Patricia Davis

so ive been messing with RemoteHams for a few months now and overall its been pretty solid for just monitoring but lately ive been trying to actually run QSOs through it and the connection just dies randomly. not every time but enough that its getting annoying. usually happens around 10-15 minutes into a contact, doesnt matter if im on 40 or 20m. my home station is running an IC-7300 connected through the RRC-1258 boxes and the internet link side seems fine, speedtest shows around 40mbps down at the remote end and about 25 at my operating location. latency is maybe 35ms on average which i thought would be plenty good enough. audio codec is set to GSM i think, been meaning to try opus but havent gotten around to messing with the settings much. what i cant figure out is whether this is a RemoteHams server issue, something on my router at the remote site, or maybe the RRC configuration. the keepalive settings on the RRC units are still basically at defaults because i followed the setup guide and it said defaults were fine for most setups. maybe thats the problem? anyone run into this and figure out what was actually causing it

tbh i just use N1MM for everything including regular FT8 sessions and yeah the interface is busy but you get used to it. theres a WSJT-X integration mode that works ok, not perfect but its serviceable. never saw the point of maintaining two programs and two logs personally that said i know guys at the club who swear by Log4OM for day to day and they seem happy. different strokes i guess

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and im starting to hear a lot about chasing DX and all these different awards and honestly im a little lost. like i understand the basic concept that you're trying to contact stations in different places but i dont really understand how the credits work or if you have to submit logs to someone or what. from what i can tell DXCC is countries (well entities i guess), WAS is all 50 states, and WAZ is zones but i dont really know what zones means in this context. are these all run by the ARRL or different organizations? and do you have to pay for each one separately? also i keep seeing people mention LoTW and i have an account but ive only uploaded maybe a dozen QSOs. someone at my club said i should be logging everything to LoTW from day one which i wish someone had told me earlier honestly. anyway if anyone can point me in the right direction id appreciate it, just looking to understand how all this works before i go too deep into chasing stuff

the collinear vs yagi thing really comes down to what you're trying to do. for general driving around and hitting repeaters, a decent collinear like the tram you mentioned or honestly even a comet SBB-5 does fine, more gain than a rubber duck, still omnidirectional. but if you want to actually work simplex out to 30-40 miles from a parked spot, a yagi is a completely different tool. the gain difference is real and so is the front to back rejection which actually helps more than people think when theres qrm. i ran a 5 element M2 on a camera tripod out the back of my suv for a while for portable ops, its kind of a pain to set up but on 2m it was night and day compared to the whip. got into a repeater about 55 miles out that my mag mount couldnt even hear. the trick is pointing it obviously, you gotta know roughly where you're aiming which isnt always practical from a moving vehicle but for parked ops totally worth it imo

honestly my biggest addition was just a headlamp. like a decent one with fresh batteries. i had a flashlight in there for a while but you need both hands when youre messing with connectors in the dark and holding a light in your teeth gets old fast. also if you dont have a way to charge your HT off the main battery you should probably sort that out. i just have a USB adapter that runs off my LiFePO4 and it keeps everything topped up. FT-857 is a great radio by the way, same one i use for portable ops, thing is a tank.

so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now, my neighbor is licensed and got me interested. i picked up a baofeng uv-5r at a hamfest last month thinking id just figure it out but apparently you actually need a license to transmit which i didnt fully realize lol anyway im trying to figure out how to study for the technician exam. i looked at the arrl handbook at the library and it seemed like way more than i need? like is there a simpler way to approach this. i heard something about a question pool, does that mean the actual test questions are already published somewhere and you can just memorize them or is it more complicated than that also how long did it take people to actually feel ready, im not great at math and some of the electrical theory stuff is intimidating me already

so ive been using N1MM for a while now, mostly for contests but i also just leave it running for regular QSOs which i know isnt really what its designed for but it works ok. a buddy at the club keeps telling me to try Log4OM and says it handles the day to day stuff way better while still being decent for contesting. im not sure i want to deal with migrating everything over though. the other thing is i run WSJT-X pretty regularly for FT8 and my current setup has N1MM and WSJT-X talking to each other through UDP which mostly works but i get occasional dupes logged or the freq doesnt update right, little annoyances. wondering if Log4OM handles that integration any smoother or if its just the same headaches with a different interface. anyone actually made the switch or run both? i have like 8 years of logs in N1MM at this point so thats kind of holding me back from doing anything drastic

yeah i do exactly this, Log4OM for everyday stuff and N1MM when a contest comes up. the WSJT-X integration with Log4OM works fine honestly, you just point the UDP port at it same as you would with any logger, just make sure youre not trying to run both loggers at the same time or theyll both be trying to eat the same UDP packets and it gets weird the ADIF sync thing is the only real headache. what i do is just export from N1MM after a contest and import into Log4OM to keep my master log clean. takes maybe 5 minutes after a weekend and i havent had duplicate issues as long as i let Log4OM check for dupes on import. not a perfect system but it works well enough that ive been doing it for like two years without any real disasters

