Patricia Wilson

I did my first one last spring and honestly had a blast. The nature reference thing is kind of cool because WWFF really does emphasize the wildlife and conservation angle more than some other programs, some activators even write little notes about the habitat in their activation reports which I think is a neat touch. Dont stress too much about the logging software situation, I just used a paper log in the field and transferred everything when I got home, uploaded the ADIF and it all went through fine. The WWFF community tends to be pretty forgiving with new activators.

so ive been messing around with crystal controlled transmitters for a few months now, mostly just copying schematics from EMRFD and the old handbooks but i finally want to design something more from scratch. going for a 40m CW rig, nothing fancy, just a decent little QRP transmitter in the 5 watt range. my main issue right now is the PA stage. ive been using a 2N3904 for driver stuff which is fine but when i start thinking about the final amp i keep going back and forth between using a IRF510 versus just stacking a couple of 2N2222s. the IRF510 seems like the obvious choice for power handling but i keep reading people saying the input capacitance is a pain at HF and you really need to think about the gate drive. anybody actually built with the IRF510 on 40m and can tell me if its worth it or if im overcomplicating this also should i be worried about keying clicks at this stage of design or is that something i tune out later. im using a pi network output which i think handles some of it but not sure

yeah just jump in, the slow speed sections of 40m around 7.050 or so there's almost always someone willing to have a patient qso. worst case they send QRS and slow down for you. one thing i never see people mention is that recording yourself and listening back is actually kind of brutal but super helpful. i used to think my spacing was fine until i heard it back and realized my word spacing was almost nonexistent lol. also if you want something to compare to, find recordings of really clean CW operators and just listen to how the rhythm sounds. it becomes almost musical once you start hearing it right.

for the generator question, a lot of guys in our group run the eu2200i honda or the predator 2000 from harbor freight — the predator is way cheaper and honestly pretty quiet for the price, about 65db at load which isnt bad. but if youre only running 100w HF and some accessories you probably dont need anything close to 2kw. a 1000w class inverter genny is plenty and easier to haul. that said if you have the 2000 available for free id just take it, the extra headroom is nice if someone else needs to charge something or you end up running longer than planned. on the antenna stuff i'd say the efhw is usually faster to deploy if you can get any kind of support up, even a painters pole or a mast section will work. the buddipole is more versatile but setup time kills you when youre trying to get on the air fast during an exercise. i keep a 31ft jackite pole in the truck specifically for this reason, throw the efhw up in like 5 minutes and youre done. signalink plus fldigi is totally fine, thats basically the standard for this kind of thing. winlink is probably what your EC wants you to run anyway so make sure you have that configured too before you show up.

so our ARES group has a county-level exercise coming up and im trying to figure out the best way to do sustained HF ops from a trailer we're setting up as the net control station. we've done this before but always kind of winged it and this time the EC wants something more thought through. right now the plan is a Yaesu FT-991A as the main rig, running into a Chameleon MPAS Lite vertical because its quick to deploy and doesnt need radials which matters when we're on a parking lot surface. we had a dipole situation a couple years back and the feedline ran across a walkway and it was just a mess. anyway the vertical has worked okay but ive always felt like we were leaving signal on the table especially on 40m. the power side is what im really unsure about. we have a Honda EU2200i and it runs fine but i get a little nervous running the radio off a generator directly even through a power conditioner. last exercise one of the other guys had some nasty noise on receive that we traced back to a cheap inverter somewhere nearby. our generator is pretty clean but still. thinking about using a pair of 100ah LiFePO4 batteries as the primary and having the generator float them through a decent charger rather than running everything directly off the genny. that way if the generator has to cycle off or gets moved we dont lose ops continuity. does that actually make sense or am i overcomplicating it also curious what other groups are using for antenna support. we have some MFJ fiberglass poles and a couple painters poles duct taped together situation which is embarrassing honestly

yeah the summer slump is real, happens to basically every net I've ever been part of. what helped our Wednesday night 2m net was honestly just having the NCS personally reach out to operators who had checked in before but gone quiet — not in a guilt trippy way just a quick email or even a text if you have their number saying hey we miss you on the net. sounds simple but it actually worked, got a couple guys back who thought we had changed our frequency or something also worth seeing if any of the local clubs in nearby towns would cross-promote. we linked up with a club about 40 miles out and suddenly had a few more mobiles checking in from their area. doesnt fix everything but 10-11 check-ins feels way more alive than 3 the HF nets do tend to hold up better through the summer partly because its traffic nets and people feel a bit more committed to passing actual messages. if you havent tried getting your ARES members to run some practice traffic it might give the net a little more purpose beyond just the roll call

