Sarah Kim

yeah so the single yagi situation is tough but not impossible with Q65 these days. i ran a 2m EME sked last fall with a guy who was using a single M2 2MXP28 on an az/el, so 28 elements, and he could hear the big stations fine but struggled to complete with smaller setups. the math is brutal — you're dealing with path loss of around 252 dB on 2m and the moon is not a great reflector, maybe -3 dBsm or something in that range, so every dB of antenna gain you can squeeze out actually matters a lot. the preamp situation is honestly just as important as the antenna. you want something with a noise figure under 0.3 dB right at the feedpoint, no exceptions. any feedline loss before the LNA just kills you. guys running SSB Elektronik or cavity preamps right at the boom see a huge difference vs even a short run of good coax first. on transmit the LNA needs to either switch out or be protected but you probably know that. CW EME is still very much alive but you're right that it's mostly the big guns. i've heard W5LUA on CW EME and it's just a completely different world, stacked yagi arrays, legal limit, the whole deal. for a newcomer Q65-60A is the way to go, the integration time really helps pull signals out. get on the ping jockey site and watch the activity before you even get on the air, you'll learn a lot just from that.

the balun question is one of those things people argue about forever but practically speaking yeah you want at least a 1:1 choke balun at the feedpoint or youll get RF coming back down the coax shield and that can cause all kinds of weird stuff — noisy receive, pattern distortion, RF in the shack. you can wind your own out of coax, just google W1JB's common mode choke designs or similar, super cheap. or grab one of those cheap ferrite chokes off amazon, not ideal but better than nothing. 30 feet at the apex as an inverted V is totally workable for 40m. angle between the legs matters a bit, try to keep it above 90 degrees, 120 ideally. and yeah cut a bit long then trim — easier than adding wire back. clay soil mostly affects verticals and anything ground-mounted, your dipole should be fine.

yeah that squeeze timing thing is a real issue coming back after a gap. mode B vs mode A trips people up constantly and most guys dont even realize which one theyre using. mode B will insert an extra element if you release both paddles at the same time, which is probably exactly what youre describing. try switching the K2 keyer to mode A and see if it cleans up — a lot of old-school operators actually prefer mode A because it behaves more predictably until your timing is really locked in again. also dont ignore the possibility that the Bencher contacts just need a good cleaning. a used paddle can have oxidized contacts that cause intermittent behavior that looks like a timing issue. little dab of caig on the contacts and a few squeezes usually sorts that out. if you can borrow another paddle even temporarily itll tell you pretty quick whether its the paddle or your technique.

i run Log4OM as my main logger and like it quite a bit for dx and general stuff, the clublog integration and the real time propagation overlay are nice touches. havent really used it for contests much though so cant speak to that side of things. the WSJT-X hookup works fine for me but i did have to fiddle with the settings a bit on first setup, think there's a guide on the Log4OM groups.io if you search around.

so ive been on 40m almost every evening for the past few weeks and it just feels... dead? like i can still hear some stuff but nowhere near what it used to be even a couple months ago. not sure if its just my antenna situation or propagation has been weird or what. running a dipole at about 30 feet nothing fancy. maybe im just on at the wrong times idk

Thanks for the real-world data! I've been hesitant to make the jump due to cost, but seeing the actual performance difference helps justify it. The weight alone would be worth it for my backpack portable operations.

so i finally picked a summit for my first activation, going up W4T/SU-068 tomorrow morning. ive been chasing for a few months now and figured it was time to actually get up there and do it myself. got my KX2 all packed, a 20m EFHW rolled up, and im bringing a small Li-Fe battery pack that should give me a few hours of operation. the hike is only about 2 miles which isnt bad but theres some elevation gain. i posted my alert on SOTAwatch already and i think i put the right activiation zone coordinates in but honestly that whole process still confuses me a little. do i need to do anything else before heading out? like is there some checklist i should be aware of or am i overthinking this. also wondering if i should bring both 20m and 40m wire options or if 20m will be enough for a quick activation this time of year. just want to make sure i get at least my 4 contacts so it counts.

The ICOM IC-7300. This is the radio we picked for our HF Masterclass, and with continued use, we have enjoyed this rig. For right about $1,000 you get 100 watts of HF output power in a direct sampling HF radio. Excellent choice for beginners with great learning features like waterfall display.

im kind of in the same boat lol, maybe a little further along at like 12wpm but still feel like im fighting it every day. one thing that helped me weirdly was just having CW on in the background while doing other stuff — not even actively trying to copy, just passively listening. i dont know if theres science behind it or whatever but after a few weeks of that i started recognizing common words and prosigns without thinking about it. also just fyi the LCWO website has a really good Koch trainer if you havent tried it, some people like it better than G4FON just depends what clicks for you

CQ WW is actually a fantastic first contest in my opinion, yeah it gets pretty crowded especially on 20m Saturday morning but thats kind of part of the fun. the exchange is dead simple — signal report and your CQ zone, thats it. zone 4 or 5 for most of the US depending where you are. once you've sent it a few dozen times it becomes muscle memory. for software i'd really suggest not doing paper if you can avoid it. N1MM+ is free and pretty much the standard for contesting, it handles dupe checking automatically which saves you a ton of headache. takes maybe an hour to get the basic setup going before the contest weekend. there are some youtube walkthroughs that are pretty decent. and yeah SOTA is a whole different animal, its more of an award program with an ongoing points system, activators go to summits and chasers work them from home. there are SOTA specific events occasionally but its not tied to the major contest calendar really. some people do activate during Field Day which is its own weird thing — more of a public service / emergency preparedness exercise than a pure contest even though there's scoring involved. just jump in honestly. even if you only make 50 contacts your first CQ WW you'll learn more in one weekend than months of casual operating.

welcome to the hobby. i passed my tech about 8 months ago and went through the exact same thing with the baofeng and the first repeater contact nerves. study for your general when you get a chance, HF is a whole different world and worth it

not a dumb question at all, i was confused by the same thing when i started. so the basic DXCC award is mode and band agnostic — meaning all your confirmed entities regardless of band or mode go into one pool for the basic mixed award. once you hit 100 confirmed entities you can apply and pay the fee on the arrl website. but here's the thing, lotw doesnt automatically apply for the award for you, you have to actually go into your account and submit the application. the credits are sitting there waiting, you just gotta pull the trigger on the application. the band-specific awards like 160m dxcc or 10m dxcc are separate things you chase on top of that, and yeah those do require 100 confirmed on that specific band. Heard Island is a tough one to get confirmed so thats a great get. WAS and WAZ work a bit differently too so dont mix those up in your head — WAZ is zones not entities, took me a while to figure out the difference honestly.

43 on your first activation is really solid, nice work. i remember my first one i was so nervous i kept fumbling the callsigns and asking people to repeat. the hunters really are forgiving though youre right about that. i use a similar setup, kx3 with a linked dipole i made myself, and 40m is almost always the money band for me in the afternoon. what were you running for power?

I'm looking for recommendations on mobile apps that can access DX cluster data like QRZ and DXWatch. I'm getting tired of using the mobile browser interface on my phone when I'm away from the shack. Ideally want something with spot filtering, push notifications for rare DX, and maybe integration with QRZ lookups. What are you folks using? iOS or Android both welcome.