Jessica Wilson

so anyway i finally started doing this too after my buddy told me about it. i kept thinking i had to be DOING something when i got on the air but honestly just listening is half the fun when the bands cooperate. 40 gets weird and wonderful after like 9pm local. also heard some spanish language traffic last week which i think was south america but im still figuring out propagation so who knows

I just started doing WWFF activations this year and the spotting thing is so true. I didnt spot myself my first time and basically sat there calling CQ into the void for way too long before a random station finally picked me up and spotted me, then suddenly the pile started. Now i always self-spot right when i get set up and it makes everything so much easier. Also i use HAMRS for logging in the field, it exports directly to the format WWFF wants which saves a lot of headache.

The transmitter is based on Steve Weber's design because it's perfect and is used in some form by many QRP CW rigs. It gives me between 4-6 watts output on all bands Sometimes simple is better - proven designs get you on the air faster!

yeah that translation problem is really real. i went through the same thing during a Red Cross shelter support exercise maybe three years ago now. you spend all this time getting good at radio procedure and then the moment a non-ham asks you a simple question you kind of blank because your brain is still half in radio mode. our group started doing a thing where one person is designated strictly as the liaison and they dont touch the radio at all, they just sit with the agency staff and translate. made a huge difference honestly. the power thing comes up every single time in our after-action reviews. every time. somebody always underestimates how long they'll actually be deployed. i run two 100ah LiFePO4 batteries now and i still make sure i know where i can recharge if it goes long. the fancy case stuff is great but if you havent done the math on your actual draw over 12 or 24 hours you're just guessing. sounds like a good exercise though, having real EOC staff there is pretty rare from what i've seen, most groups just simulate the whole thing which only gets you so far.

Regular drills help you identify weaknesses and practice setup. I do monthly go-kit deployments in my backyard - sounds silly but I've caught several potential failures this way, including a bad battery connection that would've killed my setup during a real emergency.

okay so i just passed my general last month and upgraded from tech, and ive been thinking about applying for a vanity call. my current sequential call is kind of a mouthful and honestly i just want something shorter for when im doing HF work. 1x2 or 2x1 would be ideal but i know those are basically impossible to get without waiting forever. anyway i went through the ULS system and looked at some of the available calls in my district and there are actually a few 1x3 calls sitting there that i kind of like. my question is — when you apply for a vanity do they actually process them in the order received, or is it more like a lottery if multiple people apply for the same call on the same day? i read something somewhere that said there was a 30 day window thing but i cant tell if thats still how it works or if that changed. the FCC docs are... not exactly light reading lol also does it matter that i only have a general and not extra? like will they deprioritize my application or is it just first come first served regardless of license class

one thing nobody mentions when you start looking at EME is the mechanical headache of actually tracking the moon with any kind of accuracy. you can have all the RF sorted and then discover your azimuth elevation rotator system is the weak link. i went through two different controller setups before landing on one that tracks smoothly enough to not waste half my window chasing the moon around. something to think about early before you're committed to a particular antenna configuration because the mounting and tracking hardware can end up costing as much as the antenna itself depending what route you go

yeah 10 meters has been waking up pretty regularly the last month or so. we're climbing toward solar max so this is kind of what you'd expect, cycle 25 has been outperforming a lot of the predictions which is great news for us HF folks. SFI around 180 is definitely on the higher end, generally speaking anything above 150 and you start seeing 10 and 12 open more reliably but there's other stuff going on too — the K index matters a lot, if there's geomagnetic activity from a CME or whatever it can wipe out the higher bands even when flux is decent. i always keep an eye on both. spaceweather.com is handy or just the noaa space weather site. the JA opening on 15 is classic for your time of day too, long path can do some funny things depending on where you are. keep watching the cluster and youll start to get a feel for when the bands are going to cooperate. 17 meters has also been surprisingly good for DX lately if you havent tried it much

