Robert Kowalski

Don't forget about coil capacitance and wire routing through the form - that changes the electrical length significantly. I measure each coil's inductance with an LC meter before assembly, then adjust spacing to hit the target reactance for the operating frequency rather than relying on turn count alone.

30 feet on 40m isnt really getting you much low angle radiation, youre probably looking at a takeoff angle somewhere in the 60-70 degree range which is honestly pretty good for that 200-500 mile regional stuff you're talking about. your neighbor with the vertical and a good radial field is going to be better at low angles, like under 20-25 degrees, which matters more for real DX. so in theory your dipole should actually be winning for the near regional skip if everything is working right. that said, 30 feet isnt a lot of height and ground effects on a dipole can be weird. if you can get it to 50 or 60 feet youll notice a real difference. also how many radials does he have out? because a vertical with only like 8-10 radials can actually lose to a decent dipole even on the low angle stuff. theres a reason guys who are serious about 40m verticals lay down 60+ radials.

Are you measuring at the antenna or at the radio? That much coax can transform the impedance significantly at VHF. Try measuring right at the antenna feedpoint with a short jumper to isolate whether it's the antenna or feedline causing the problem.

so ive been doing contests for maybe 3-4 years now, mostly single op on 20 and 40, sometimes dabble in 15 when conditions cooperate. been hearing a lot about SO2R setups and how much it can improve your rate but honestly every time i look into it i get overwhelmed by the station engineering side of things. the filtering alone seems like a nightmare if your antennas are close together. my current setup is an IC-7300 and a secondhand TS-590SG that i picked up last year for exactly this reason but havent really committed to making it work properly. i tried running both during the last CQ WW phone and nearly blew my mind trying to manage the audio feeds and keep track of which radio was which. maybe im just not wired for it or maybe i havent found the right logging software integration yet. im running N1MM+ and i know it has SO2R support but the configuration took me an afternoon and still felt janky. is there some point where the rate improvement actually shows up or is it really only worth it if youre already making like 150+ Qs an hour on radio 1 and you have dead time to fill? curious what people who actually use it regularly think, not looking for the "just try it" answer because i did try it and it was a mess lol

had almost the exact same thing happen with a 7800 a while back. turned out to be the speaker wire connection on the back of the radio — not the external speaker jack, but the little internal speaker lead inside. if the previous owner had it apart at some point the connector in there can work itself loose over time especially with vibration. worth pulling the covers and just reseating everything you can see. also check if the external speaker jack has anything partially inserted, sometimes a loose plug in there will cut off the internal speaker and if the plug isnt fully making contact you get that intermittent thing you're describing.

ok so i've been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about solar flux index and how it affects the bands but i honestly dont fully understand the connection. like yesterday i jumped on 10 meters just to check and all of a sudden i was hearing stations from europe and south america just booming in and i'm running like 100w into a dipole in my attic. i made contacts with a guy in brazil and someone in spain within like 20 minutes which has never happened to me before on that band. so i went and looked up the solar flux number and it was around 180 or so, and i know thats supposed to be good but i dont really understand the mechanics of why a higher number means better dx on the higher bands. is it just more ionization of the F layer? and how do i know in advance when conditions are going to be good so i can actually be ready instead of stumbling into it by accident like i did yesterday. i've been checking dxmaps and pskreporter but i feel like im always a step behind. also does it matter what time of day it is or does the flux kind of just make the whole day better when it's high? sorry if these are dumb questions just trying to wrap my head around this stuff

im in basically the same boat, been a Tech for like 18 months and just signed up to take the General next month at a hamfest. the question pool thing is real, a lot of the actual exam questions are pulled directly from the published pool so if you know the pool you're in decent shape. i've been using an app called Ham Radio Prep or whatever, its fine. some of the electrical theory questions are a bit wtf at first but they kind of explain the concepts in the app too. what got me motivated was finally hearing some DX on a friends HF rig and realizing i was just sitting there listening and couldnt do anything about it lol

JS8Call is genuinely usable for real conversations, i use it probably 3-4 times a week especially late evenings on 40m. the sensitivity is noticeably worse than FT8, you're not going to be pulling out signals at -20dB or whatever, but it's still way better than PSK31 on a rough band. think of it more like a resilient text chat than a contact-logging machine. the learning curve on the interface is real, took me a while to stop fighting it. once you get the inbox and the heartbeat stuff figured out it clicks. biggest thing is you have to actually be patient and hang around, people arent just scanning through like on FT8. you kind of have to find a frequency where a few regulars hang out and just... be there for a while. theres a loose net on 7.078 most evenings depending on your local time that might be worth checking. for your setup that should be totally fine. i work people regularly with 50 watts and a wire and JS8Call handles it well enough. just dont expect FT8 level DX on it, thats not really the point anyway.

