QRP Guy

not super experienced with homebrew transmitters but i built a 40m receiver last year and had drift issues that turned out to be my voltage regulator getting warm and causing the supply rail to sag just slightly - like not enough to see on a meter but enough to pull the oscillator. probably not your issue since you said the bench supply is flat but just throwing it out there in case

i just passed mine like six weeks ago so this is pretty fresh for me. the phase angle and filter stuff was definitely the part that took the longest to get comfortble with, i wont lie. but the way i looked at it was im not gonna be designing circuits, im just learning enough to recognize whats going on and pick the right answer on a multiple choice test. kinda cold blooded way to think about it but it worked lol. took me maybe 6 weeks studying maybe 30-45 min a night and i passed with room to spare. go for it

honestly the General exam is not as bad as the question pool makes it look. i had zero electronics background when i upgraded and i just used the HamStudy website and did like 20-30 minutes a day for maybe three weeks. the propagation questions are actually kind of interesting once you start to get it, like it starts to click why 40m works great at night and 10m is all over the place depending on the solar cycle. as for privileges, the big ones youre going to care about are 40m, 20m, and 17m for starters. 20m especially is where a ton of DX action happens and as a General you get a solid chunk of it. 40 meters is great for domestic stuff and ragchewing, you can hit most of the country pretty reliably. youll still have some parts of the bands that are Extra only but honestly as a new HF operator you wont even notice for a while, theres plenty of room. just do it, it opens up a whole other side of the hobby

so ive been chasing summits for about six months now and finally decided to just go do an activation myself. picked out W6/NS-267 which is a pretty easy hike near me, nothing crazy, just wanted to start somewhere manageable before i try anything with real elevation gain. my question is about logging the summit reference properly. when i self-spot on SOTAwatch do i just type the reference exactly as it appears on the database, like W6/NS-267, and then list my frequency and mode? ive seen some activators put extra notes in the spot and some dont bother. also not sure if i need to pre-announce on the reflector or if just showing up on the air and spotting myself is fine. planning to run my KX2 with a linked dipole, maybe 10 watts into a thrown-up wire. did a few POTA activations so im not totally green but SOTA feels a bit more... i dont know, official somehow? like people are actually watching SOTAwatch and will call in right away which is both exciting and kind of terrifying any tips from people whove done a bunch of these would be great

congrats on the first one. im still just chasing for now but reading stuff like this makes me want to actually get out and try an activation. been nervous about the whole self-spotting thing and not knowing if anyone will even hear me but sounds like the system works pretty well if you just get on and call.

yeah you do have to get General before Extra, theres no skipping it. but honestly dont overthink the electrical theory, its not as bad as it looks on paper. most of it is like, you see the same question stems over and over and after a while your brain just knows the answer even if you dont fully understand the math behind it. i used the hamstudy.org flashcard thing for maybe 3 weeks and passed with room to spare. the propagation questions tripped me up a little at first, stuff about which bands open at what times of day and why, but once you kind of get the basic idea of how the ionosphere works it starts to click. 20 meters is a great first HF band to mess with btw, especially if you just want to make contacts without a huge antenna setup. good luck, its totally worth doing

that's pretty much exactly how my first activation went too, a lot of hurry up and wait and then suddenly everything happening at once. the ICS courses help but yeah until you're actually sitting in an EOC with served agency people walking around and real (well, simulated) stress in the room it's hard to get the feel for it. the thing that helped me most was just doing more nets honestly. our group runs a weekly directed net specifically for training and the EC lets people take turns doing net control even if they mess up, which is how you learn. if your group doesnt do something like that it might be worth suggesting. after maybe a dozen times running net control for a low-stakes weekly net I felt way more ready when it counted. also the ARRL emcomm level 1 course online is worth doing if you havent already, goes a bit deeper than just the ICS stuff

