonetic alphabet cheat sheet next to your radio until you have it down. took me maybe two weeks of being on the air before i stopped needing it. the NATO ones really are better than just making stuff up btw, like "Sierra" vs "Sugar" sounds different enough that it matters when the band is noisy

10m has been cracking open here in the mornings a couple times this month, worked a PY station (Brazil) last week which was the first real 10m DX ive had in like three years so something is definitely happening. i got lucky and just happened to have the rig on while eating breakfast. honestly i just leave DX cluster notifications on my phone now so i dont miss the openings when they happen because they can come and go pretty fast especially on the high bands.

yeah this is basically the exact setup i settled on after way too much tinkering. what i do is keep Log4OM as my main day-to-day logger and then when a contest weekend comes i just fire up N1MM pointed at its own contest-specific log file. after the contest i do a manual ADIF import back into Log4OM to keep everything in one place. its an extra step but honestly takes like two minutes and i've had zero issues with duplicates or anything weird. the WSJT-X thing though, thats where it gets annoying. you cant really have both loggers listening to WSJT-X at the same time without one of them getting confused about who owns the port. what i ended up doing is just picking one at a time — during FT8 sessions Log4OM gets the UDP feed, during contests i redirect it to N1MM. its not elegant but it works and i havent lost a QSO yet doing it this way. Log4OM's WSJT-X integration is actually pretty decent now, a lot better than it was a couple versions ago.

yeah that plateau around 7-8 wpm is super common, almost everyone hits it. the 5-letter group thing is actually kind of a trap in my opinion — it teaches your brain to wait for the next character instead of building words. what really helped me was switching to receiving actual text, like short sentences or even just common ham abbreviations, so your brain starts to chunk things together. the other thing nobody tells you is that you should bump your character speed way up even if you slow the word spacing down. farnsworth timing basically — run the characters at like 15 or 18wpm but stretch the gaps between letters and words so you have time to think. that way your brain never gets used to the slow dits and dahs that you'll have to unlearn later anyway. i went from 8 to about 14 within a couple months just doing that change, then the rest came slower but it came. also just copy copy copy without writing everything down sometimes. its scary but trying to get meaning without pencil in hand forces your brain to actually process the words instead of just transcribing letters.

yeah what he said about the forms. i keep a little folder in my bag with a bunch of ICS-213s and 214s already printed, saved me more than once. also bring snacks lol, marathon events can run longer than you think especially if the course has delays. nobody tells you that part when you sign up

congrats on the first activation, those early ones are the best. to answer your question — yeah WWFF needs 44 QSOs to qualify the reference, same number as POTA ironically, but they are totally separate programs with separate logs and awards. you do need the reference in your log for each contact, not just the header. when you upload to the wwff logbook they want to see the reference in the MY_SIG_INFO field if youre doing ADIF. some logging programs handle this automatically but if you typed it manually just double check that field isnt blank. also worth joining the WWFF Facebook group if you haven't already, the folks there are really helpful and the activators spots page is great for getting chasers to find you. sounds like the setup worked fine if you were getting a pileup on 25w, the KX2 is a solid little rig for this kind of thing

QRZ is one that confused me forever because i kept thinking it meant something was wrong lol. its actually just asking who called, you hear it a lot when someone comes on frequency and the other op didnt quite catch the callsign. and yeah QRP is a whole thing, theres a huge community of people who specifically run low power like 5 watts or less, they make it kind of a challenge to make contacts that way honestly the best way i learned was just keeping a little cheat sheet next to the radio for the first few months. dont stress too much about sounding clueless, everyone was there once and most hams are pretty patient with newcomers asking stuff

honestly for the exam itself you can get away with just hammering the question pool. hamstudy.org will tell you when youre consistently passing practice tests and at that point youre probably ready. that said, the filter stuff and the transmission line theory actually makes way more sense if you spend like an hour with the ARRL Extra Class License Manual, not even to study for the test but just because once you see the diagrams it clicks and then you stop dreading those questions. the math on the actual exam is never that brutal, its usually plug and chug with the formula right there in context. dont overthink it, you already know more than you think you do from two years on the air.