yeah im going, been going for like 6 years in a row now. you gotta get there right when the doors open if you want the good stuff, seriously the good HF gear disappears in like the first 45 minutes. last year i snagged an old kenwood TS-440 for way less than it goes for on qrz classifieds. bring cash too, a lot of the vendors dont do venmo or whatever

ive been wanting to do the heil swap on mine for a while but keep putting it off, good to hear its actually worth it. does the PR-781 need an adapter for the 8 pin icom connector or did you just wire something up yourself

im kind of in the same boat actually, stuck around 15 right now so following this thread. one thing i started doing was listening to actual QSOs on 40m with the volume low while im doing other stuff around the shack, not even trying to copy just kind of ambient listening. no idea if its helping scientifically but it feels like the rhythm is getting more natural? maybe placebo who knows lol

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for probably two years now, just never got around to it. finally pulled the trigger last weekend and honestly it went smoother than i expected. basically just moving a couple diodes on the main board, took maybe 20 minutes once i had the radio open and could see what i was doing. what prompted it was i wanted to be able to monitor some freqs just outside the normal ham allocation and also mess around with NVIS stuff for our local emcomm group where we sometimes need a little flexibility. not gonna lie the service manual on that radio is actually pretty decent once you find the right revision, some of the older ones floating around dont have the right board layout diagrams. while i had it open i also reseated the finals heatsink because ive read a few places that the thermal compound from the factory isnt great and mine was definitely dried out and crumbly. put some decent MX-4 on there. hard to say if it made a measurable difference in output but it certainly cant hurt and the radio runs a little cooler i think on long digital mode sessions. anyone else done mods to theirs? curious if theres anything else worth doing to this radio while i have the confidence and tools out. i know people talk about the fan mod for continuous duty stuff but im not sure if i need it for my use case.

so ive been wanting to hit a hamfest for a while now and kept missing them. i think our local club does one in the spring but i honestly dont know if its still a thing, havent seen anything posted about it. anyone know of good ones coming up in the midwest or just generally worth driving to? dayton is always on my radar but its kind of a haul from where i am and i dunno if i want to do it solo. last time i went to a swap meet type thing i ended up spending way too much on an old HF rig that needed more work than i expected but hey it was still fun just walking around talking to people

timing is everything, totally agree with you on that. i used to call in the peak of every pileup and wonder why i never got through. now i treat it almost like a rhythm thing — you have to feel when the pile thins. also depends a lot on the DXpedition team honestly. some of them are just way better operators than others. i worked a 3Y0J callsign a couple years back and the op was absolutely surgical, pulling weak ones out of nowhere. others you can tell they're just grabbing whoever is loudest. one thing i'd add is working the band edges of their listening window. if they say 'up 5 to 10' i'll try up 5 first since most people pile into the middle. sometimes up 9.8 or whatever is basically empty and they cruise right up there. not always but worth trying before you give up.

yeah the band plan stuff can be confusing especially because theres the FCC allocations which are the actual legal limits and then theres the ARRL band plan which is kind of a gentlemens agreement on top of that. for 40m as a general you can do phone from 7.175 up to 7.300 MHz, that part is correct. the digital and CW stuff is lower in the band, roughly 7.025 to 7.125 for generals on CW and some data modes. Extras get the whole thing basically. as for accidentally going out of band, part 97 doesnt really have a self-reporting requirement for something like that. if its a genuine mistake and not a pattern of behavior youre probably fine. the FCC isnt sitting there monitoring every QSO. that said if someone files a complaint thats a different story but for an honest oops-i-was-3kHz-off situation, just learn from it and move on. the more important thing is knowing where your carrier frequency puts your actual signal, like if youre doing SSB your carrier might be at 7.174 but your voice is going up from there so you want some margin.