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and figured id just ask here because googling just gives me the same three articles over and over. right now im running WSJT-X for FT8 and it logs to its own ADIF file which i then import into Log4OM and that mostly works fine except sometimes the dupes dont get flagged right and i have to manually check which is annoying but whatever. the issue is i want to start doing some contests — nothing serious, maybe SS or a state QSO party here and there — and everyone keeps telling me N1MM is the way to go for that. which i get, N1MM is basically built for contesting. but then i'd have two separate logs going and merging them afterwards sounds like a nightmare honestly. does anyone actually run both and keep everything synced up or do you just pick one and accept the tradeoffs. im running Windows 10 if that matters, nothing fancy, just a regular shack PC. also curious if Log4OM can even handle contest-style dupe checking in real time because i never really tried to push it that way

You're going to do great, honestly the first one is always the most nerve wracking and then you realize its just operating from a park which you've obviously done before in a different context. The self-spotting thing — yeah just spot yourself when you get on frequency, and if you switch bands just re-spot with the new frequency. People do it all the time. Some activators spot every 20-30 minutes or so just to keep the pile coming but theres no rule about it, just whatever feels right. On the frequency hopping, totally normal to move from 40 to 20 or wherever the band is cooperating. Just spot again when you land somewhere new and the hunters will find you. The POTA community is really good about that. One thing i'd say is dont stress too much about getting exactly 10 QSOs even though thats the minimum for a valid activation — most of the time if conditions are halfway decent you'll blow past that in the first 20 minutes. Enjoy the park, thats kind of the whole point anyway.

so ive been playing around with DXwatch and the cluster spotting stuff on QRZ for a few months now and i think i mostly get it but wanted to check if theres a smarter way to use both at the same time. right now i basically have two browser tabs open and im switching back and forth which feels kind of dumb the thing i keep running into is DXwatch seems to update faster for the dx spots i care about (chasing some ATNO stuff lately) but QRZ is nice because i can just click on the callsign and get all the info without opening another tab. so both have their thing going on is there some app or way to pull both feeds into one place? i heard someone on a club net mention something called DX4WIN but that might be old. also curious if anyone uses the mobile apps for this - ive got an android phone and would love to have something i can glance at when im in the shack without being tied to the laptop

i tried js8call for a few weeks and kind of gave up but not because of the setup, that part was fine. just kept missing the timing on replies and losing threads halfway through an exchange. might have been my schedule more than the mode itself. still think the concept is cool especially for emcomm type stuff where you need to actually pass information not just exchange signal reports. maybe ill revisit it this winter when im not doing as much voice operating

4 contacts is 4 contacts man, it counts. honestly the first one is always a mess, you spend so long fussing with the antenna and by the time youre on the air youre already exhausted lol. S2S on your first activation is actually pretty solid though, some people never bother chasing those. the EFHW angle thing is real, i ruined a couple activations early on trying to get a perfect inverted V and just wasting time. now i just throw it as sloper and call it good enough. signal reports from a summit are rarely going to be bad enough to matter anyway, everyone knows youre probably running 10 watts from a hilltop.