so i've been wanting to get into QRP for a while now and last month i finally pulled the trigger on one of those Pennywhistle kits — no wait, i mean the Mountain Topper kit from LNR, anyway it doesnt really matter which one. point is i spent about two weekends soldering it up, burned my finger once being an idiot, but it came together and actually worked first try which i honestly did not expect. took it out to the local park yesterday with just a random wire antenna i strung up in a tree, ran it off a little lipo pack, and worked 4 states on 40m in about an hour running 5 watts. i know thats nothing to some of you guys but for me sitting there in the grass with this tiny box i built myself making contacts it was kind of a whole new thing. way more satisfying than just cranking up the amp at home. anyway curious if anyone else has gone down the QRP rabbit hole and what kits or rigs youre running. also wondering if theres a big difference between 5w and like 10w in terms of real world results or if im just chasing numbers at that point

honestly 1.4:1 at the feedpoint without a tuner on a homebrew dipole is pretty solid work, i spent two weekends fighting my first one before i figured out i had measured from the wrong end of the coax or something dumb like that. anyway the height thing is a real issue on 40, 25 feet is basically like a low band antenna at that point in terms of takeoff angle. i dont have a great solution because im also stuck with trees but i ended up just accepting my dipole is mostly good for stateside stuff.

hawk watching you while you operate is honestly the dream. i did one activation last fall at a wildlife area and had a whole family of deer just kind of hanging around about 30 feet away the whole time, didnt seem bothered at all by the radio stuff. made the whole thing feel worth it even when 40m was being difficult that day. WWFF has a nice vibe to it, more relaxed than some of the contest-y feeling stuff. welcome to the addiction i guess

the gateway timeout thing is almost always propagation or the gateway being busy, not necessarily dead. those RMS nodes get hammered sometimes especially on 20m during busy hours. what i do is sort by distance but then also cross-reference with the Winlink maps page — winlink.org has a live map that shows recent gateway activity and you can usually tell which ones are healthy vs just technically on the list. for your VARA HF setup specifically, try adding a few backup channels in your session settings for the same gateway on different frequencies. 40m is often more reliable for regional stuff than 20m depending on time of day and your location. also make sure your VARA is registered if you havent done that, the unregistered speed cap makes a pretty noticeable difference when youre trying to move actual message traffic under time pressure. on the email delay question — generally pretty fast once the message clears the gateway, like regular email delivery times. ive had messages show up in a gmail inbox within a minute or two of the radio session completing. the slower part is just the over-the-air connection itself. for an ARES exercise it should be totally fine, just practice the workflow a few times before the drill so people know what the client looks like and dont panic when VARA is negotiating speeds.

the single biggest thing that changed my pileup success rate was learning to NOT call on the same freq as the loudest stations in the pileup. everyone crowds around the obvious spot and you just become part of the noise floor to the DX op. when he says up 5 most people treat that as 5 and only 5. if you're working a spread, try 7 or 8 up, or even 3 up, basically anywhere the wall of callers isnt as thick. you can hear the pileup thinning out at the edges if you listen carefully before transmitting. also the tail-end thing is real but timing is everything. you want to be sending your callsign right as his transmission ends, not a half second after everyone else piles on. i actually key up slightly before he stops transmitting sometimes so the first dit of my call hits right on the dot. feels weird but it works. the K3 VOX delay can be a factor here depending on how you have it configured, worth playing with if you haven't. been on the DXpedition side a few times, nothing super exotic but i helped operate on a somewhat rare NA entity a couple years back. honestly from the other end the stations that break through aren't always the loudest. its the ones who send a clean crisp callsign once and then shut up. the guys sending their call four or five times in a row just make the pileup worse and ironically they get heard less because they're now transmitting while we're trying to call someone back.