so its been raining all week and ive basically just been spinning the dial on 40m listening to nothing in particular. caught a few guys ragchewing about their antennas down in georgia somewhere, didnt bother jumping in. sometimes its just nice to listen i guess. anyway what are you all up to lately, anything interesting happening on the bands or is it as dead as it seems from here

so im finally doing a proper field activation this weekend, been planning this for about two months now and i think ive got most of it figured out but the power side is still giving me fits. running a IC-7300 and a small amp, not a big amp just the LDG and maybe 100w so nothing crazy, but i want to have reliable power for like 8-10 hours straight without having to baby sit the battery situation the whole time. my current plan is a 30ah lifepo4 feeding the rig directly and then a small honda eu2200i as backup or to run a charger if things get low. the problem is placement. the site im using has decent tree cover which is great for my linked dipole but that also means i cant really get the generator far enough away from the operating position without running a really long extension cord. last time i tried something similar the rf got into everything and i had this horrible buzzing on 40m that i couldnt track down for like an hour. anyone dealt with generator noise on hf in the field? im thinking maybe a ferrite clamp on the power cord going to the charger might help but i honestly dont know if thats enough. also curious what people use for antenna support out in the field, my linked dipole is on a 31ft spiderpole right now but im wondering if a different center height or a different feedline run would help with the ground situation at this site which is pretty rocky.

the EA8 stations on 2m EME are pretty active, theres a few of them with serious arrays so decoding them on a single yagi sounds about right. completing is tougher because they need to hear you back i ran a similar setup for about a year before i added a second yagi and honestly the difference in completed QSOs was pretty dramatic, not just marginal. went from a handful of partials to actually finishing contacts consistently. still not running big power either, just the legal limit here. its not just about your receive side, the other station has to pull you out too and more antenna helps both ways obviously dont overlook the coax situation either if you havent already. anything lossy between the radio and the yagi is just killing you twice, once on tx and once on rx. a lot of guys underestimate that part

yeah honestly the dual power source thing is smart. one thing i'll add — watch your RFI situation if you do run the generator at the same time as receiving. my eu2000 (older model) was putting garbage all over 40m when it was under light load, something about the inverter frequency I think. had to run it harder or just switch to battery for actual comms. the 2200i might be better i dunno but worth checking before the exercise not during it lol

yeah the no-tree summit thing is a real issue, ive done a bunch of activations above treeline and what works for me is just a telescoping fiberglass mast, mine is a 7m sotabeams one and it fits in my pack no problem. you can guy it out with some thin paracord and tent stakes and it holds up in most wind, not all wind but most. the end fed just hangs vertical or you do a slight sloper and it works fine. honestly once you switch to the mast you wont go back to screwing around with trees also on the battery thing, what were you running for capacity? i switched to a 3ah lipo and even at 10w on the kx2 i can do a full activation easy. might be worth checking if your battery is actually at full charge before you head out, mine had a bad cell and i didnt know for a while

87 confirmed in a year is actually pretty solid, don't sell yourself short. i was maybe around 70 at that point and i thought i was doing ok lol. the jump from 87 to 100 can go fast if conditions cooperate, especially if you haven't worked much on 10m yet because that band has been really good lately with the solar cycle where it is. one thing i'd add is look into Club Log if you havent already — a lot of DXpeditions use it for their online log and you can check if your call shows up before the cards even go out. saved me a lot of anxiety waiting to find out if a contact was actually in the log or not

so i finally got activated for a real ARES deployment last weekend, county EOC needed radio support during the flooding situation we had. ive been in the local ARES group for about 8 months but this was my first actual activation not just a drill. honestly i felt pretty underprepared even though i thought i was ready. the net control stuff was fine, i know my way around that, but there were a few moments where i wasnt sure of the ICS protocol stuff and kind of had to wing it a little. the served agency coordinator kept asking me things i didnt totally have answers to which was a bit awkward. anyway it went ok overall i think. traffic moved, nobody got hurt lol. but im curious how other people felt after their first real one vs a drill. like is it always that different or did i just have bad luck with the EOC coordinator being kind of demanding. also wondering if the ICS 100 and 200 courses are really enough prep or should i be doing more. i did both of those online last year.