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into a local 2m net last tuesday, been licensed for about 4 months now and i've just been listening mostly. the net control called for check-ins and i keyed up and gave my call but i think i stepped on someone else who was already transmitting? at least it sounded like there was a double when i heard the playback on the club's recording. nobody said anything to me and net control acknowledged me fine but i felt terrible about it. also i wasnt sure when exactly to give my call — like do you wait for a full pause after the net control finishes talking or is there some specific timing thing i should know about. i've read the ARRL stuff but it's kind of vague on the actual feel of it if that makes sense. is there like an unwritten rule about how long to wait. i also wasn't sure if i was supposed to give my full call or just suffix, the other stations seemed to just give their suffix but i went full call which maybe sounded weird anyway nobody kicked me off or anything so i guess it was okay but i want to do better next time

i dont know man, ive had my ft-991a sitting here for like 3 weeks and barely touched it. not sure if its the weather or what but i just havent felt motivated to fire it up. used to get on 40m every evening almost without thinking about it. now i sit down and just kind of stare at it and then go watch tv instead. maybe i need a new project or something to shake things off. anyone else go through phases like this?

Don't worry too much about the late check-in thing, most net controls are pretty happy to take late check-ins right up until they close the net. If you hear them do a second call for check-ins just jump in then, and if you miss that just wait for them to ask for any final check-ins before closing — they almost always do that. Checking in late is totally normal, life happens and people tune in at different times. On the traffic question, in most casual nets around here people just say their call and maybe "no traffic" or "just checking in" and that's perfectly fine. You'll start to pick up the rhythm of how your specific net runs after a few more weeks. Every net has its own little quirks honestly. The main thing is you're participating and that's what matters, those nets only stay alive because people actually show up.

so ive been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for it and take the technician exam. i downloaded some stuff but honestly theres so much out there i dont know whats worth using vs what i can just skip. like do i need to read an actual book or is just drilling the question pool enough to pass? i heard the pool has something like 400+ questions and only 35 show up on the test so im wondering if i can just memorize answers without really understanding everything. also is the electrical theory stuff actually important or can i kind of gloss over that part

yeah i went through the same thing last year. ended up putting up a Hustler 6BTV and laying down about 30 radials, mix of lengths, nothing too scientific. honestly compared to my old dipole which was also kind of low the vertical just sounds quieter on receive too which i wasnt expecting. might be a local noise thing but DX signals def seem punchier. only downside is the thing needs tuning every season when the ground shifts a little and the resonant point drifts, kinda annoying.

ok so i passed my general a few weeks ago and im still trying to figure out the whole frequency thing. i know generals get more of 40m than technicians but i keep second guessing myself before i transmit anywhere. like i know there's the actual FCC allocation and then there's the ARRL band plan which seems different? or at least the numbers dont always match up when i look at different charts online. mostly asking about phone on 40m. i've been sitting around 7.250 which i think is fine but someone in my club said i should stay away from the band edges and i dont really know what counts as a band edge or how close is too close. is 7.200 actually usable or is that sketchy territory for a general? i have a IC-7300 and the thing lets me tune anywhere so its not like the radio is stopping me from doing something dumb

so ive been trying to work FO-29 and AO-73 for a few months now with a handheld yagi setup, nothing fancy, just a pair of Arrow antennas and my FT-818 doing the uplink and an SDR for the downlink monitoring while i tune. the passes are short enough that by the time i find my own signal on the downlink and correct for the doppler im already halfway through the pass and fumbling with the radio. feels like im chasing my own tail every single time. the doppler correction is the part that kills me. i know the math, i get that the uplink and downlink shift in opposite directions on a linear transponder, but doing that in real time while pointing a yagi and trying not to spin around like an idiot in the backyard is just... a lot. ive been using gpredict for tracking and it helps but the manual tuning is just brutal. does anyone actually do this without some kind of computer-aided doppler correction? or am i just supposed to accept that the first minute of every pass is basically wasted getting set up? also curious whether AO-73 is even worth bothering with right now, ive heard its been in power saving mode a lot. FO-29 seems more reliable but the inverting transponder thing still messes with my head when im trying to hold a qso.