the pileup dying after 10 min is totally normal dont worry about that, happens on basically every activation once the chasers who were watching the spot all log you. after that its mostly S2S contacts and random passers by. i usually switch bands at that point, 20 or 17 can get you some dx chasers if the band is open and that keeps it interesting

ok so i just got my technician license about three weeks ago and ive been trying to get into the local 2m repeater but nobody ever seems to hear me. i programmed the frequency in (147.315 with a plus offset) and i can hear people talking on it just fine but when i key up nobody responds or acknowledges me at all. a guy at the club meeting mentioned something about a CTCSS tone and i looked it up but honestly the explanations i found were kind of confusing. from what i understand the repeater requires you to transmit a specific sub-audible tone along with your voice so the repeater controller knows to actually open up and retransmit you? is that right? and if i dont have the right tone programmed in my radio the repeater just... ignores me? my HT is a baofeng uv-5r and i think i can set the tone in the menu somewhere but i have no idea what tone this particular repeater uses. is there like a database or something where i can look that up? also kind of a side question — when i do finally get on the repeater is there like a proper way to join a conversation thats already going on? i dont want to be rude about it but i also dont know the etiquette. any help appreciated, this stuff is way more complicated than the technician exam made it seem lol

yeah the duplicate spots are totally normal, thats just how the cluster network works — multiple stations around the world are all reporting the same DX so youll see the same callsign pop up several times in a short window. its actually useful because if youre seeing 4 or 5 spots its a pretty good sign the guy is actually there and not just a one-off bad spot. sometimes a single spot is a mistake or the band closed right after for filtering out FT8 and the digital stuff, DXwatch has those mode filter buttons right at the top of the page, just uncheck FT8 and FT4 and youll clean up the list quite a bit. QRZ's cluster thing is fine for a quick look but yeah i find it a bit slow too, i just use DXwatch directly most of the time. if you really want to get into it, some guys run actual cluster client software like CC User or just telnet directly into a node but honestly the web tools are fine for casual DX chasing

yeah what the other person said about hamstudy is solid. i'll add that the Gordon West study guide is pretty popular and it's written specifically around the question pool rather than being a general electronics textbook, so if you do want a book that might be a better fit than whatever you picked up. my elmer back when i got my ticket actually printed out the whole question pool and just went through it with a highlighter which sounds tedious but apparently it worked for him lol. different things work for different people i guess. one thing i'd say is dont skip the regulatory and operating procedure questions even if they seem boring, there's a decent chunk of those on the exam and people sometimes focus too much on the technical stuff and then get tripped up on the rules questions. anyway good luck, once you pass just get on the air as soon as you can even if you feel like you dont know what youre doing yet

yeah this was my exact situation for like two years. what i ended up doing is just keeping Log4OM as my master log and using the ADIF import after every contest. N1MM exports clean ADIF so you just dump it into Log4OM when you're done, do a dupe check, and move on. its an extra step but honestly takes maybe five minutes and i only contest a couple times a month anyway so its not a big deal for me. the WSJT-X thing is fine if you set it up to log to Log4OM via UDP and then when you fire up a contest weekend you just stop Log4OM, redirect WSJT-X to N1MM and go. the annoying part is remembering to flip it back after. i've definitely ended up with a weekend of FT8 contacts sitting in N1MM that i forgot to export more than once

yeah i went through the same confusion like six months ago lol. what helped me was just picking one and sticking with it for a while instead of trying to watch three things at once. i use DX Summit mostly just cause the interface is simple and i can filter down to whatever band im on at the moment. one thing i'll say is dont trust the cluster too blindly especially for rare ones, sometimes spots are wrong frequency or even wrong callsign entirely, somebody heard something and guessed. always good to verify yourself before you start calling into a pileup on the wrong freq

Check your RF power output while speaking - most rigs show about 30W average with proper mic gain, but people max everything trying to see 100W average reading, resulting in horrible audio and dirty signals. Less is definitely more with that particular radio.

I used HamStudy.org flashcards for about 3 weeks after passing Tech. The key is understanding WHY answers are correct, not just memorizing. Taking a few practice exams to become familiar with the exam format and to assess your readiness before the real event is always a good idea. Don't skip the practice tests!

