Patricia Wilson

so ive been doing POTA for about a year now and someone in my local club mentioned WWFF and i went down a bit of a rabbit hole last night. looks like theres a ton of nature references in my area that arent activated very often or at all, which is kind of exciting honestly. my main questions are around the logging side of things. for POTA i just use the app and it handles most of it but WWFF seems a bit different with the upload process. do i need to submit to both the WWFF database and also to something else depending on what country program the park falls under? im in the US so i think thats KFF but im not 100% sure how the two relate to each other. also wondering about the QSO count - i know POTA is 10 contacts to count as an activation but i've seen different numbers thrown around for WWFF. is it really 44 contacts to get the full points or is that just for certain award tiers? not planning to worry too much about awards right away just want to make sure im doing it right from the start. any tips from people who have done both programs would be really appreciated, especially if there are gotchas i should know about before my first time out

yeah i was in the same boat about six months ago. the thing that helped me was actually asking the net control operator after the net was over - like just called them directly on the repeater and said hey im new can you give me some pointers. most net controls are thrilled to help and will walk you through their specific net's procedures because they do vary quite a bit from net to net. some nets want just your callsign, some want callsign name and location, some have a specific format they announce at the top of the net if you can catch it. the weekly training net in my area actually has a whole segment for new operators which is nice but not every club does that

This sounds like jitter buffer issues to me. I've seen this with several remote systems when there's packet loss or inconsistent routing between sites. You might want to run a continuous ping test to see if you're getting dropped packets. The RemoteHams system is pretty sensitive to network conditions - much more so than something like TeamViewer or other remote desktop apps. Even 1-2% packet loss can cause the symptoms you're describing.

I was terrified for my first check-in too! The Thursday net folks are super welcoming - just key up and say something like "KJ7XYZ, this is Mike in Springfield, checking in to the net." They'll probably ask if you're a new ham and welcome you specially.

yeah the delay thing on some of those apps is a real problem and honestly it comes down to which cluster node the app is pulling from. some of them are just aggregating RSS feeds or something and they're not actually connected to a live telnet node. what worked for me was ditching the standalone apps for day to day use and just running DX4WIN or even just a plain telnet session into a cluster node directly — you get the spots basically in real time that way. for the QRZ lookup part, once you get your workflow down you kind of stop needing to look up every single call. after a while you recognize prefixes pretty fast and you only really need to dig into QRZ when something unusual pops up or you want to double check a DXCC entity. also pskreporter is worth bookmarking if you havent already, especially for figuring out if a band is actually open in your direction before you even try to work something. saved me a lot of frustration honestly.

yeah the band plan stuff can be confusing because the ARRL band plan and the actual FCC allocations are two different things. the FCC part 97 rules are the legal ones, the ARRL plan is more of a gentlemans agreement type thing. for 40 meters as a general you can use phone on 7.175 to 7.300 MHz, below that is CW territory for generals. so if you wanna do SSB stick above 7.175. on the ID thing your club buddy is right, you only have to ID when you transmit. part 97.119 covers that. no transmission means no ID required. and for accidentally going into the wrong segment, honestly if its a one time thing and youre not causing interference the FCC isnt going to show up at your door. they have bigger fish to fry. that said try not to make a habit of it because some of the CW ops on the lower end of 40 will definitely let you know about it, not always politely either

Just got my Tech license last month and I've been listening to the local 2m net every Tuesday night. I really want to check in but I'm nervous about messing up the procedure. The net control will specify the information needed for check in, generally limited to basic information such as call sign and location. Should I just jump in when they call for check-ins, or is there a specific format I should follow? Any tips for a new ham would be greatly appreciated!

If you have a generous radial system, the vertical can do at least as well as a dipole in many circumstances. Your 32 buried radials should be performing well. Elevated radials (4 quarter-wave wires at 8-10 feet) can match that performance with much less copper and labor, but require more mechanical support.

