Jessica Wilson

so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now and people just throw around all these abbreviations and short codes and im completely lost half the time. like i get that CQ means calling anyone but then theres QSL and QRM and QRN and QTH and honestly it just keeps going. i looked some of them up but theres like hundreds of them and i dont know which ones actually get used on the air vs which ones are just historical or whatever. is there a short list of the ones i actually need to know for everyday use? also is it different on CW vs phone, like do people say the letters out loud on voice or just use regular words

the timeout thing with VARA FM is almost always either the audio levels being off or the gateway is just busy or not actually monitoring at that moment even if it shows active in the map. the winlink gateway list doesnt always reflect real-time status perfectly, something could show green and actually be down for maintenance or whatever. for the audio levels — open VARA FM standalone (not through winlink, just run it directly) and key up your radio manually while watching the input meter. you want it hitting somewhere around 50-70% on the drive, not clipping, not too low. a lot of people set it too hot because they think more is better and then the gateway cant decode them. also make sure your radio isnt doing any TX processing like compression or speech proc, turn all that off. and yeah once you do get connected the email routing is pretty seamless honestly. you compose in WL Express, put a normal email address in the To field, it goes through the RMS gateway to the CMS servers and then out to the internet. receiving works the same way in reverse. theres nothing extra to configure on that end, it just works once the RF connection is solid.

i had the same situation with an inverted V last spring, ended up adding like 3 inches per leg to get it where i wanted, but my ground conditions are probably different than yours. one thing i noticed is if you wait until mid afternoon to measure vs early morning the readings can shift a bit, moisture in the ground and all that. so try to do your final trim at the same time of day each time if you can, or at least be aware of it. probably doesnt matter a ton but it got me chasing my tail for a day before someone told me that.

yeah what he said about the 8-bit ADC is the main thing people dont talk about enough. for FT8 receive it probably wont matter much since those signals arent that weak generally but WSPR is a different story and honestly the RTL-SDR v3 with a good LNA and some filtering can do surprisingly well on HF already if you havent tried that route. a Nooelec LaNA or the RTL-SDR blog LNA with a high pass filter does a lot before you spend more money on hardware. that said i did eventually go SDRplay and dont regret it

oh man the overpacking thing is SO real, my first activation i brought like a full sized folding table and two chairs and a cooler and my wife's portable canopy thing for shade. ended up leaving half of it in the car because i had to hike like a quarter mile to the operating spot and just said forget it. now i basically do QRP with a KX3 and a wire in a bag and that's it. less is definitely more for POTA once you get the hang of it also 40m at noon can be hit or miss depending on where you are, sounds like propagation was cooperating for you. i usually try to get on 20 first just to see what's happening and then drop down to 40 later in the afternoon when it starts opening up more locally. not saying that's the right way just what works for me

yeah the tech HF situation is kind of a bummer tbh, i remember being in the same spot. the ARRL band plan chart is way easier to read than raw Part 97 text if you havent found that yet, just google ARRL band plan and look at the tech column. saves a lot of headache trying to parse the actual regulatory language. also just a heads up — some of those 40m nets might let you check in just to listen or do traffic handling on VHF relay which some nets do, so worth asking the net control before you assume you're totally locked out

so ive been running a remote setup for about two years now using a mix of stuff — SDR-Console with a LimeSDR mini at the shack, some VPN tunneling back to my home network, and a Raspberry Pi doing the heavy lifting for PTT and CAT control. works fine mostly but its always been this janky thing where if the Pi crashes or something trips at home i have to either drive back or hope my neighbor can go hit the reset button. anyway a buddy of mine told me to just use RemoteHams and honestly i looked into it and i dont fully understand what the advantage is for someone already doing this. like is it mainly for people who dont want to set up their own infrastructure? or is there something im missing about the SDR remote piece of it. i know some guys use it for internet linking too but ive never gotten into that side of things. mostly asking because my lease situation might change and id potentially be putting the radio at a different QTH and i want something more robust than what i currently have cobbled together

