Amanda Thomas

im just gonna say the pi VPN route is more work up front but you own the whole thing end to end which matters to me. RemoteHams is fine but its another service that could just go away someday or change their pricing. i had a buddy who had his whole workflow built around a comercial remote service and when they had a server outage he couldnt get into his own station at all for like 3 days which is just silly. the 7300 does work pretty well over a direct connection with something like SDR# or even the native Icom RS-BA1 software, latency is the main enemy and you kinda just learn to live with a half second or so of delay. for contests its rough but for casual DX hunting its totally workable once you get used to it.

so ive been wanting to learn morse code for a while now, mostly because i see all these guys on 40m just rattling away and i have no idea whats happening. i passed my general a few months back and someone at the club mentioned i should try cw but i dont even know where to begin honestly. like do people still use tapes or is there an app for this now? i tried just looking up the alphabet chart and memorizing dots and dashes but that felt wrong somehow, a guy at the hamfest told me thats the worst way to do it but didnt really explain what the right way was. is there like a standard method people use or does everyone just figure out their own thing also how long does it realistically take before you can actually copy something on the air, i dont need to be fast just want to be able to follow a basic qso eventually

yeah the SDRplay is genuinely noticeably better on HF, not just a little bit better. the direct sampling hack on the RTL dongles was always kind of a hack and you can hear it. the RSP1B has actual frontend filtering and the noise floor is just cleaner, makes a real difference when youre trying to pull weak signals out on 40m or 80m especially at night when the band is crowded. for WSPR decoding specifically i went from decoding maybe 30-40 stations a night with the RTL to consistently seeing 80-100 with the RSPdx i eventually upgraded to, though thats the more expensive one. even the base RSP1B should be a meaningful step up. the 12-bit ADC vs the 8-bit in RTL dongles matters more than people think, especially for dynamic range when a nearby strong signal is stomping on everything. HackRF for receive only is kind of a waste yeah. its 8-bit too and its designed around transmit flexibility, the receive performance is actually not as good as a dedicated RX-only SDR at the same price point. if youre not doing anything that needs transmit capability id skip it entirely for this use case.

so ive been running Log4OM for general logging for a couple years now and honestly really like it for day to day stuff, the interface took some getting used to but the cloudlog sync and the way it handles QSL tracking is pretty solid. my issue is contest season. every time a big contest rolls around i end up fighting with it or just defaulting back to N1MM which i keep installed but barely touch outside of contests. recently started doing more FT8 and JS8Call and now WSJT-X is in the mix too and its getting complicated. WSJT-X talks to Log4OM okay through UDP but ive had some duplicate logging weirdness where ill work a station on FT8, it logs in WSJT-X, pushes to Log4OM, and then somehow ends up doubled in the ADIF. not every time, just often enough to be annoying. so the question is really — does anyone run all three? like N1MM for contests, WSJT-X for digital, and Log4OM as the master log? and if so how do you handle the deduplication without going crazy. or is there a cleaner workflow im missing. i feel like theres probably a better way to set this up that im just not seeing

the RemoteHams client is honestly pretty solid for what it is, i ran it for about a year before switching back to a custom setup because i wanted more control over the audio pipeline. the SDR feature you're talking about is real and works, you basically register your SDR source (i used an RTL-SDR feeding into it, though an Airspy or similar is way better for the dynamic range) and it shows up in their network for other users to tune around on. for club use that could actually be pretty nice if your members are okay with making accounts the latency thing is real for CW but for just monitoring or casual SSB it's fine. where i found it fell apart was anything PTT-critical, there's just enough jitter on a bad day that it gets frustrating. your VPN approach is actually probably lower latency if your connection is stable, the issue you're describing sounds more like the watchdog and power management side of things not the protocol itself. a good smart PDU with remote reboot capability fixed most of my similar headaches, something like the WattBox or even a cheaper TP-Link Kasa setup wired to the Pi's power circuit

had the same issue going from a budget rig to something with a real waterfall, honestly changes how you operate more than you'd expect. i still catch myself just watching the scope instead of actually listening half the time which is probably backwards but whatever it works. enjoy the new radio

so ive been trying to get Winlink Express set up for a few weeks now and im mostly there but the RMS gateway stuff is still confusing me a bit. I've got a Signalink USB running into my IC-7300 and i can see the waterfall activity on Vara HF but when i try to connect to a nearby gateway it either times out or i get a partial handshake and then nothing. The gateway shows up in the RMS list as active so i dont think its down. what i'm not sure about is whether im handling the message store-and-forward side correctly. like once a message goes out to the gateway, does it just sit in the Winlink cloud until the recipient picks it up? I've been testing by sending to my own gmail and it seems to hit eventually but sometimes takes a while. Also is there a way to see if your message actually made it to the gateway or do you just have to wait and hope? I've been digging through the logs in Winlink Express but half of it is inscrutable to me. Any of you running Vara HF setups have suggestions for getting more reliable connects?

yeah what he said, and also just to add — when i first got my general i spent way too long stressing about this stuff when i couldve just been on the air. the ARRL band plan is a good reference but dont confuse it with the actual FCC rules, theyre different things. the band plan is more like what the community has agreed on for keeping things organized, nets on certain freqs, digital modes clustered together etc. you can technically operate outside those suggestions as long as youre within your license privleges honestly just download the actual part 97 rules and ctrl+f your way to the frequency table, takes like 5 minutes and then you have the real answer not some guys blog from 2009

yeah the relay lag is almost certainly the relay itself, those mechanical ones have a pull-in time that can be 5-10ms and then theres the debounce situation on top of that. for PTT you really dont need that — just use an NPN transistor like a 2N2222 or even a BC547, collector to the PTT pin, emitter to ground, base through a 1k resistor from your arduino pin. done. no lag worth worrying about and it'll handle the current no problem for a control line. i did basically the same thing with my 7300 a while back, works great. one thing to watch is make sure youre isolating the arduino ground from the radio ground properly or you might get RF getting into the arduino when you transmit and causing all kinds of weird resets. I had that happen and spent a weekend chasing it before i figured it out. a small ferrite on the USB cable going to the arduino usually helps.