The smart algorithms are great in theory but legacy digis don't support them. WIDEn-N and TRACEn-N reduce redundant transmissions and prevent packet loops, but you can't count on every digi in your path being that smart. WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 works everywhere.

the thermal thing is a real possibility. what i'd do is get it misbehaving and then use a can of freeze spray very carefully on different areas of the PA board to see if cooling something down makes it snap back. its a bit crude but it can help narrow down the area fast. also check the thermistor that feeds into the ALC circuit, if that's drifting it could be telling the radio to back off power when it shouldnt be. dont remember the exact part number off the top of my head but its in the service manual.

yeah I was in the same boat about a year ago when i started checking into nets. felt super awkward the first few times like everyone was judging every word. turns out most of the regulars are just happy someone new showed up. i just listened for like two or three sessions to get the rhythm of how that specific net ran and then jumped in. the net control on ours actually welcomes new hams specifically which helped a lot.

Just picked up my first dual-band HT and I'm having trouble accessing our local 2m repeater. I can hear the repeater output just fine, but when I transmit nothing comes back. The repeater directory shows it needs 141.3 Hz tone but I must be doing something wrong in the programming. Any FT-70 owners have step-by-step instructions for setting the transmit tone? I've read the manual three times and I'm still lost!

yeah so 9 el and 150w is going to be tough but its not impossible depending on who you're trying to work. the thing is EME has gotten way more accessible since Q65 came along, its got a couple dB advantage over JT65 for weak signal stuff which actually matters a lot on a path with that kind of loss. some of the big stations in europe and japan are genuinely running 4 and 8 yagi arrays with full legal limit and they can hear almost anyone with a halfway decent setup. realistically though for a single yagi 2m station you'd probably want to be closer to a 17 or 21 element long boom yagi and push the power up as high as you can reasonably do. the IC-9700 at 10w out to a linear is fine, lots of guys run the HL-450B or a SSPA in that range. the other thing people dont talk about enough is the feedline situation — if you have 2 or 3 dB of loss between the radio and the antenna thats absolutely killing you, especially on receive. a good low noise preamp right at the antenna like an SSB Electronics or a Kuhne is basically mandatory. for coordination honestly just check the ON4KST 2m chat, thats where everyone schedules these days. you post your locator and your setup and people will try a sked with you if your station looks viable. dont just call CQ on 144.120 expecting results, especially starting out. also check the EME2 reflector, old school but people still use it for skeds

yeah the hunting problem is almost always a deadband issue rather than resolution. even with perfect ADC readings if your control loop doesnt have a wide enough deadband the motor will never settle. i went through the exact same thing with a similar setup and the fix for me was just defining like a 3-4 degree window where the controller says good enough and stops driving. once i did that the jitter basically disappeared even with the stock arduino ADC. that said the ADS1115 isnt a bad idea anyway especially if you ever want to do precise satellite tracking where a degree or two actually matters. but id try the deadband fix first because its literally a few lines of code change and you might find you dont need anything else. also check your power supply — if the arduino and the motor controller are sharing a supply the noise from the motor switching can mess with your analog readings pretty badly. learned that one the hard way too.

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for like two years now and i really like it for day to day stuff, tracking qsos, integrating with WSJT-X for FT8, all that. but every time a contest rolls around everyone just says use N1MM and i feel like im being told to learn a whole new piece of software just for weekends. tried N1MM last CQ WW and honestly got pretty confused with the entry window setup, couldnt figure out where to set my exchange for the section, ended up just logging on paper for the first hour which was embarrassing. does it actually get easier or is there a learning curve people just dont mention. also does N1MM even do WSJT-X integration properly or do i have to run them totally separate. feels like im running three things at once sometimes and my shack PC is not exactly new hardware

im building almost the exact same thing right now haha, what FET are you using? im using an MPF102 and mine oscillates pretty well but i havent got it stable enough to actually listen to anything yet, just RF noise mostly. curious if your audio stage is just a single transistor amp or something more involved