so ive been running an inverted V for 40m for a couple years now, apex at about 35 feet with the ends dropping down to maybe 8 feet off the ground on each side. works ok but i keep reading that a flat top dipole at the same apex height would outperform it, especially at lower takeoff angles for dx. my problem is i only have the one tall support (a pine tree roughly in the middle of the yard) so a flat top would mean the ends are also at 35 feet which means i need two more supports at the far ends of the lot. anyone actually done a side by side comparison or modeled both configs? i ran it through mmana-gal once and the flat top showed better gain at low angles but honestly i wasnt sure i set up the inverted V geometry right in the model. the ground constants i used were probably wrong too. also my lot is kind of irregular shaped so one end of the dipole would be closer to the house foundation than id like. not sure how much that matters at 40m wavelengths. anyway curious what people have actually experienced not just what the modeling says

yeah what he said about the inverting transponder, that took me a embarrassingly long time to get sorted out. the other thing i'd add is honestly just spend a pass or two not even trying to make contacts, just sit on rx and watch where signals are, listen to how the doppler sounds, get a feel for how the passband is moving during the pass. i found that really helped me before i started stressing about actually working someone. AO-73 can be kind of finicky depending on power levels too, the transponder will start to saturate if too many people are running too much power and then everything gets muddy. some passes are just rough because of that, nothing wrong with your setup.

yeah on the dx stuff you pretty much always want phonetics because half the time the other station doesnt speak english as a first language anyway and NATO phonetics are international so foxtrot means foxtrot whether you're in ohio or japan. i learned that the hard way when i was trying to work a JA station and i just said my letters normally and he kept sending back the wrong call because he thought my C was a D or something, started doing phonetics after that and it cleared right up

1.8 at 7.150 isnt bad at all for a first build honestly, most tuners will handle that no problem and plenty of rigs will too. the inverted-v geometry will shift your resonant point a bit compared to a flat-top so your effective electrical length is a little different than what the formula gives you. the drooping ends also lower the feedpoint impedance somewhat, 50 ohm coax into an inverted-v can get you into that territory even when everything is technically right. i'd try trimming a few inches off each leg at a time and rescanning across the band to see where your minimum SWR actually falls. if its below 7.150 you trim, above you add wire. the ferrite chokes are a good call, common mode is definitely a real thing with coax-fed dipoles especially if your feedline runs parallel to the antenna for any distance. self-amalgamating tape on the feedpoint is fine, i do the same thing.

bias drift on one of the finals would be my first guess honestly. the symptom you're describing -- gradual power loss, no thermal shutdown, no error codes -- that pattern usually points to a transistor that's still partially functional but the bias point has shifted. the 7300 uses RD70HHF1s in the PA stage if i remember right and they're not exotic but they do drift over time especially if the rig ever ran hot for extended periods. before you do anything drastic i'd pull the covers and measure quiescent current on the PA with no RF drive. there are a few guys on the icom repair forums who've documented this exact fault and most of them found one device biased way off from spec. sometimes you can trim it back if the adjustment is still in range, sometimes the transistor itself is just weak and needs replacing. either way it's not a terrible job if you're comfortable with RF power stages, just be careful obviously, those drains can bite you even at idle. also worth checking the ALC voltage at the PA input with a scope while transmitting -- if the ALC is clamping harder than it should that's a different but related problem and it would show up pretty clearly.

yeah 10m was absolutely on fire here too, i'm in the midwest and i worked like 40 countries in a couple hours which almost never happens for me outside of a contest. the sfi has been climbing for a few weeks now and some of the predictions are showing we might be close to the actual peak of cycle 25 sooner than originally thought. i've been keeping an eye on the noaa space weather site and also pskreporter which is honestly underrated for seeing where your signal is landing in real time before you even start calling cq. the trick i've found is just to have 10m in the background on a second radio if you have one, or just check in every hour or so because these openings can fire up fast and disappear just as quick. the long path to japan in the morning hours has been especially good lately if you can get up early enough