ran into almost the exact same decision about two years back. ended up going RSPdx and havent regretted it once. the difference vs the RTL dongle was immediately obvious, like first night i fired it up i was pulling WSPR spots on 40m that the dongle couldnt even hint at. the HF direct sampling on it is genuinely good, not just "usable" good. the HackRF transmit capability sounds cool on paper but honestly for most of what you described i dont think youll miss it. if you want to do fox hunting transmitter stuff theres cheaper ways to handle that side of things. the HackRF receive really is mediocre, its more of a swiss army knife where all the blades are medium quality rather than one really sharp one if that makes sense. for serious monitoring work the RSPdx just walks all over it. only thing id add is make sure youre running SDRuno or at least give it a fair shot before you jump to SDR# or whatever, the RSP hardware and SDRuno are actually pretty well integrated and some of the noise reduction stuff in there is legitimately useful not just marketing fluff.

i had almost the exact same setup as you and went to a 7 element yagi last spring. the fascia board thing is real, i ended up just doing a second chimney strap lower down on the chimney and running a short mast off that which avoided any drilling. kinda ugly but it works. anyway yeah for weak signal it absolutely made a difference, worked some stations on SSB i had no idea were even on the band before

so i've been running a Diamond X50 on the roof for a couple years now and it does fine for the local repeaters but i've been thinking about putting up a yagi for some weak signal stuff on 2m. the thing is i'm not sure if the gain difference is actually going to matter for what i do which is mostly just chatting on the linked repeater system and occasionally trying to work some SSB when there's a good opening. my roof mount situation is kind of a pain because i've got a chimney mount that the X50 is on right now and adding a second mast would mean drilling through the fascia board which my wife is not thrilled about. been looking at the M2 2M5WL and some of the cushcraft stuff but honestly the prices have gone nuts lately. anyone made this switch and actually noticed a real world difference or am i just chasing gain numbers on paper

congrats on the license. I remember my first QSO, I was so nervous I forgot to give my callsign at the end and the other op had to ask me to ID lol. been licensed about 3 years now and i still get a little rush when i work someone new. stick with it, the rabbit hole goes real deep from here

yeah i noticed too, worked a ZL station on sunday which was only my second ever contact outside north america so i was pretty stoked about that. im running just a dipole in the attic so if i can do it anyone can probably. i still get confused about the difference between flux and the A index and K index, theres like so many numbers to track. anyway yeah 10m is the move right now, keep checking it

yeah what he said. i was so nervous my first time i forgot to unkey before i started talking and net control had to ask me to go again lol. nobody cared. these nets exist partly to give people practice so you're literally doing exactly what its for. one thing i'll add — if you ever genuinely dont know what to do in the moment just say your callsign and wait, net control will usually guide you through it. they've dealt with way worse than a missed ID at the end of a transmission trust me.

haha that first QSO feeling is real, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. i remember mine, i actually forgot to say my callsign at the end and the other guy had to remind me. took me like two more weeks before i stopped getting nervous every time i keyed up. you'll get used to it fast though, just keep jumping in when you hear a clear frequency

so ive been poking around on 20m and 40m the last few days and somethings off, like i was getting some really decent dx one minute and then it just drops to nothing, checked the solar flux and yeah its been kinda all over the place but still felt stranger than usual. not complaining because i worked a guy in the azores on tuesday which honestly surprised me, but then couldnt even raise my buddy two states over later that same evening on 40. bands are weird man. anyone else noticing this or is it just me and my janky setup

so i finally got to participate in a full scale simulated disaster exercise through our local ARES group and honestly it was way more eye opening than i expected. we were running a scenario where the county EOC had lost all normal comms and we had to coordinate shelter-in-place messaging across three different served agencies at the same time. the thing that got me was how fast things fell apart when operators werent sure who had net control. like we had practiced the individual pieces but when everything was running at once people just started calling in whenever and the frequency got absolutely stepped on. net control did a great job eventually getting it sorted but those first 20 minutes were kind of a mess honestly. also learned that my go bag setup is not as ready as i thought. my mag mount antenna fell off my car twice during repositioning and i was running off a battery that i hadnt load tested in like 6 months and it showed. lesson learned there for sure. anybody else run drills like this and have stuff that surprised them? curious what other groups do differently because i feel like we could improve how we hand off net control when someone needs to leave or step away

