Robert Kowalski

oh man you're gonna have a blast, first activation is so fun. few things i wish someone told me -- bring way more battery than you think you need, especially if its cold out. also self-spotting is totally fine, actually most activators do it. just pull up pota.app on your phone, go to activator tools and drop your spot with your frequency and mode. hunters are watching those spots constantly so you'll start getting calls pretty quick usually. HAMRS works fine for activating too by the way, just switch it to activator mode. make sure you have the park reference in there before you start logging. and dont stress too much about the 10 contact minimum, if youre in a decent location on 40m during the day you'll blow past that. good luck and post how it goes

yeah that sounds completely normal for three weeks in, honestly. the uneven spacing thing is almost always a combination of tension and timing - your hand hasnt built the muscle memory yet and youre probably tensing up when you concentrate. first thing id do is dial the keyer speed down to whatever feels almost too slow, like 10 or even 8 wpm, and just send random letters without thinking about whether theyre right. the goal at that stage is relaxing your grip not accuracy. also check the dit/dah ratio setting on the MFJ if it has one, sometimes they ship with the weight slightly off and it makes everything feel mushy. single lever paddles can also be a little unforgiving when youre learning. not saying you need different gear but some folks find it easier to start on a straight key just to get the rhythm in their head before moving to iambic. either way dont stress too much, three weeks is nothing in CW terms.

so ive been wanting to get off the cheap whip i bought when i got my ticket and actually build something real. decided to try a basic 40m dipole, just some 14 gauge stranded wire i had laying around from an old extension cord job. used the 468/f formula and came out to like 33.2 feet per side which felt right to me. strung it up between the chimney and a tree in the backyard, probably 20 feet off the ground at the feedpoint which i know isnt ideal but thats what i had. coax down to the shack, put my analyzer on it and the resonant point is coming in around 7.4 MHz instead of the 7.15 I was shooting for. so its too short? or is 7.4 close enough that the environment is just pulling it a bit. i thought shorter wire meant higher frequency so i feel like i need to add wire but then the SWR is actually not terrible at 7.4, sitting around 1.4:1 which my tuner can handle easy. not sure if i should bother trimming or adding or just leave it and use the tuner. kind of proud that it actually works at all honestly

the timing thing trips up a lot of new folks, dont worry about it. most net controls will leave a short pause after they finish saying something before they start listening for check-ins, and thats your window. just state your callsign clearly, maybe phonetics if the band sounds rough, and keep it short. net control will acknowledge you and thats pretty much it for a basic check-in net. for the special event stuff, the ARRL website has a list of special event stations and a lot of them run coordinated nets or have their own QSL cards which is kind of fun to chase. parks on the air activations usually get posted on the pota.app site with frequencies and times if you wanna try to work one on HF. some of the more active parks operators also post on local club reflectors beforehand so might be worth joining if you havent already

had almost the exact same thing happen to me last year. turned out the igate near me was running some older software and would randomly drop its APRS-IS connection and not reconnect automatically. the operator didnt even know it was happening. you could see packets hitting the digi fine but they just werent making it to the internet. honestly the easiest way to check is just run direwolf on a cheap raspberry pi or even an old laptop with a baofeng or something and set up your own igate. then you know for certain at least one igate in range is working and pushing to IS. takes maybe an afternoon to set up and then you stop depending on whoever maintains the local infrastructure.

so ive been running Log4OM for general logging for a couple years now and honestly its fine, does what i need for day to day stuff, keeping track of QSOs, awards tracking, that kind of thing. but every time contest season rolls around i feel like im fighting it a bit. someone at the club mentioned just running N1MM alongside it and keeping them separate which sounds messy but maybe thats just how people do it? also started messing with FT8 more lately and WSJT-X has its own log and then i have to import that into Log4OM and half the time the dupes dont get flagged right or the band info comes in weird. im probably doing something wrong with the ADIF import settings but i havent had time to dig into it. basically wondering if anyone runs all three of these or if theres a cleaner way to do this without maintaining like three separate logs that slowly drift out of sync. my DXCC count in Log4OM is already slightly off from what LoTW shows and i dont even know where the discrepancy came from at this point

just want to add — check out the WSJT-X documentation for EME specifically and also the ping jockey site or maybe EME Logger to see whos active. the community is pretty small but really helpful, guys will often schedule skeds with a new station just to give you a contact. dont be shy about posting that you're a new station trying to get a first contact, thats actually pretty normal in EME circles oh and the moon doesnt have to be perfectly positioned, you get a window of several hours depending on your lat/lon and theirs so scheduling across time zones isnt as brutal as you might think

welcome to the rabbit hole haha. okay so the good news is the technician exam really isnt that bad, its 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so theres actually a decent margin for error. all the questions come from a public question pool so nothing is a surprise if you study from the right stuff. most people use HamStudy.org which is free and does a really good job of tracking which questions you're getting wrong and drilling those specifically. some people like the ARRL Technician book too if you want something more structured but honestly hamStudy got me through mine in like 2 weeks of just doing practice tests on my phone during lunch breaks. the actual exam fee is usually around 15 bucks at a VE session, you can find those through the ARRL website. once you pass they get your callsign issued in a few days and you're on the air