haha the reference number thing gets everyone at first. i remeber my first activation i just wrote the KFF number on a piece of tape and stuck it on the side of the radio so i'd stop blanking on it mid-pileup. sounds dumb but it worked. after a few activations it just rolls off the tongue automatically. the P2P contacts are honestly one of the best parts of the whole program imo. theres something weirdly satisfying about making contact with another person who's also standing in a field somewhere with a radio strapped to their back. i've had some really good ragchews come out of those after the pileup dies down. congrats on the first one, 47 QSOs is a solid outing especially if conditions werent great

yeah the three system thing trips up a lot of newer folks, totally understandable. so the short version is: LoTW (Logbook of the World) is run by the ARRL and its the gold standard for award credits like DXCC. most serious DXers use it and if you're chasing DXCC you really do need it. the confirmations carry actual weight for awards. the downside is it can feel clunky and getting your certificate set up the first time is a bit of a process. eQSL is a separate private system, easier to use honestly, and some people prefer it — but ARRL doesnt accept eQSL confirmations for DXCC so if thats your goal it wont help you there. that said a lot of casual operators and some dx stations use it and its fine for just tracking contacts personally. paper QSL cards are kind of their own thing — some people love them, some dont bother. the bureau system is basically a way to exchange cards cheaply through national amateur radio organizations instead of paying postage to mail individual cards internationally. your national society handles sorting and forwarding. it's slow, like months sometimes, but it works. if you want cards from rare DX stations a lot of them will only respond via bureau or direct mail with a self addressed envelope and return postage. honestly just keep uploading to LoTW regularly and dont stress the rest until you know what awards you actually want to chase. you can always backfill later.

yeah you've got it a little backwards — the digipeater just repeats the packet on RF, it doesn't push anything to the internet. you need an igate for that, which is a separate station that's connected to the APRS-IS network and also listening on 144.390. when your packet gets digi'd, an igate somewhere nearby has to hear it and then upload it to the servers. so if there's no igate covering your area you could have perfect RF and still be invisible online. check aprs.fi and look at the raw packets tab for your callsign, sometimes it shows up but delayed. also look at who's igateing in your area using the map — filter for igates specifically. if there's a gap in coverage you might want to think about running your own igate, which with direwolf is actually pretty easy to set up, you just need a decent internet connection and to configure the APRSIS32 or direwolf IGSERVER settings properly.

so we've got a ARES exercise coming up in about 6 weeks and i'm trying to figure out the best way to handle power for a 48 hour deployment. the site is a county fairground, no shore power anywhere near where they want us set up, and we're talking about running two HF stations plus a VHF/UHF repeater crossband setup and some digital stuff on a laptop. my gut says just bring the honda eu2200i I already own and call it day, but a couple of the other guys want to do a pure battery/solar setup and honestly i'm not sold on that for 48 hours with that much load. we did the rough math and we're looking at maybe 20-25 amps average draw when both HF rigs are in receive and the repeater is idling, and obviously way more when someone keys up. the antenna situation is also a mess. last exercise we used a couple of NVIS inverted-Ls off a 30ft telescoping mast and they worked okay but setup took forever. thinking about maybe doing a linked dipole this time so we can cover 40 and 80 without retuning, or maybe just a fan dipole. anybody run fan dipoles in a field setting and had good results, or does the feedline situation become a nightmare with all the other RF floating around? also just generally curious what other people are bringing to these things these days. feels like every exercise I read about online is different and half of them dont really talk about what actually went wrong.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and figured id just ask here because i keep reading contradictory stuff online. im running a modest setup, IC-7300 into a LDG tuner, and right now i have a half wave dipole for 40m strung up inverted-V style about 30 feet at the apex. its fed with RG-8X into the shack. works okay i guess but im wondering if a vertical would do better for DX since ive read a bunch of times that verticals have a lower takeoff angle and thats better for longer paths. the thing is i also read that verticals need a decent radial system or they just suck up the RF into the ground and you lose half your power anyway. and i dont really have the yard space to bury like 60 radials or whatever the recommendation is. i was thinking about one of those trap verticals or maybe even just a simple quarter wave with like 4 or 8 radials elevated a couple feet off the ground. current dipole does get me into europe from the midwest pretty regularly on 40 when conditions are up but im wondering if im leaving contacts on the table. anyone actually compared these two antenna types head to head at their own station? not looking for theoretical stuff, just real world experience from people who have actually used both.

