Jessica Wilson

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from me, K-4822 if anyone's familiar with it. i was pretty nervous honestly because ive read so many posts about people struggling to get their 10 contacts and i only had about 2 hours before i had to leave. ended up running 20m with my KX2 and a linked dipole i threw up between two trees, maybe 20 feet high in the middle. got 23 QSOs in about 90 minutes which i was really happy with. most of the hunters found me pretty quick after i spotted myself on the POTA app. anyway my questions are kind of scattered. first, is it worth calling CQ for a while before spotting yourself, or just spot right away? i waited maybe 10 minutes and only got 2 calls so i spotted and then it went crazy busy. also is there any etiquette around how long you stay on a frequency once you've been spotted? felt a little rude just QSYing but i was getting QRM from somewhere around 14.245 and needed to move. and last thing — do most people log in real time with an app or just paper and upload later? i was using paper and it felt a bit chaotic trying to write and talk at the same time.

so i went through the exact same thing like 6 months ago and what finally clicked for me was just listening to a busy pass first without transmitting at all. like just tune around the whole passband during a high elevation pass and see if you can hear other people working each other. if you can hear them then you know your rx chain is at least functional. if you cant hear anything on a good pass with a known active bird then somethings wrong with the setup before you even worry about the doppler stuff. ao-7 in mode b is actually pretty forgiving once you get the hang of it but it can be tricky because that satellite is ancient and the power levels are weird depending on lighting conditions. fo-29 is more consistent imo. gpredict does have a rig control plugin that can handle doppler correction automatically if you want to set that up before your next attempt, takes maybe an hour to configure if you have a rig that supports CAT control.

general is definitely a step up from tech but honestly not by as much as you'd think. the question pool is bigger and yeah some of the electrical theory stuff can trip you up if you're not used to thinking about things like impedance or how a superheterodyne receiver works, but you don't need to actually understand all of it deeply to pass the test, you just need to recognize the right answer hamstudy is exactly what i used and it works great, just do the practice exams over and over until you're consistently hitting like 85% or better and you'll be fine on test day. the propagation stuff sounds scary but its actually pretty interesting once it clicks, like understanding why 40m works great at night and 10m is all over the place depending on the solar cycle. that stuff starts making sense pretty fast 30 minutes a night for 3 or 4 weeks should be plenty honestly. and once you get that general ticket the whole HF world opens up and you'll wonder why you waited so long. 40 meters alone will keep you busy for years

so i finally got around to building a dipole instead of buying one, been putting it off for way too long. used 14 gauge stranded copper wire i had laying around from an old project, cut each leg to about 16.5 feet for 40m operation roughly. got it up in an inverted V config with the apex at maybe 30 feet off a tree in the backyard. the feedpoint is where im a bit lost though. i twisted the wire ends together with the coax braid and center conductor, taped it up with self-amalgamating tape and called it done for now. swr is reading around 1.8:1 at 7.150 which honestly isnt terrible but i feel like i did the feedpoint wrong. should i be using a balun there? ive seen people go back and forth on this and im not sure if it actually matters for receive or if im overthinking it. also the two legs are at about 120 degrees apart, not sure if that changes the feedpoint impedance much compared to a flat dipole. been getting decent reports on 40m so maybe it doesnt matter but would like to understand it better.

I was in the same boat last year! All FEMA IS courses use current versions and require you to get a FEMA student ID. I'd suggest doing ICS-100 and IS-700 first since those are prerequisites for the ARRL EC-001 emergency communications course.

