Emily Davis

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for about two years now and i really like it for day to day stuff, tracking QSOs, looking up callsigns, that kind of thing. but every time a contest comes around i feel like im fighting the software. tried to use it during the ARRL DX CW last month and i just kept fumbling around looking for things that should be one keypress away. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just run N1MM for contests and not fight it, and yeah i know N1MM is basically the standard for serious contesting but i really dont want to manage two separate logs and then have to merge everything back into Log4OM afterward. does anyone actually do that workflow regularly or is it a pain. also curious if the ADIF import from N1MM into Log4OM is clean or do you end up with duplicates and weird fields everywhere. side question — is anyone running WSJT-X alongside N1MM during a contest or does that get complicated with the UDP ports and everything fighting over the radio

the sitting and staring at WSJT-X part is accurate lol. i did my first EME contact about two years ago with a 2x9el setup and maybe 400w, took forever to find a window where the geometry was right and the big gun station i was trying to work was pointed at the moon at the same time i was. timing and coordination matter a lot more than i expected, like you cant just call CQ and wait, you kinda need to know whos on and when theyre aimed your direction. the online scheduling tools and the ping jockey reflector are how people coordinate, worth getting familiar with those before you even get on the air for this. also dont forget polarization, the Faraday rotation thing is real and annoying and sometimes you just lose the contact because the polarization shifted and theres nothing you can do about it unless you have some way to rotate your feed or you have cross pol capability which most small stations dont

Just got my Tech license last month and looking to install my first mobile rig in my 2019 F-150. I'm torn between getting separate VHF and UHF radios or going with a dual-band unit like the Icom IC-2730A or Yaesu FT-7900R. My main use will be local repeaters and some emergency communications. Budget is around $300-400 for the radio itself. Any recommendations from the experienced mobile operators here?

so i got my technician license a few months ago and ive been reading about CW and it sounds really interesting but honestly i have no idea how to even begin learning it. like do people just memorize the dots and dashes on paper or is there some better way? i tried looking up some stuff online but theres so many different opinions and apps and methods that i got kind of overwhelmed and closed the tab lol i dont have any particular goal with it, just want to eventually be able to make a contact or two on 40m or something. not trying to be a contester or anything. just curious if anyone here has done this from absolute zero and what actually worked for them

ha that sounds about right, mine wasnt much better. forgot to tighten the antenna connector and spent half the activation wondering why my signal reports were so bad. but yeah 4 QSOs qualifies the summit, thats the rule, and it goes in the log and on sotadata just the same as if you had a perfect day. dont stress the partial call too much, if you logged what you heard in good faith thats fine. the chasers are pretty understanding about propagation and marginal condtions. the counterpoise thing is super common by the way, a lot of guys now just tape a short one directly to the feedpoint of the antenna so its always there as a backup. learned that trick the hard way myself

yeah that sounds like a ground issue with the mag mount almost certainly. the thing about mag mounts is they rely on the vehicle body for the ground plane and if the coax shield isnt making a clean connection to the mount base you get exactly what youre describing -- SWR that jumps around depending on where you are relative to other objects. i had the same problem with a Larsen NMO on my jeep years ago turned out the PL-259 at the radio end was barely soldered and the center pin was intermittent. id check every connection in the coax run first. also running coax through a door frame crimps the shield over time and can cause weird SWR behavior especially if the door has been opened and closed a few hundred times since you installed it. if you can, drill a hole and use a proper feedthrough, makes a huge difference. the MR77 is a decent antenna so im betting its a coax or connector problem not the antenna itself.

honestly the theory is not as bad as it looks once you just sit down with it. i put it off for like three years telling myself the same thing and then when i actually cracked open the material it took me maybe six weeks of casual studying on the bus to work. the filter stuff and the transistor questions are intimidating on paper but the question pool is a closed pool so youre really just learning the answers to specific questions, you dont have to derive everything from scratch or anything like that. the extra privileges i use way more than i expected actually. the CW portion of 40m is way less crowded and 75m phone has some segments that are a lot quieter. and if you ever want to be a VE and give back to the hobby you need the extra for most testing sessions. thats actually what pushed me over the edge more than the band privileges if im being honest. plus theres just something about having all your tickets that feels like you actually finished something

same thing happened to me last week, i was just scanning around and suddenly EA and CT stations everywhere on 10. i didn't even have my antenna tuned properly for that band and still pulled in a few contacts which tells you how good it was lol. i've started checking the spaceweather sites more regularly now just to get a rough idea of what to expect but honestly half the time i just stumble onto openings by accident