so ive been messing around with this idea for a couple weeks now and im not sure if im overcomplicating things. basically i have an old CDE Ham IV rotator thats still mechanically solid but the controller box has seen better days, the pot is flaky and the meter is basically useless. instead of tracking down a replacement controller or paying for one of those aftermarket units i was thinking about just building something around an arduino mega i have sitting in a drawer. the idea is pretty straightforward, read the pot voltage with the analog input, drive the rotator motor through a relay board, and then talk to the PC over serial so i can feed it into ham radio deluxe or whatever. ive seen a few projects online that do basically this but they all seem to have slightly different approaches and some of the code looks pretty old and probably written for earlier arduino IDE versions. has anyone actually done this and used it for serious operating, like contesting or satellite work where you really need the heading to be accurate and responsive? im a little worried about the pot noise causing jitter in the position reading and whether simple averaging in software is good enough or if i need to do something more aggressive with filtering. also not sure if the mega is even the right board for this or if something like a pi zero with a proper ADC hat would be more accurate. any experience here would be appreciated, even if its just "dont bother it was a nightmare"

so ive been messing around with an old antenna rotator for a few months now and the controller died on me, the original unit was some no-name thing that came with a used yagi i picked up and honestly the controller was already held together with prayers and electrical tape when i got it. anyway instead of buying a replacement i figured this would be a good excuse to finally do something with the pile of arduino uno and mega boards i have sitting in a drawer from various impulse buys on aliexpress. the basic idea is to use a stepper motor driver board — i have a drv8825 kicking around — and just drive the azimuth motor directly, reading position back from a pot on the rotator shaft. been looking at hamlib and apparently you can interface custom rotators through rotctld which would be great for getting it working with wsjtx for satellite stuff eventually. i have a raspberry pi 4 that could sit in the shack and handle the higher level stuff while the arduino handles the actual motor control loop. has anyone actually done something like this end to end? im not worried about the electronics side too much but the hamlib integration is where im getting fuzzy. any gotchas with the serial communication between the pi and the arduino that i should know about going in?

so i decided to finally go for my technician license after hanging around a local club for a few months and everyone says just memorize the question pool but honestly im not sure thats the best way to go about it? like i bought the ARRL handbook but its way more than i need right now and i feel like im drowning in info about stuff that wont even be on the test is there a specific study guide people actually recommend or is the free stuff online good enough. i found hamstudry.org i think it was called and did a few practice tests but my scores are all over the place, like 70% one time then 55% the next which is kind of discouraging. the actual exam is 35 questions right and you need like 26 to pass? someone at the club told me the electrical theory part trips up most new people and honestly yeah that ohms law stuff with the formulas is where im losing points i think anyway just wondering how others approached it and roughly how long it took before feeling ready to actually sit for the exam

yeah 10m was nuts, i caught the tail end of it around 4pm local and still managed to log a few italians and what sounded like a Brazilian station though the pile up was pretty thick by then. my noise floor was actually behaving for once which helped. its funny cause i had literally just told my wife the band was dead and to not expect me to be on the radio much this week and then bam there it is lol. fingers crossed this keeps up through the weekend i have a few entities i really want to knock off the list. on the Icom thing i heard something similar, a guy in my local club was talking about it at the last meeting. he seemed pretty confident it was real but who knows how these things get distorted by the time they make the rounds. i'm not in a rush to upgrade from my 7300 honestly but if the price is reasonable i might at least go take a look at Dayton if they have it there.

i had the same exact frustration with JS8. love the concept, the async messaging thing is genuinely clever, but i fired it up three weekends in a row on 20m and barely heard anyone. ended up just going back to FT8 because at least i was making contacts lol. might try it again on 80m at night, heard thats where some of the more active users hang out

The running dits thing is almost definitely a tension issue, yeah. When i first switched to paddles i was basically white-knuckling the thing and your fingers cant feel the contact point if youre squeezing that hard. Try resting your thumb and finger on the paddles without actually touching them and just getting a feel for how light the spring tension actually is. The Bencher BY-1 is a pretty light paddle out of the box so you may even want to tighten the tension screws a tiny bit until it feels more deliberate to you. Also check your iambic settings on the 7300 — if its set to mode A vs mode B that can really change how it feels, especially if youre coming from straight key muscle memory. Some people actually switch back to mode A when relearning because its a bit more forgiving. For receiving — skip W1AW for a bit honestly. Just tune around 40 meters in the evenings and copy random QSOs at whatever speed feels comfortable. Dont try to copy 100%, just get what you can and move on. The freeze-up thing is totally normal and it goes away once you stop expecting perfection from yourself.