the mic placement thing is almost certainly part of your problem. with the PR-40 you really want to be talking into the front of it, not across it — it's a cardioid dynamic and it's pretty directional. six inches is also a bit far for SSB, most guys run 2-3 inches for that kind of mic. too far back and you lose presence and your radio's mic gain ends up cranked to compensate which introduces all kinds of noise and weirdness. for the 7300 specifically, the stock TX bandwidth is actually decent but a lot of people mess with it and forget what they changed. there's a menu option to do a full reset on just the audio parameters without wiping everything else — worth looking into before you go chasing EQ settings. as a rough starting point, mic gain around 50-60%, the TX low cut filter around 100hz and high cut around 2800hz is pretty standard voice-grade SSB. you dont need to transmit a lot of low end, it just eats power and muddies things up on the receive end anyway. the speech processor is another one people leave on without realizing it — if you have that engaged without setting it up properly it'll squash your audio in a way that sounds exactly like the barrel effect you described.

don't sweat it too much, doubling happens to everyone and honestly it happens to experienced operators too especially on busy repeaters. what probably happened is you and another person both heard the same pause and keyed up at the same time — your radio would just pick up the stronger signal so you may not have heard the other person at all. net control usually handles that gracefully and asks for any stations they may have missed. for directed nets, the idea is you only transmit when net control specifically asks for check-ins or calls on you. so you wait for them to say something like "any further check-ins" and then you give your call. on a round table or informal ragchew net it's way more relaxed and people just take turns talking. the key thing i always tell new folks is just listen a lot before you jump in. even 10-15 minutes of just monitoring a net before you ever check in will tell you more than any youtube video. you're doing fine, the fact that you're even thinking about this stuff means you're not gonna be that guy.

Field Day is honestly the perfect starting point, especially if your club does it. you dont need to know everything, you just show up and someone will put you in front of a radio and tell you what to do. thats how most of us learned. the whole point of Field Day is kind of chaotic and fun and its not really scored the same way as a serious contest so the pressure is way lower. CQ WW is a whole different thing — that one gets serious fast, pile-ups everywhere, DX stations running hundreds of contacts an hour. still fun to just tune around and make a few QSOs even if youre not seriously competing, but id save that for after you've got a few Field Days under your belt. for logging just grab a free copy of N1MM+ before Field Day, most clubs use it anyway and someone will help you set it up. dont stress the paper log thing, just jump in.

yeah what he said. one thing i'll add -- dont stress too much about memorizing all the specifics right away. i was a tech for like two years before upgrading and honestly you learn the relevant rules pretty quick just by operating. the stuff that really matters day to day is knowing your power limits (1500w PEP max but realistically nobody's running that on VHF lol), not broadcasting music or obscene content, IDing every 10 minutes and at the end of transmissions. that's like 90% of what Part 97 is about for normal operating. the rest only comes up in weird edge cases

Just got my Technician license last month and I'm having trouble accessing some local repeaters. I can hear the output just fine, but when I try to transmit, nobody seems to hear me. Someone told me it's probably because I'm not programming the CTCSS tone properly - apparently this is a common issue for newcomers and I need to transmit the correct tone for the repeater to even recognize my signal. I found the repeater directory shows a tone of 141.3 Hz, but I'm not sure how to set this up on my Baofeng UV-5R. The manual isn't very clear about the difference between TX tone and RX tone. Do I need to set both? Any help would be appreciated! 73, KJ7ABC

yeah i was in the same boat when i first started checking into nets, felt super awkward for like the first month. one thing that helped me was i found a copy of the ARRL Net Directory and just read through how formal nets are supposed to work, not that every local net follows it perfectly but it gives you a baseline. also dont be afraid to ask the net control directly after the net closes, most of them are super happy to answer questions, thats kind of the whole point of the hobby anyway

honestly the best thing i ever did was just spend a few sessions not even trying to work the DX, just listening to how the op was managing the pile. like really paying attention to where they came back, how fast they were moving, whether they were doing call areas or just fishing. after doing that a few times something just clicked and my rate of getting through went way up even without changing any equipment. also — and this might be controversial — i think a lot of people massively overestimate how much antenna gain helps in a pileup vs just operating technique. like yeah if you're running a dipole and everyone else has beams thats a real disadvantage, but the difference between a 3el and a 5el yagi in a pileup is probably less than good timing. propagation windows matter a lot too, sometimes showing up 20 minutes before the peak and working the DX when the pile is smaller is worth more than any antenna upgrade