James Moore

so ive been messing with RemoteHams for a few weeks now trying to get my station accessible from work and honestly the audio latency is driving me crazy. im running the RCForb client on my laptop connecting back to my home shack which has a IC-7300 hooked up to a old windows 10 box. the control works fine, PTT fires, everything seems to sync up okay but theres like this noticeable delay that makes it almost impossible to work any kind of pile up or even have a normal QSO without stepping on people. my upload at home is only around 15mbps which i thought would be fine but maybe not? and the work wifi is probably not helping either. i read somewhere that you can tweak the audio buffer settings in the server config but i cant find where that actually is in the interface. has anyone dealt with this and found a decent working combination of settings? also curious if anyone has compared this to running something like WebSDR or even just a straight VNC connection with WSJT-X in the background, wondering if thats more practical for just doing digital modes remotely. the SDR side of things actually works pretty well for monitoring, its the transmit control part that feels janky

If the other ham station sends me a "RST 448" report, it means my signal is readable with practically no difficulty, fair signal strength, and good D.C. note with just a trace of ripple. When I get a "5 by 8" signal report during SSB, it means my signal is perfectly readable and strong.

so our ARES group has a county-level exercise coming up in about three weeks and i've been tasked with putting together a portable station that can run for 12+ hours without shore power. been doing this a while but honestly every time i set up for a long field deployment i second-guess myself on the power side. right now i'm thinking a 100ah lithium battery with a 30a solar panel as a trickle top-off during the day, and then i have a small honda eu2200i as a backup if we really need it. the radio is an IC-7300 which draws maybe 20-22 amps at full power transmit but we're mostly going to be running 50-60% for net control stuff so probably averaging closer to 8-10 amps with receive cycles factored in. the antenna situation is where i'm less sure. i have a buddipole that i've used a ton but i'm also thinking about just throwing up a linked dipole on a 31ft spiderpole — way simpler to tune and honestly more efficient i think. we'll mostly be on 40 and 80 for local and regional traffic, maybe some 20m if we need to reach the state EOC. anyone done similar setups for a long exercise? my main worry is that 100ah wont be enough if we have a cloudy day and the solar doesn't contribute much. i dont want to be cranking the generator all afternoon because that draws attention and is just annoying.

so ive been meaning to do this for probably two years now and after the storm last month knocked out power for four days in our county i finally got serious about it. got a pelican case, my FT-857D, a 40ah lithium battery from bioenno, and a little solar panel. threw in some coax, a few PL-259 connectors, and an anderson powerpole distribution block. pretty sure i have the basics but honestly i feel like im still forgetting something obvious and i wont know until i actually need it and its too late. I'm mainly going to be running HF for ARES stuff, maybe some local 2m/70cm if needed. not sure if i should duplicate my HT in the kit or just rely on the 857. also debating whether to keep the whole thing in the car all the time or just staged somewhere in the house ready to grab. probably stupid question but figured id ask before i go spend more money on stuff i dont need

yeah i did basically the same thing last year except i used some random speaker wire i had and it worked fine honestly. one thing i wish somebody told me is to leave yourself some extra length when you first cut it, way easier to trim than to splice more on. i cut mine a little too short the first time and had to do this whole thing with a bit of extra wire and some tape and it was a mess. works fine now but still. also dont overthink the coax connector situation too much, ive seen guys use all kinds of janky stuff at the feedpoint and it just works. waterproofing it is probably worth doing though if its gonna live outside, i used some self-amalgamating tape over the whole box and havent had any issues through two winters.

welcome to the hobby. the 20 minute ragchew on your very first contact is actually pretty solid, some people just get a quick 59 73 and thats it for their first qso. the repeater guys in most areas are pretty welcoming to new folks so you picked a good way to start. what part of the country are you in if you dont mind me asking

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and ive always thought EME looked insane but also kind of impossible for a normal person. lately though ive been reading more about it and it seems like with JT65 and the digital modes it's actually become a lot more doable than the old days when you needed a massive array and a kilowatt just to hear anything. my current setup is a 15 element yagi on 2m and a TS-590 with a 100 watt amp, roughly 500w at the feedpoint after losses i think. been doing some tropo and sporadic e with it but thats obviously a completely different thing. is that even close to enough to try EME seriously or am i wasting my time pointing at the moon with that. i keep seeing people talk about EMD dish setups and these huge H-frame yagi arrays and it starts sounding very expensive very fast. also the elevation rotor thing — my current setup doesnt have elevation control, just azimuth. i assume i basically need to add that before anything else? or can you cheat with horizontal-only tracking and just pick windows when the moon is at a workable elevation angle naturally?

Have you looked at the Alpha Delta DX-CC? It's an OCF that works great on 80/40/20/10 without a tuner. A bit heavier than wire but the time savings during setup make it worth it for EmComm work.