the farnsworth thing really does work but you gotta stick with it longer than feels comfortable, thats the whole deal. your brain needs to learn the sound of each character at full speed before anything else matters. if you slow down the characters themselves youre basically teaching yourself a different language that you'll have to unlearn later. what helped me more than anything was just doing it every single day even if only for 15 minutes. consistency beat long sessions every time. i used lcwo and did the koch method starting from scratch even though i already knew the alphabet — felt silly at first but going character by character and only adding a new one when you hit 90% accuracy on the current set, something about that just builds real solid recognition instead of kinda-sorta recognition. also — and this took me forever to accept — stop writing everything down. try to just hear words. even if you only copy one word out of five at first thats fine. copying on paper slows your brain down in a weird way once you get past a certain speed. you want it to feel more like listening to someone talk than decoding a puzzle.

yeah this is something i went through a couple years back. short answer is a vertical with a bad radial field is genuinely worse than a dipole at 35 feet, at least in my experience. i put up a quarter wave vertical for 40 and was really disappointed until i got serious about the radials. started with 8 radials and it was noticeably noisier and my signal reports were actually worse than the dipole in some directions. once i got up to around 24 radials, each about 33 feet long, things started to click and it did pull ahead of the dipole for DX. low angle stuff, europe from the midwest, that kind of path. but for regional stuff within like 500 miles the dipole still wins because of the higher angle radiation. so it kinda depends what you're actually trying to work. if you're hunting DX it can be worth it but dont tear down the dipole, they do different things.

i was in the same boat when i got my tech, spent like a whole evening convinced i couldnt do anything on HF at all lol. the CW privileges on the lower bands are real but the segments are tiny, like we're talking a few kHz on 40m i think. not a ton of room but its something if you want to practice code. upgrade to general as soon as you can tho honestly, it opens up so much more and the exam isnt that bad

get there friday if you can, seriously. some of the best deals happen when people are still setting up their tables and they dont want to haul stuff back. i scored a barely used IC-7300 for way under market a couple years ago just wandering around friday afternoon. the parking situation is whatever, just budget extra time and maybe bring cash for the lot fees. hotel wise we usually stay in dayton proper and just deal with the drive, never had it take more than like 30-40 min even on busy days

Paper cards are still magical to receive! I'd suggest doing electronic QSLs for awards and efficiency, but send paper cards for special contacts or when requested. Despite the advantages of electronic QSLs, physical QSL cards are often historical or sentimental keepsakes.

yeah i had almost the exact same thing happen on a DC receiver i built years ago and it drove me crazy for weeks. ended up being that the pot itself was acting like an antenna and picking up mains hum, i had to shield the wiring to it with a short piece of braid. also try rotating the board around if you can, sometimes you just happen to be oriented wrong relative to a noise source and physically moving things helps. sounds dumb but it works sometimes

yeah the fan swap is worth doing if the fan noise bothers you during SSB operation on weaker signals, some people find it distracting when monitoring. i put a Noctua NF-A4x10 in mine, had to fab a little adapter bracket out of some scrap aluminum but it fit fine. temps actually run maybe 2-3 degrees warmer under key-down conditions compared to the stock fan at full blast but nothing that ever concerned me, the thermal cutback doesnt kick in any earlier that ive noticed. on the TX unlock thing i'd just leave it alone personally. the extended RX is a grey area but generally tolerated, messing with the TX side opens up a whole different can of worms especially if you ever have the radio looked at for warranty or repair work. not worth the headache.

About time the ARRL caught up with modern repeater infrastructure. The old directory was getting pretty stale with all the System Fusion and DMR deployments happening. Worth every penny for traveling ops.

yeah 17 and 15 have both been punching above their weight this week. i noticed it tuesday evening, had a long rag chew with a CT3 station and the signal was genuinely 59 both ways which i wasnt expecting at all. the SFI being up helps but i think we also had a stretch of low geomagnetic activity, the K index was sitting at 1 or 2 for a few days in a row and that combination is kind of the sweet spot if you're trying to work long path stuff. for saturday your best bet is probably getting on before sunrise your time, that gray line window into the pacific can be real short from the midwest, maybe 20-30 minutes depending on time of year. 15 might be your best shot for JA and then check 12m later in the morning if the flux stays up. worth keeping an eye on the DXMaps cluster too just to see whats actually being heard where.