congrats on your first one, that summit is no joke depending on the trail you took. to answer your question yeah the activation zone is typically defined as within 25 vertical meters of the true summit, so as long as you were within that elevation band youre good to go. it doesnt matter if you were slightly off to the side or sheltered behind some rocks, staying out of the wind is just smart operating honestly. for confirming the activation — once you upload your log to the SOTA database it usually shows up within a day or so on your activator page. you can check sota.org.uk and look at your callsign under the activator section. if the 4 contacts are there and at least one of them was on an HF band (or 2m if thats what you used) it should count. sometimes if a chaser also logs the contact it shows as a confirmed QSO which is a nice little checkmark. sounds like you did everything right to me, 4 contacts on a homebrew antenna on your first time out is a solid start

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, W6 summit up in the sierras, took forever to hike in and by the time i got set up my hands were basically numb. brought the KX2 and a linked dipole i made from that youtube video everyone recommends and honestly the antenna was kind of a mess because i forgot one of the wing nuts at home so i was just kind of holding the connector together with my fingers at one point managed to get 4 contacts on 20m which is enough to count but barely. one guy gave me a 57 and i think he was being generous. also my phone died so i couldnt use the sota spotter app which made everything harder, had to just call CQ into the void hoping someone was listening anyway it still counted and i already want to do another one, something went wrong the whole time but it was honestly more fun than any operating ive done from home

congrats on the first one, 52 contacts is a solid activation especially if conditions werent cooperating. for finding lesser-activated references the wwff.us site has a search where you can filter by number of activations and you can just sort by least activated. some of those nature preserves and wildlife management areas have zero or one activation ever, nobody really goes to them partly because theyre hard to find or the access is weird. i activated a little county wetland preserve last spring that had never been done before and it felt really satisfying to put it on the map. just make sure you check that the reference is actually in the database and confirmed before you drive out there, ive heard of people getting burned by that

oh man you are going to have a blast. CQ WW is genuinely one of those things that just has to be experienced because no amount of explaining really does it justice. 15 and 20 meters especially just go absolutely wall to wall with signals from everywhere, like you tune across the band and every couple hundred hertz theres another station from some country you never worked before. your setup is totally fine for a casual run at it. 100w and a dipole is how a lot of people do it and you can still rack up a decent score, especially if propagation cooperates. the S&P approach, search and pounce, is probably your best bet starting out, just tune around, find stations calling CQ, give them your call and the exchange, move on. the exchange for CQ WW phone is just your callsign, a 59 report, and your CQ zone number which for most of the US is zone 5 or 3 or 4 depending where you are. for logging i would really recommend downloading N1MM+ before the weekend, its free and it handles the dupe checking and zone multiplier tracking automatically which saves a ton of headaches. paper works but youll lose track of what zones you have pretty fast once things get busy. as for SOTA and CQ WW connecting, they dont really overlap directly, maybe your buddy was thinking of the ARRL November sweepstakes where some clubs tie in bonus activities, or possibly a separate SOTA weekend event. SOTA is kind of its own world with its own chaser points system, really rewarding but separate from the big contest scene.

oh man the battery thing is so real. i made that exact mistake in my second activation, not a sim, an actual severe weather watch where we ended up being deployed for about 11 hours. showed up with my main HT on maybe 70% because i figured i'd charged it the week before. learned real fast to just have a rule that you charge everything the night before, every time, no exceptions. i keep a sticky note on my go bag lid that says CHARGE and still check it twice. the ICS forms thing is a learning curve too. a lot of people know the theory but never actually practice filling one out under any kind of time pressure. our group started doing monthly tabletop drills just for paperwork flow and it sounds boring but it made a huge difference. you get muscle memory for where everything lives and how to phrase things in standard format. the dead air anxiety goes away eventually, probably took me 4 or 5 real activations before i stopped interpreting silence as something being wrong. net control usually has way more going on than you realize and sometimes silence just means things are quiet which is actually good news during an emergency.