haha yeah the LoTW certificate thing threw me off too when i first tried to sign up, but its really not as bad as it looks once you just go through it step by step. basically ARRL wants to verify youre actually who you say you are so the confirmations mean something, the certificate is just the way they do that. you mail them a form or do it online and eventually you get a file you load into their software. once thats done uploading logs is pretty easy. as for which system — honestly most serious award chasers want LoTW because DXCC and a bunch of the big awards only count LoTW confirmations now. eQSL is more casual and some awards accept it but its kind of the second tier if that makes sense. doesnt mean its bad, plenty of people use both. and yeah the physical card thing — theres definitely an unwritten expectation that if someone sends you a card you send one back. it doesnt have to be fancy, you can get a batch printed pretty cheap from places that specialize in ham QSL cards. honestly getting cards in the mail never gets old even after years of doing this

I'm kind of in the same boat as you actually, hovering around 12wpm and it feels like treading water. But one thing that helped me a little bit was just listening to actual on-air QSOs even when I can only catch maybe half of it. there's something different about hearing real operators versus the computer generated stuff, the rhythm feels more natural somehow. W1AW practice sessions are good for this too since they do different speeds. Anyway not sure if that helps but you're definitely not alone in finding this part frustrating

90 minutes for that mod is pretty good, took me closer to two hours first time i opened one of those up, those SMD pads near the RF section are not forgiving if you rush it. what magnification were you using? i've got a cheap usb microscope that works okay but im thinking about getting something better before i start poking around in my 7600 which has even less room to work with

im in almost the exact same boat lol, built my qcx+ a few months ago and have been trying to figure out sota. 40m worked fine for me in the evenings but yeah daytime is rough, lot of static and qrm. i havent tried 20m yet but everyone keeps telling me to. maybe we should try and schedule a sked sometime, always cool to work another qcx user

Been using K3 sub-receiver for years now - game changer for split work. Once you are set up for split, all you need to do is press and hold a button and the radio switches the audio from the DX station to the pileup. Then you tune the pileup to figure out whom the DX is working. The key is discipline - listen 5-10 minutes before first call to establish their rhythm.

yeah the question pool is exactly what you think it is, the FCC publishes the actual pool of questions and the test gets pulled directly from that. so theoretically you could just memorize every question and answer and pass without really understanding any of it, some people do that, but i'd say at least learning the basics of what youre memorizing helps it stick better. HamStudy.org is honestly where i'd point you first, it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and drills you on those. took me maybe 3 weeks of studying maybe 20-30 min a day and i passed with an 85 or something like that. the electrical questions tripped me up at first but once you get the basic ohms law stuff down it clicks pretty fast. dont overthink the ARRL book, its good reference material but you dont need to read every word of it to pass the tech exam

not required by the FCC no, at least not for amateur radio. the NATO phonetics are just what basically everyone settled on because they work well — each word is chosen to sound distinct from the others even through a lot of noise or distortion. you'll hear romeo and it doesn't sound like anything else on the list, that's kind of the point. the old timers using different words are probably using older phonetic alphabets, there were a few different ones floating around before NATO standardized everything in the 50s. some guys just never switched or they learned from someone who hadn't. you'll hear things like sugar for S or baker for B from that era. it's not wrong exactly, just... old. in an emergency or a contest when things get hectic the NATO ones are way better because everyone knows them and they cut through better. honestly just drill the NATO ones until they're automatic. when you're trying to copy a callsign in a pileup you dont want to be thinking, you want it to just come out right.

classic alternator whine, happens to almost everybody at least once. what youre hearing is interference getting into the audio chain from the alternator and it follows engine RPM exactly for that reason. the dedicated power run helps with a lot of things but doesnt always kill this completely depending on how the vehicle is wired. first thing id try is one of those little inline noise filters on the power leads right at the radio itself, the ones that look like a small ferrite choke. sometimes thats all it takes. also check that your coax shield is grounded at the antenna mount and not floating, that can contribute too even if its not the main culprit. and if the hum is coming through the speaker specifically, sometimes just bonding the radio chassis to the vehicle chassis with a short heavy braid right at the mounting point helps more than you'd think. people underestimate how important the chassis bond is compared to just grounding the negative lead.

The key word in 97.119 is "communication" - this means the entire QSO, not each individual transmission. So in your ragchew example, you only need to ID at the very end of the contact and every 10 minutes during. The call sign must be transmitted by CW emission, by phone in English, or by RTTY/data when using digital modes.

im basically in the same boat as you so take this for what its worth but i found that just picking ONE cluster and sticking with it made things less chaotic. i use DXwatch almost exclusively now and just keep a QRZ tab open in the background. the toggling thing was driving me nuts too. also your dipole setup is fine for a lot of DX, dont let anyone tell you otherwise, ive heard guys on wire antennas work some pretty rare stuff when the timing is right