welcome to the hobby, just wait till you try HF and work somebody in another country for the first time, thats when it really gets you. i still remeber my first DX contact and it was just some guy in canada but i was absolutely thrilled anyway

so i finally got out to do my first pota activation last weekend at K-1234 and it was a disaster. brought my ft-891 and a 20m end fed but couldnt get anyone to hear me. kept calling cq pota for like an hour with maybe 2 contacts. saw other people posting huge numbers from the same park so obviously im doing something wrong. antenna was up about 15 feet in a tree, swr was fine on the meter. do i need to be on certain frequencies or what? feeling pretty discouraged right now

the diagonal dipole thing works better than you'd think honestly. ive worked some activators where i could tell their antenna situation was improvised and the signal was still totally usable. dont sweat the setup too much, just get back out there

so i started learning CW back in the spring, got up to about 13wpm using just code groups and some basic words and then just... hit a wall. i cant seem to get any faster no matter what i do. im using the Koch method with the G4FON software and i practice maybe 20-30 minutes a day which i read is supposed to be the right amount, not too much not too little. the weird thing is some letters i copy fine at 18 or even 20wpm but then something like a C or a Y just completely falls apart and i start losing the whole sentence trying to figure out what it was. does this ever go away on its own or is there something specific i should be doing differently. i really want to get to 20 so i can actually ragchew on 40m without making a fool of myself. been a tech for 2 years and just got my general last month so the bands are finally open to me and i dont want to waste it

the 817 is solid but if you can find an 818 those are a little nicer to work with, just a thought. anyway what kind of emergencies are you prepping for mostly? like served agency stuff with ARES or CERT, or more just personal family preparedness? asking because it changes what you prioritize a bit. if youre doing served agency work you might need to think about what bands your group actually operates on and make sure your kit matches that, some groups are heavy into VHF/UHF for local coordination and dont need HF at all for most activations. for cases i started with a big ammo can which was kind of a pain and moved to a small rolling carry-on bag which is way more practical honestly. everything is accessible and i dont throw my back out carrying it.

so i finally did my first POTA activation last weekend at a state park about 45 min from home. packed up the KX2, my little carbon fiber mast, and a linked dipole i built last winter. got out there, found a picnic table near the parking lot, and spent like 20 minutes trying to get the antenna up before i realized i forgot the freaking guy line stakes. so the mast kept wanting to fall over every time i let go of it. ended up just leaning it against a tree at a weird angle and running the dipole kind of diagonally which probably wasnt ideal. anyway i still managed 12 QSOs on 40m before the battery started getting low. not enough to qualify the park so i gotta go back. the thing is i had a blast despite all the chaos, like there was something really satisfying about just making contacts from a picnic table in the woods. already planning the next one and making a checklist this time.

Focus on the operational ones first: QRL, QRZ, QRT, QSY, and QTH. The technical ones like QRK (signal clarity) and QRO/QRP (power) will make sense once you're having regular QSOs. Listen to others use them in context - that's how I learned most of mine naturally.

yeah what he said about LoTW is right, it took me like 6 months before I really started seeing my confirmed count climb because so much depends on the other station uploading. one thing i'd add — for DXCC specifically, confirmed means you have either a paper QSL card OR a LoTW confirmation, and when you go to actually apply you can do it online through the ARRL website now which is way easier than it used to be. just dont lose your paper cards if you get them, i had a guy in my club lose a bunch in a basement flood and he was pretty bummed out. anyway 35-40 entities already puts you well on your way to the basic DXCC award once you get the confirmations lined up

i made basically the same jump except i was coming off a ts-570 and honestly the hardest part was just learning where icom put everything since i was so used to kenwood's layout. still sometimes reach for a knob that isnt there lol. how are you finding it on 10 and 12m with the cycle picking up, ive been having a lot of fun up there lately and the radio just seems to come alive on the higher bands