honestly i tried js8call twice and both times just sat there for like 45 minutes hearing nothing so i went back to ft8. maybe im on the wrong frequencies or wrong time of day idk. what dial frequency are you guys actually finding activity on 40m

so i've been meaning to get into LEO satellite work for probably two years now and i finally just sat down and did it last weekend. been using gpredict for tracking which honestly works pretty well once you get the keplerian elements updated, but i had a few things that really confused me during the pass. the doppler correction is what got me. i set up gpredict to control my rig (IC-9700) and it was shifting the frequencies automatically which is great in theory but i kept losing the signal partway through the pass and i couldnt figure out if it was doppler drift or just the satellite going behind something. house is in a kind of low spot with trees on the south side so that doesnt help. also the linear transponder on AO-73 — i know you have to invert your sense on SSB when working it but i kept hearing what sounded like the right signals and then when i transmitted i couldnt hear myself coming back down. was running maybe 5w into a handheld yagi i built from a tape measure design, az/el was totally manual just holding it up. is 5w even enough or do i need to point better or both. i really cant tell which problem i have

might be worth checking if there's any correlation with your power supply voltage drooping at that moment — even a brief sag can cause the rig to fold back. i had a dropout issue that drove me crazy for a month and it was the bench supply current limiting for literally milliseconds under key-down, not enough to show on a slow meter but enough to freak out the radio. threw a scope on the supply rail and saw it immediately. probably not your issue if youre on a good supply but worth ruling out quick before going deeper into the rig itself.

been using my $25 rtl-sdr v3 for about two years now mostly monitoring local pd and fd stuff around 450-470 mhz range with a discone and its been pretty solid. finally decided to get a hackrf one thinking it would be better since it costs way more and can tx too but honestly the hackrf seems way less sensitive than the rtlsdr, like i can barely hear the same signals that come through crystal clear on the dongle. tried messing with the LNA and VGA settings in sdr# for hours but cant seem to get it working as well. friend has one too and same issue am i missing something obvious here or is the hackrf just not meant for regular scanning? the frequency coverage is nice but if i cant actually hear anything what good is it

so ive been doing contests for about 4 years now, mostly single op on 20 and 40, and i keep reading about SO2R and how serious contesters swear by it for rate but honestly every time i try to wrap my head around it i get a headache. like the station complexity alone seems insane. two radios, two antennas, bandpass filters, some kind of controller so you're not blowing up your second receiver when the first rig is transmitting... it adds up fast both in terms of money and just mental overhead during a run. my current setup is a 7300 with a fan dipole and i do okay, usually somewhere in the middle of the pack for my category but i want to improve. someone at the club said the real gains for most ops arent SO2R anyway, they're in smarter rate management — like knowing when to run vs S&P, when to QSY a multiplier hunt, stuff like that. is that true or is SO2R really where the big jump in score comes from? curious what people who actually do this think, not looking for the textbook answer

did this exact comparison a few years back, had both antennas up at the same time for a couple weeks which was a pain but worth it. the vertical with a decent radial field — i had 24 radials, mixed lengths mostly around 30-33 feet — did noticeably better on dx paths, particularly long path stuff toward JA and into europe at greyline. but the dipole, even at your kind of height, has a lower noise floor in my experience. the vertical picked up way more local QRM from my neighbors solar inverter and whatever else is floating around. so its not as simple as vertical wins. if youre in a noisy suburban environment the dipole might actually be more usable day to day even if it theoretically loses a couple db on low angle. 16 radials is a reasonable starting point but honestly every one you add does help, just with diminishing returns past like 16-20 or so

so ive been doing sweepstakes CW for about 6 years now and always just run SO1R, usually put up decent numbers but i keep seeing guys on the 3830 scores page just absolutely crushing it with SO2R setups and im starting to wonder if im leaving a lot of rate on the table. my current setup is a k3 and an ic-7300 sitting right next to each other and ive got antenna switching sorted out between a 3el yagi on 15 and a dipole on 40 but i never actually tried running both radios at the same time in a contest. my main concern is honestly the interference between the two rigs when theyre both transmitting even close in time. i know the k3 has the sub-receiver but im talking actual SO2R with two separate antennas and two separate transmitters. is the learning curve as brutal as everyone says or is it one of those things that clicks after like one contest

ok so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it got me curious. i looked into it a bit and i guess theres different levels of licenses? technician then general then something else? im honestly not sure where to begin studying or even what the test is actually like. do you just memorize answers or do you actually have to understand the stuff. i dont want to fail it and feel dumb lol. any suggestions on how to study would be appreciated, i have maybe an hour a night to put into it