Michael Anderson

yeah the UDP logging from WSJT-X is actually pretty solid once you get it going. in WSJT-X go to settings, reporting tab, and theres a UDP server section — just make sure the port matches what Log4OM is listening on, i think its 2237 by default but check your Log4OM UDP settings to be sure. once thats done every QSO that WSJT-X logs hits Log4OM in real time, no importing needed. been running it that way for about a year and its mostly reliable. occasionally a QSO doesnt come through but thats rare. the N1MM situation is harder. i just accept that contest logs live in N1MM during the contest and then i do a manual ADIF export into Log4OM after. annoying but i do it the same day so i dont forget. the bigger issue is making sure Log4OM doesnt show those contacts as dupes during the next contest because the dupe checking in N1MM obviously wont know about them unless you import your master log, which is a whole other rabbit hole honestly.

the inverted V or sloped configuration is totally fine, people do it all the time and it works great. the pattern shifts a bit but honestly on 40m youre not going to notice or care. as long as the center is up as high as you can get it the ends dont need to be perfectly level, just keep them off the ground by a few feet at minimum or youll have losses and RF where you dont want it. for insulators i use the egg type ceramic ones on the ends but ive also just drilled holes in small chunks of CPVC and threaded the wire through and it worked fine for years. PVC is perfectly good at RF at HF frequencies, the losses are negligible. the center insulator matters a bit more just because thats where the stress is, so make sure whatever you use is solid mechanically. i actually bought a piece of 3/4 inch schedule 40 PVC, cut it about 4 inches, drilled two holes close together in the middle for the coax and balun attachment, and two holes near each end for the wire, worked fine. solder the connections, dont just clamp them. a bad mechanical connection will corrode and youll be chasing an intermittent problem six months from now wondering why your SWR jumped. tin the wire ends, tin the balun terminals if they have them, and make a good solid joint then seal it up with self amalgamating tape. the 14 gauge stranded is fine for a backyard dipole, maybe a little light if you get a lot of ice load but for most situations its ok.

yeah 190+ on the flux index is pretty solid, we havent seen numbers like that consistently in a long time so enjoy it while it lasts. solar cycle 25 has been overperforming predictions which is great news for HF. generally speaking once you get above like 150 on the SFI its worth poking around on 10 and 12 meters especially in the afternoon when the path to south america or europe opens up depending on where you are. the thing i always tell newer guys is dont just watch the flux number, watch the A and K index too. if the K index spikes above 4 or 5 you can have great flux but the bands will be a mess because of geomagnetic activity messing things up. there are days where everything looks perfect on paper and 10m is dead, and other days where the indices arent amazing but there's this weird long path opening to somewhere you never expect. thats kind of what keeps it interesting honestly. dxmaps is a great tool, just keep an eye on where the spots are clustered and youll start to develop a feel for it over time.

hamstudy.org is honestly probably all you need for passing the test, i used it when i did my tech a few years back and just did like 20-30 questions a day for two weeks. it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and keeps drilling you on those which is nice. the gordon west audio stuff is good too if you commute and want something to listen to in the car your cousin isnt wrong that you can brute force memorize and pass, the pool only has like 400 something questions and they pull 35 for the actual test. but i'd say at least try to understand the basic electricity stuff, ohms law and that kind of thing, because it actually does come up when youre troubleshooting real problems later on. the band plan stuff you kind of just pick up naturally once you start listening around anyway so dont stress too much about memorizing every frequency allocation perfectly

yeah i remember my first check-in, i totally fumbled my callsign and had to repeat myself twice. net control was super patient though. most of them are used to new folks coming on. just go for it honestly, the worst that happens is you have to say your call again.

yeah you can definitely log the same activation for both POTA and WWFF, lots of people do that. actually its pretty common with state parks and wildlife areas since they overlap a lot in the databases. just make sure you hit the minimum contact requirements for each program separately, WWFF wants 44 QSOs for a full activation credit while POTA is just 10. so youll need to stay on the air a bit longer if you want both to count. as for announcing, its not mandatory but the WWFF spots page and posting on their facebook group or the cluster really does help. hunters from Europe especially love chasing WWFF references and theyll pile on if they see a spot. your 857D into a dipole on 40 will work great for that, 14 mhz in the afternoon if you can swing it too. have a good time out there, wildlife management areas are usually pretty quiet and the scenery is half the point honestly

ok so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for it and get my technician license. problem is i dont really know how to study for this thing. i downloaded some app and it just throws questions at me but i feel like im just memorizing answers without actually understanding anything. is that... fine? like does it actually work that way or do i need to read a whole book first also the question pool is huge. someone told me theres like 400+ questions and only 35 show up on the test. do i really need to know all of them or is there some way to focus on specific sections. the math stuff especially is freaking me out a bit, the ohms law questions and stuff like that