Same problem here with WSPR operations - really hurts extended propagation testing. Updated to latest WSJT-X and disabled the TX Watchdog setting but still having issues. 73

yeah im going, been going most years for probably the last decade. the trick with parking is just get there like an hour before gates open and you'll be fine, its the people who show up at 9 that end up walking from the overflow lot. the outdoor flea market is honestly where all the good deals are anyway, indoor vendors tend to be priced like they know what they have lol not sure about the club carpool thing, havent heard anything at the last couple meetings but could ask around

so i finally took the plunge and built one of those QCX mini kits from QRP Labs. been putting it off for like a year because i was nervous about the SMD stuff but honestly it wasnt as bad as i thought. took me two evenings and it fired right up on 40m, which apparently doesnt always happen so i felt pretty lucky. anyway its putting out about 4 watts which i guess is normal for that kit. ive been making contacts but mostly just within a few hundred miles. i know QRP is supposed to work much farther than that and i see people talking about DX contacts running like 2 watts so im wondering if my antenna situation is just killing me. right now im using a wire dipole in the attic which i know isnt ideal. would it make more sense to focus on getting a better antenna situation outside before i worry about anything else with the rig itself? or is there something i should check in the setup first also curious if anyone has recommendations for what bands are best for QRP when youre just starting out with it. 40 seems active but i dont know if thats the right choice for daytime vs nighttime or what

repeaterbook.com is what basically everyone uses for road trips, you can filter by state and it has an app too which is handy when youre actually driving. i usually export a chunk of repeaters for whatever states im passing through into a CSV and load them into the radio the night before. little tedious but worth it. also seconding the alternator whine thing, had that exact same problem when i first installed mine and it drove me crazy for weeks lol

yeah the inverting transponder thing gets everyone at first. the way i finally got it to click was to basically stop thinking about the uplink frequency and just chase the downlink. park your downlink on your signal and stop touching it, then only move the uplink to correct for doppler on that side. it sounds backwards but once you lock onto yourself on the downlink you realize when you need to nudge the uplink up or down. the other thing that helped me a lot was doing a few passes just listening, not even trying to transmit. just track with gpredict and watch how much the beacon moves across a full pass. gives you a feel for the rate of change before you're also trying to point an antenna and find contacts at the same time. 52 degree pass is actually a lot to handle when youre just starting out, a lower elevation pass is weirdly easier because things move slower.

Mosley antennas are built to last - I've stuck with them because they never break, but you're right about trap maintenance. The newer designs eliminate that headache completely. If your TA-33M is still working well, consider it's proven reliability versus potential performance gains before jumping.

Good to see the FCC cleaning up outdated regulations! The VEC region changes in §97.521(b) and Appendix 2 were obsolete anyway. Makes the rules cleaner and easier to navigate for new hams. The current VEC system works well without those legacy provisions.

JS8Call is genuinely underrated and i think a lot of people dismiss it just because FT8 is flashier in terms of raw contact rate. the relay/store-forward stuff is actually really clever for marginal paths. i run it on 40 and 80 pretty regularly, mostly late evenings, and theres usually a handful of people around who actually want to chat rather than just log a grid square. PSK31 is not dead but its definitely thinned out. i still check 14.070 sometimes out of habit and you do see activity especially on weekends but its nothing like it was ten years ago. the thing about PSK31 that FT8 cant replace is that you can actually type in real time, like freeform conversation, and the waterfall on a good decoder is still honestly beautiful to watch when theres a bunch of stations on. weak signal wise though FT8 and even JS8Call will walk all over it, PSK31 needs a decent signal to be reliable whereas JS8Call will crawl through at SNR levels that would make PSK31 completely unreadable. if you want the conversation feel without giving up too much weak signal performance JS8Call is probably your best bet right now. WSPR is interesting too but thats not really conversation territory obviously.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and everyone keeps telling me i should try a contest but honestly it feels pretty overwhelming when i look at the exchange formats and all the rules for different events. like cq ww alone has like a whole pdf of rules and im not even sure what my multipliers would be or how to log properly. i was thinking about doing arrl field day in june since it seems more beginner friendly and a lot of clubs participate together? not sure if im better off just finding a local club and tagging along for field day before i try to do anything solo. also saw people talking about sota which isnt really a contest i guess but it seems related somehow, the portable operating angle at least. anyone remember their first real contest experience and how it went? did you just jump in or did you spend a lot of time prepping first. my station is pretty modest — just a 100w hf rig and a wire antenna in the backyard so im not expecting to win anything, just want to make some contacts and not embarrass myself too badly

this is basically me every weekend. my shack is in the garage and i just leave the rig on while im doing other stuff. half the time i dont even transmit, just listening. my neighbor asked me once what i was doing and i tried to explain it and he just looked at me like i had two heads