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i still feel awkward about nets. like i listen to the tuesday night 2m net on our local repeater all the time but i never check in because honestly i dont know what to say after they acknowledge me. the net control just says your callsign and then what? do you have to have something to say or can you just say "no traffic" and be done with it? i checked in once and just froze up and said something dumb about the weather and felt embarrassed for like a week lol. also whats the actual etiquette for checking into a net if youre mobile and might have to drop off early? do you say that upfront or just disappear when you need to? nobody ever explains this stuff in the technician materials and i feel like im missing a whole layer of how this hobby works.

so last tuesday i finally worked up the nerve to check into our local 2m traffic net for the first time. ive been licensed about 4 months and kept telling myself id do it but kept chickening out. anyway i jumped in and honestly it went okay but i made a few mistakes that im still kind of embarrassed about. the main thing was i didnt realize you're supposed to wait for the net control to acknowledge you before you start talking. i just kind of launched into my callsign and location and some rambling about having no traffic and the NCS had to interrupt me and explain the format. everyone was nice about it but still. also i keyed up at the wrong time and caused a double and didnt even realize it was me until the NCS asked if there was a station with interference. is this normal for new people or did i just have a particularly rough first check-in? also does anyone have a good resource for how nets are actually supposed to work because i feel like i learned more in those 10 minutes than i did studying for my tech exam

remoterig boxes might be worth a look if you get tired of the software stack — i know that's kind of a different direction but the dedicated hardware handles the audio codec stuff at a lower level and i've had way better luck with marginal links using one of those than any PC software solution. not saying RCForb is bad just that hardware dedicated to the task tends to be more resilient when the connection gets weird. also for what its worth i did a remote setup for a friend and we ended up using a starlink at the remote end and it basically solved all our latency issues overnight. yeah the latency isnt as low as a wired connection but it's at least consistent which for remote operating is honestly more important than raw speed.

im building something similar right now actually, JFET regen on 80m, and i had the same exact problem. what i ended up doing was replacing the pot with a 5k trimmer set to find the right range and then putting a 1k linear pot in series for the actual tuning control. gives you way more usable throw on the knob. its still not perfect but its a lot less frustrating. the LM386 amp stage is the same thing im using, does yours have any motorboating issues at higher gain settings? mine oscillates like crazy above about 6x gain and i cant figure out if its the layout or if i need more bypassing on the supply rail.

yeah the listening thing is huge and most people skip it entirely. i watched a video once of a DXpedition operator talking about this and he said the biggest mistake is guys who call continuously without ever stopping to listen where the dx is actually coming back. they have no idea if theyre even close to where the dx is tuning. one thing i've had luck with on CW specifically is timing the tail end of the dx station's callsign. like you send your call right as they finish their last character, not a half second after. takes a little practice to get the feel for it but it gets you in that little window before the pileup crashes in. on phone its harder obviously because theres always that guy who starts calling before the dx even finishes their over. the 7300 into a hex beam is honestly a solid setup for this stuff, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. ive worked some pretty rare entities with way less.

nice, ive been eyeing that radio for a while. does the built in tuner handle a decent mismatch or is it pretty limited? my current setup has a random wire out back and im wondering if id need an external LDG or something on top of it

oh man i went through exactly this when i switched from straight key to paddle, it really does feel totally foreign at first. the thing that helped me most was slowing the keyer way down, like embarrassingly slow, 10 wpm or even 8, and just drilling individual characters until my thumb and finger started to know where they were going without me thinking about it. the 7300 keyer is actually pretty decent so i doubt its the radio. also check that your paddle tension isnt too light — a lot of beginners set it feather light thinking that'll help but you end up triggering extra elements by accident. give it just a little resistance and see if that helps with the runon stuff. took me probably 6 months before sending felt even close to natural, dont get discouraged

the antenna question is the one that always gets people. i did a county EOC activation a few years back and showed up thinking id just throw up a wire dipole real quick and it turned into a 45 minute ordeal because I forgot the line to toss it over a tree and the tape measure and basically everything except the wire itself. now I have a dedicated small bag that just has antenna stuff — 100ft of paracord, some tent stakes, a few zip ties, and a notepad with the lengths already written out for the bands I use. sounds dumb but having it pre-written saves you from doing math when youre tired and stressed. for HF I'd say at minimum throw in an end-fed wire and a 9:1 unun, those pack down really small and work decent in a pinch. the 891 will love you for it. also dont forget an extra fuse or two for your power leads, I learned that one the hard way on a deployment and had to borrow from another operator which was embarrassing