Check if your keyer has Iambic Mode A (completes the element being sent when paddles are released) vs Mode B (sends an additional element opposite to the one being sent when paddles are released). Many newcomers find Mode A more forgiving while learning. Also, make sure your paddle tension isn't too sensitive - that can cause unwanted extra dits.

yeah i was in the same boat when i upgraded, part 97 reads like it was written by lawyers for other lawyers lol. one thing that helped me was just pulling up 97.301 and 97.305 side by side and going through each band i cared about. takes like 20 minutes but after that it clicked way better than trying to read it top to bottom. also the arrl has a prety good privileges chart on their site that maps it all out visually, not legally binding like the other guy said but good for a quick sanity check before you get on air

So ive been doing SS phone and CW for a few years now, always single radio, and I keep reading about SO2R guys putting up these insane rates and I finally decided to try setting it up this year. Got a second rig (an IC-7300 to go alongside my 7610) and I'm using a basic antenna switch plus some bandpass filters I borrowed from a club buddy. The problem is my brain just doesn't seem to work that way. Like I'll be running a frequency on 40 and trying to S&P on 15 and I miss exchanges on both because I'm basically half-listening to two things at once. I know the whole point is to keep your rate up while you're running but honestly I'm not sure if I'm gaining anything versus just running one radio clean. Anyone else go through this learning curve and eventually get it to click, or is there some kind of mental trick I'm missing. I feel like the guys who are good at it have just done it so many times it becomes automatic but right now it feels like rubbing my head and patting my stomach at the same time.

The receive sides of both VHF and UHF on the cross-band should have CTCSS tone encode set to minimize the chance of false triggering by other signals. Also coordinate your 70cm simplex frequencies between units - Make sure each CBR is configured to use a different 70cm simplex frequency. Coordinate your choice of frequencies with the Net Control Station to avoid interference to the net.

i put up a trap vertical last year thinking it would solve all my problems and yeah the dx got a bit better on 40 but the thing is a noise magnet like the previous guy said. my neighbor runs some kind of switching power supply or something and on the vertical it sounds like a bacon frying the whole band. on my dipole same time of day barely noticeable. just something to think about depending on your local noise situation.

Planning to upgrade to Amateur Extra in the coming months and wondering about the best approach for the new 2024-2028 question pool. I've heard the new pool incorporates significant changes compared to the 2020-2024 version with 82 new questions created and 101 questions eliminated. What study materials are people using for the current pool? Still using Gordon West or have you found better resources? Looking for recommendations on apps, books, and practice exam sites. Also curious - you need to answer at least 74% correctly (minimum 37 out of 50) to pass. Any tips for focusing study time on the most critical topics?

yeah just go to a field day event with your club, honestly its pretty low pressure and you'll learn more in one afternoon than reading the rules ever taught me. i did my first field day like three years ago and barely knew what i was doing and it was still a blast. someone handed me a headset and said just say your callsign and the exchange and it kind of clicked from there. 100 watts and a wire is totally fine by the way, ive worked plenty of people with similar setups in contests. its more about timing and being on the right frequency than raw power a lot of the time

W4XYZ here. Just completed my first real ARES activation during the recent hurricane that hit our area. After 3 years of training and SET exercises, this was the real deal. Our EC activated us at the request of local Emergency Management, and we were notified by phone, text, and radio. We set up at the EOC and provided backup communications when the county's radio system went down. Amateur radio truly provided communications "when all else fails". I learned more in 72 hours of real operation than months of drills. My go-bag worked great, but I realized I need better backup power solutions. Severe weather events require different skills and agency contacts than other emergencies. Key lessons: Test your equipment under load, have multiple power sources, and practice message formats until they're second nature. The training paid off, but nothing replaces actual experience!

Spent three hours last night trying to get my new Baofeng DM-1701 programmed and I'm about ready to throw it out the window! The included cable won't work with Windows 11 (driver issues), CHIRP doesn't support this model yet, and the manufacturer's software looks like it was designed in 1995. For those running multiple brands - do you stick with CHIRP for everything it supports, or bite the bullet and use each manufacturer's software? I've got Yaesu, Icom, and now this Baofeng DMR radio. Also, any recommendations for reliable programming cables? The cheap ones seem to be more trouble than they're worth.