so i finally did my first real activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-4882 if anyone knows the area. i had been hunting other peoples activations for probably 3 months before i worked up the nerve to actually go out and do one myself and honestly the whole thing was way more nerve wracking than i expected setup went fine, i brought my KX2 and a random wire up in a tree which usually works great at home, ran 10 watts on 40m and eventually got up to 20m when propagation shifted. the problem was i had no idea how to actually run a pileup. like i know the theory, work em fast, ask for partials if you miss a callsign, keep the frequency moving. but in practice i kept fumbling and losing qsos and at one point i just froze when like 4 people were calling at once ended up with 14 contacts which i know is enough to count as a valid activation but i really wanted to break 20. the hunters were super patient with me though, one guy even slowed way down and spelled out his call phonetically without me even asking which was really nice. anyway just wanted to share because ive been lurking here a while and everyone always makes it sound so easy lol

okay so ive been trying to get Winlink Express working for probably two weeks now and im just not getting anywhere. background: im running a IC-7300 into a SignaLink USB, on HF, trying to connect to an RMS gateway for VARA HF. i can hear the gateway beacon just fine, the audio levels look right in the waterfall, i send the connect request and it just... times out. every time. ive gone through the Winlink Express setup wizard like four times. the VARA modem software is registered (paid for it last month). my dial frequency is set to the center frequency minus the offset, pretty sure thats right anyway. RMS gateway shows as active on the winlink.org map when i check it. i just dont understand what im missing here. is there something dumb i'm doing wrong with the audio routing or is this a known issue with the 7300 and SignaLink combo? also do i need to have my callsign registered somewhere specific before i can actually send mail through the system or does the first connection handle that?

had almost the exact same thing happen on a BC-era transmitter i was restoring, turned out one of the coupling caps in the audio chain had gone leaky and was shifting the bias on the modulator tube. the distortion sounded kind of boxy like you're describing. just something to rule out if the transformer and screen voltage stuff checks out.

1.4:1 on a first build without a lot of fussing is actually pretty decent. some guys obsess over getting it to 1:1 but at 1.4 your radio is perfectly happy and you're not losing anything meaningful. nice work getting it in the air and actually making a contact — that's the whole point right there.

JS8Call never really hit critical mass the way FT8 did and i think thats just the reality of it. KN4CRD designed it for a specific niche — emergency comms, store and forward messaging, that kind of thing — and it does that really well but casual rag chewing crowd mostly stayed on SSB or went to FT8 for the DX hunting. you'll find more activity during regional JS8 nets, there are a few that run on 40m in the evenings depending on your location. the HF conditions also matter a lot more with JS8 since your decoding window is wider than FT8's 15 seconds. honestly your 7300 is more than capable. might just be a timing and band thing. i'd check the JS8Call groups.io reflector, they post net schedules there occasionally and its more active than you'd think for a niche mode.

dayton is absolutely worth it at least once, i went back in maybe 2019 and the flea market alone takes like half a day just to walk through. you wont buy everything you see but just seeing all the old gear laid out is something else. go early though, like embarrassingly early, the good stuff gets picked over fast. also budget more than you think you'll spend lol

the weather affecting your SWR readings is pretty normal to be honest, especially with wire antennas. a wet rope or wet tree branch near the wire can detune things a bit and you'd see that on the analyzer. that said if moisture actually got into the feedpoint that's a real problem over time, corrosion will eat your connections and you'll be scratching your head six months from now wondering why things went south. i've been using self-amalgamating tape for years and it's really the way to go at the feedpoint, coax seal is kinda messy and harder to remove when you need to redo connections. what i do is wrap the SO-239 and the first few inches of coax together, then a layer of self-amalgamating, then a layer of regular electrical tape over that to protect the self-amalgamating from UV since that stuff degrades in sunlight eventually. also make sure your project box itself has a drain hole at the bottom so if any water does get in it can get back out, sealed boxes can actually trap moisture worse than open ones sometimes. 1.4:1 on 40m with a homebrew dipole is perfectly fine, dont chase a 1:1 SWR, the feedline loss at that ratio is basically nothing.

yeah the display on those is notoriously dim, yaesu really cheaped out on that part. i replaced the backlight on mine maybe 4 years ago, its not a trivial job because you have to basically fully disassemble the front panel to get to the display assembly. the stock backlight is a cold cathode fluorescent which is already pretty old tech, some guys have converted to LED strips but you have to match the color temp or it looks weird. i dont have a written procedure bookmarked but i know there were some good threads on eham and also the 857 yahoo group archive if you can dig through that. the resistor mod you mentioned is real — theres a series resistor on the backlight circuit and going slightly lower value does bump the brightness but you're also running the lamp hotter so its a tradeoff on longevity. given the age of yours id probably just convert to LED and be done with it honestly.