so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and i mostly just do 2m/70cm stuff, some APRS, talked on a few local repeaters. its been fun but i keep hearing people talk about HF and working dx and whatnot and honestly it sounds way more interesting than anything ive done so far. im thinking about taking the General exam but im not really sure how to study for it or how different it is from the tech exam. the tech exam felt pretty manageable once i went through the question pool a few times on ham study dot org or whatever. is General similar or is there a lot more actual electronics theory i need to understand? i remember struggling a bit with the ohms law stuff on tech and im worried General is going to be like, full of that. also once you pass, do you get HF privileges right away or do you have to wait for something to update in the FCC system? i dont even have an HF radio yet but im just trying to plan ahead i guess

yeah i went through the exact same thing with my uv5r when i first started, that radio will drive you nuts. i think there's a setting called T-CTCS for transmit and R-CTCS for receive, make sure you're putting the 100.0 in the T-CTCS slot not the R one, that tripped me up for like a week before someone pointed it out to me at a club meeting

hey welcome to the hobby, good on you for wanting to do things right before jumping in. CTCSS is basically a continuous sub-audible tone that your radio sends along with your voice when you transmit — the repeater is listening for that specific tone and wont open up unless it hears it. its not really a password, more like a way to keep the repeater from being triggered by interference or signals from other repeaters on the same frequency. think of it like a handshake. for your Baofeng you want to set the tone on transmit side only in most cases — thats usually labeled T-CTCS or just CTCS-T in the menu. the receive side (R-CTCS) is a different thing and just filters what you hear, most people leave that off unless theres a specific reason. the tone value itself should be listed in the repeater directory alongside the frequency and offset, something like 100.0 or 136.5 Hz. if you cant find it you can always reach out to the club directly and just ask, theyre usually happy to help new folks get on. once you get it programmed just give a short call like your callsign and see if anyone comes back. most repeaters have a courtesy beep after you unkey that tells you the repeater heard you and the squelch tail dropped. good luck

the thing that always gets people is the paperwork and reference stuff — like having your frequencies written down on a laminated card, ARES net schedules, ICS forms if you do EMCOMM stuff, that kind of thing. when stuff is actually going wrong your brain does not work the way you think it will and having that stuff printed out is way more useful than you'd expect. also a basic toolkit, not just connectors but a small wrench set, electrical tape, zip ties, maybe a short jumper. i cant tell you how many times ive watched someone show up to a deployment and spend 20 minutes looking for a 10mm to mount an antenna bracket. on the HT question — yes, bring one, just do it. different band plan, backup if the 857 has a problem, you can hand it off to someone else if you need to. the redundancy is the whole point. and personally i stage mine in the house near the door, not the car, because cars get hot and cold and stuff degrades faster. but thats just me.

Just passed my Technician exam and trying to decide on my first radio. Local ham store is pushing a dual-band mobile rig over a handheld, saying it'll be more enjoyable. Budget is around $200-300. I'm thinking mobile with power supply and base antenna might be the way to go for better range to local repeaters. What do you think for a complete beginner?

honestly the technician exam is pretty approachable even without any electronics background, dont let it intimidate you. the question pool is public, which is a huge deal — the actual test questions come directly from that pool so you're not getting surprised by anything you havent seen before. hamstudy.org is probably where id point you first, just make an account and start running through the practice questions. it shows you how you're doing per category and once you're consistently hitting like 85% or higher on the practice tests you're probably ready to sit for the real thing. the ARRL Technician study guide book is good too if you're someone who likes to actually understand the why behind the answers rather than just memorizing, but honestly a lot of people just do the flash card grind on hamstudy and pass fine. the exam itself is 35 questions and you need 26 correct, so theres some room for error. look up a VE session near you through the ARRL website or ham study also lists exam sessions. your neighbor might even know of a local club doing testing which is usually pretty low key and chill compared to what you might be imagining