That NCS handoff problem is super common and honestly I think its one of those things that looks easy on paper but falls apart under even mild pressure. What we started doing in our group is keeping a running log sheet — not just the message traffic but a quick status block at the top that gets updated every 30 minutes or so. Net conditions, any frequencies in use, which stations have checked in, what traffic is pending. When the new NCS sits down they read the block out loud to confirm they have the picture. Sounds almost too simple but it cut down our handoff confusion a lot. The repeater thing though, yeah that one stings. We did an exercise two years ago where we simulated a full infrastructure failure and about half the group just kind of froze because simplex felt unfamiliar. We now do a simplex-only net once a month just to keep those skills up. Not exciting but it matters when things go sideways for real.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and finally feel comfortable enough to start checking into nets regularly instead of just listening. been monitoring a few different ones but im a little confused about the timing and how formal the check-in process actually is for most of them. like last week i tried to check into what i think was a traffic net on 80m and i guess i jumped in at the wrong time or something because the net control just kind of moved on and i dont think my call even got logged. wasnt sure if i should try again or just wait. ended up just listening the rest of the night. also saw something about a special event station coming up for some kind of anniversary, W1AW i think or maybe a different one, and it said you could get a certificate for making contact. is that something you just do like a normal QSO or is there a whole process to it? i looked on their website but couldnt find anything super clear about how to actually submit for the certificate after the fact.

im running a pretty similar setup to what you described with the 7300 and VPN and yeah SSB remote is kind of a pain. one thing that helped me a lot was switching from openvpn to wireguard, the latency dropped noticably. still not perfect but its better. havent tried RemoteHams myself so cant compare directly but a few guys in my club swear by it for portable ops

yeah i went through basically this same thing a couple years ago. ended up settling on Log4OM as my main shack log and it handles the WSJT-X integration pretty cleanly actually, you just point WSJT-X at Log4OM via the UDP port and it picks up the QSOs in real time, no importing needed. the DXCC tracking and LoTW sync is way nicer than anything ive tried to hack together in N1MM for day to day use. that said i still keep N1MM installed and fire it up for any serious contesting because honestly nothing touches it for that, the bandmap and the rate display and all the keyboard shortcuts are just muscle memory at this point and i dont think Log4OM is really trying to compete with it in that space. after the contest i just import the N1MM ADIF into Log4OM to keep everything in one place. little annoying but its like a 2 minute job so whatever

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been slowly learning about DX chasing and all the different awards out there. i get that DXCC is the big one everyone talks about, confirmed countries and all that. but then theres WAS which is all 50 states and WAZ which is the zones thing? i think? and i keep seeing people on here mention chasing credits like its a job and i honestly dont fully understand how it all fits together. like is there some logical order to go after these or do people just pick whatever sounds fun. i worked a station in japan last week on 20m which was pretty exciting for me, first real DX contact, and now im kind of hooked on the idea of actually going for some kind of award. my setup is just a modest wire antenna and a 100 watt radio so im not expecting miracles but figured id ask before i spend a bunch of time going in the wrong direction. also do you have to pay for all of these or are some free. seems like every award has a fee attached

also worth checking — is the repeater even active? i spent like two weeks messing with tones on a repeater near me and eventually found out it had been off the air for like a year, still listed on repeaterbook but nobody updated it. try looking up if theres a local club that runs it and see if they have a website or anything. some areas have a linked system too where multiple repeaters are connected together and sometimes the linking does weird things with tones depending on which node youre hitting. but yeah the TX tone thing the other guy mentioned is definitely where to start.

yeah the FT8 hollow feeling is real, i quit logging FT8 contacts after like 6 months because it started feeling like a video game score and not ham radio. switched back to RTTY contesting and at least thats got some urgency to it even if the exchanges are short. never really tried JS8Call but your post is making me think about it. does it run okay on a pi or does it need a real computer

yeah the band edge thing is real, technically your signal including sidebands has to stay within your allocation so on like LSB you need to be a bit above the lower band edge so the sideband doesnt spill over. most rigs arent gonna let you tune right to the edge anyway but its worth keeping in mind. i messed this up early on too so dont feel bad

I had the exact same issue with my RTL-SDR v4. CubicSDR continues development and version 0.2.8-test3 works with RTL-SDR v4. Try the latest CubicSDR AppImage - it handles the v4 DC offset much better than GQRX in my experience.