so i finally got activated for real last weekend. been doing ARES training for about eight months now, net check-ins every tuesday, two simulated emergency tests, the whole thing. figured i had a decent handle on what an actual activation would look like. it was a missing persons search in the county just north of us and our EC called us out Saturday morning. i showed up with my go-bag, HT, the spare battery pack i always charge on fridays, and my little notebook. felt pretty prepared honestly. except nobody really told me where to go when i got to the staging area. like there was a lot of standing around waiting for assignments and the ICS stuff i studied didnt totally match how it actually played out on the ground. the served agency liaison was great but she was pulled in like four directions at once. i ended up just kind of shadowing one of the more experienced guys for the first couple hours which was actually really valuable, more than any of the online training if im being honest. not complaining at all, it was a good experience and the search had a happy ending. just curious if this is kind of normal for a first activation — that gap between training and the real thing? how did other people's first real activation go?

yeah im going, already got my table reserved actually. bringing a bunch of stuff i cleared out of the shack last month, some old HTs, a power supply that works fine just dont need it anymore, few rolls of coax. if you see a guy with a red popup canopy thats probably me lol. and yeah i think there is a VE session, saw something about it on the club facebook page but dont quote me on that

yeah that plateau around 12-14 wpm is super common, almost everybody hits it. what helped me more than anything was just... stop trying to be perfect. i used to pause and really think about each letter and that was actually slowing me down. the goal at that stage is to stop processing individual elements and start hearing whole letters and eventually whole words as sounds, kind of like how you recognize a word when someone says it out loud without thinking about the individual letters. one thing that really worked for me was bumping the character speed way up, like 20wpm character speed but only 10wpm effective speed (farnsworth timing), so your ear gets used to what letters actually sound like at higher speeds even if theres extra space between them. then you gradually reduce the spacing over time. took me maybe 6 weeks of doing that before 15wpm started feeling comfortable. also try copying common words as whole units, words like THE and AND and IS your brain will start to recognize instantly without decoding. stick with it, the 13-15 wall is real but its not permanent.

so i got my technician license a few months back and ive been on 2m and 70cm mostly but i keep hearing about HF and CW and honestly it sounds really cool to me. i know morse code isnt required anymore for the license but i still want to learn it, just feels like the right thing to do if youre gonna be a real ham i guess. problem is i have no idea where to start. i downloaded like three different apps and they all seem kind of different in how they teach it. one of them just shows you the dots and dashes visually which i heard is actually the wrong way to do it? someone at my local club mentioned the Koch method but i dont really understand what that means. is there a specific order i should learn the letters in or does it matter? and how long does it realistically take before you can actually use it on the air, like copy a QSO in real time

nets are pretty low pressure once you do it a couple times honestly. most of the time you just wait for net control to call for check-ins, then when there's a pause you give your callsign phonetically and wait. they'll acknowledge you, maybe ask if you have traffic or just say welcome and move on. some nets are just a roll call and done in 10 minutes, others like traffic nets or ARES nets have actual business to conduct but even then you mostly just listen unless you have something specific. the special event stations are kind of a separate thing — those are usually set up for a specific occasion like an anniversary or a historical site and they have their own callsigns like W1B or whatever. you can work them and sometimes get a certificate or QSL card. W1AW does operate on a schedule yeah, that one's Hiram Percy Maxim's old callsign kept alive by the ARRL. worth checking in on just to hear good clean code if nothing else. but don't let any of that overwhelm you — just find a friendly local 2m net and jump in, worst case you stumble over your callsign and everyone's been there

PSK31 is still around too if you havent tried it, fldigi is pretty easy to set up and theres still some activity on 20m around 14.070. older mode but people actually type full sentences and it has a nice waterfall. just throwing that out there since you mentioned wanting real conversations. JS8 is good though agree with the above