so ive been interested in ham radio for probably two years now and keep putting it off but my buddy just passed his technician and now im actually going to do it. problem is i dont really know where to start like i looked at the FCC stuff and got overwhelmed pretty quick. is there a specific book people use or do most folks just use the online practice tests? i heard there are 35 questions on the actual test but i dont know how many you need to get right or how the whole thing even works logistically. do i just show up somewhere or do i have to register ahead of time. sorry if these are dumb questions just trying to figure out the path of least resistance here

your antenna situation is probably more of the bottleneck than anything else tbh. 3el at 45ft is decent but if the guys you're competing with have stacked yagis or a 4el at 70ft the signal difference in a pileup is real. ive found in most domestic contests the difference between a 600 and a 1200 QSO score for me was almost entirely when i put up a better 40m antenna, everything else stayed the same. SO2R is something i messed around with using an old TS-570 as a second radio and a bunch of bandpass filters and it did help but the filtering setup took me honestly like three weekends to sort out before it wasnt causing intermod problems between the two rigs. its not plug and play

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some on 20m when conditions are decent. my elmer told me i should be uploading my logs to LoTW but then someone at the club meeting mentioned eQSL and i honestly dont know the difference or why id use one over the other or both or whatever also i still get actual paper QSL cards in the mail sometimes and those are really cool but i have no idea if i need to send cards back to everyone or just the ones who send me one first or what the etiquette is there. i did sign up for LoTW a while back but the whole TQSL thing kind of confused me and i never actually uploaded anything yet basically just trying to figure out what the normal workflow is here. do most people do all three? is one more accepted than the others for awards and stuff? sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to not be that guy who doesnt confirm contacts

I've seen similar behavior with my setup. HackRF's 8-bit samples vs RTL-SDR's more optimized data path makes a difference. For contest monitoring, I actually prefer multiple RTL-SDRs over a single HackRF - better performance per dollar and easier to distribute across different bands.

oh man i went through almost the exact same thing a couple years back after a long break. for me the big thing was the paddle gap — it was way too narrow and i was getting all kinds of unintended contacts. the Bencher BY-1 especially can be a bit fiddly. i ended up opening the gap a tiny bit more than felt natural at first and it really cleaned things up. also dont sleep on the weight/ratio setting. on the 7300 i keep mine at maybe 3:1 and weight dead center at 50. if your dahs are sounding long and draggy try bumping the speed up a couple wpm even if it feels fast, sometimes that actually tightens things up because you stop fighting the keyer. and yeah Mode B vs Mode A can throw you off if you muscle memory was built on one and you switched, worth checking which one you originally learned on if you remember

Learned something the hard way when preparing my recent DXCC endorsement application. Do NOT sort your cards by callsign or entity name! There's no specific sort order for multiples, but once sorted, list them on the record sheet in exactly the same order. Sorting according to these rules helps streamline the data entry process, and you need to check your entries very carefully to make sure info transferred from card to record sheet is 100% accurate. Errors can cause processing problems or even card rejection.

yeah the old tech plus thing is real — if you had a Technician Plus license before they consolidated everything around 2000 you kept some extra HF privileges that current techs dont get. but if you got your ticket recently that doesnt apply to you. for a current tech what you actually get on HF is pretty limited honestly. you can do CW on portions of 80, 40, and 15 meters, and then on 10 meters you get voice plus all modes up to 200 watts in the general/extra portion i think. 10m is really where a tech can have some fun when the band is open, which it actually has been lately with the solar cycle doing its thing. but yeah for most practical HF operating youre going to want to get your General, its not that hard and it opens everything up. i did mine about six weeks after i got my tech and just used the same study materials basically.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now. my antenna situation at home is basically a disaster — HOA, tiny lot, neighbors who think a dipole is some kind of surveillance equipment — so ive been looking seriously at remote operation. a buddy of mine has a remote station up at his cabin about 80 miles away and hes been bugging me to try RemoteHams to access it. i messed around with the RemoteHams client software for maybe an hour last weekend and honestly it wasnt as bad as i expected but i couldnt get the audio latency down to where it felt comfortable on SSB. were talking maybe 400-500ms which is just awkward if somebodys trying to work you and youre sitting there waiting to hear if they came back. CW wasnt terrible though, which makes sense i guess. he also has an SDR running alongside the IC-7300 so you get the panadapter through the RemoteHams SDR interface and that part actually worked pretty slick — being able to see the band and click to tune is way more intuitive than i expected for a remote setup. the internet linking piece is where i keep getting confused though. like is he running that through the RemoteHams server infrastructure or is there a way to do a direct peer connection to cut down the latency? ive read conflicting stuff on this. some posts say you can do direct but then youre dealing with port forwarding and dynamic DNS and all that and i dont know if its worth it vs just living with the relay latency. anyone actually running one of these setups day to day for like real HF operating not just poking around occasionally? curious if the latency ever stops feeling weird or if you just adapt to it.