the mushy sound is almost always a technique issue more than a settings problem, at least in my experience. the weight setting on most radios defaults to 50 which is standard, i wouldnt mess with it too much until you get your paddle feel sorted out. what i'd suggest first is bumping the tension up a bit on your paddle, light tension tends to make you squeeze too hard and then youre triggering extra dits you didn't want. also if youre still learning, iambic mode B vs mode A can make a real difference in how things feel. some people hate mode B when theyre starting out. try switching to mode A if you havent already and see if that helps. mostly though its just seat time, your hands have to learn to relax. when i first started i was gripping the paddle like it owed me money and everything sounded awful. took me a few months before my fist started sounding halfway decent on the air.

yeah did this about a year ago and same experience — you won't notice anything casual operating but hook it up to a frequency counter or run it against a GPS ref and the difference is pretty clear. i mainly did it because i was doing some 10 GHz transverter work and the LO stability actually matters when you're multiplying up that high. small error at HF becomes a big problem at 10 gig. only thing i'd add is make sure you let the rig warm up for like 20-30 min before you judge the stability, the TCXO still has a warmup curve its just much tighter than stock. also while you had it open did you do anything with the TX low pass filters or mess with the bias at all? i've been tempted to touch the PA bias a little but don't want to go down that rabbit hole without a good reason.

not a dumb question at all, honestly the band plan stuff confused me for a while too. so the short version is the FCC Part 97 allocation is the actual legal limit — that's what you have to follow. the ARRL band plan is more of a gentlemens agreement about where different modes tend to hang out, like SSB up here, digital down there, that kind of thing. you wont get your license revoked for operating SSB in the wrong chunk of the band plan but you might annoy people. for 40m as a general you can do SSB from 7.175 to 7.300 MHz. the lower chunk from 7.025 to 7.125 is for CW and digital. the band edge thing your elmer mentioned — the reason you stay off the very edge is that your signal has sidebands and if youre running SSB on 7.300 you're actually transmitting a little bit above that depending on your filter and audio. so you could technically be out of band even if your dial says 7.300. most people just stay a few kHz inside to be safe.

just to add something that tripped me up when i first started - the polarization thing on 2m EME is a real issue and kind of annoying to deal with. Faraday rotation means the polarity of your signal is constantly shifting as it goes up and bounces back down, so if you and the other station are both running fixed linear polarization you can hit a null and basically disappear on each other even with good signal otherwise. some guys use circular polarization to get around this, others just live with the fading and work around it. its one of those things nobody really warns you about until youve had a contact just fall apart for no obvious reason. also the EME2 software and WSJT-X with JT65B are kind of the de facto tools now, worth getting familiar with them on regular 2m weak signal work first so youre not learning the software at the same time youre trying to figure out your first moonbounce contact. the timing accuracy matters a lot more than people expect coming from regular FT8 use.

these exercises are honestly way less scary than they sound beforehand. the first time i did one i had all this anxiety built up and then we basically spent like 3 hours sitting at a folding table passing written messages and drinking bad coffee. not complaining, it was actually a good experience just saying it wont be like a movie. bring more than you think you need battery-wise, that's the one thing that always bites people. and a clipboard and real pencils not just a pen because pens die at the worst times. if your go-kit has a decent HT and a mag mount or a portable j-pole you're probably fine for a shelter site. the EOC end usually has the more serious gear setup. just listen more than you talk at first, especially if theres a net control already running things, and you'll pick it up fast. the experienced guys are almost always happy to walk newer folks through stuff, at least in every group ive been part of

yep same. i actually think its how i learned most of what i know about operating proceedure, just listning for a long time before i jumped in. less embarasing that way lol

honestly the 7300 and 991a combo is probably holding you back a bit just from a receiver performance standpoint during heavy band use, not saying its bad gear but when youre trying to pull weak mults out of radio 2 while radio 1 is cranking 100w on a nearby band the dynamic range situation gets uncomfortable. the bandpass filters help a lot but theres still residual noise floor elevation depending on your antenna situation and how close the feedlines are routed. i run a similar two radio setup and the thing that clicked for me was basically treating radio 2 as almost purely a mult radio and not trying to squeeze run rate out of it. like yes sometimes youll get a mini run going on radio 2 if you find a clear frequency and a new mult comes to you but chasing that is usually a trap. stay disciplined, use radio 2 to snipe mults you need, get back to the run. also N1MM has that SO2R assistant stuff that can help with audio switching automatically, if youre not using that already it might help with the cognitive load a bit. i think theres a config guide on the N1MM reflector somewhere

ok so ive been licensed as a general for about 3 months now and i keep second guessing myself when it comes to 40 meters. like i know theres a chart somewhere that shows what frequencies generals can use vs extra class but when im actually sitting at the radio i get confused especially near the band edges. someone at my club told me to just stay away from 7.125 and below but then i see people operating down there all the time and im not sure if theyre all extras or what. also whats the deal with the band edge itself, like can i transmit right at 7.000 or is that a no go. i dont want to cause interference or worse get in trouble. i feel like ive read the rules three times and it still doesnt fully click for me

yeah this is basically the eternal question for anyone who does both contests and regular operating. i run N1MM strictly for contests and Log4OM for everything else, been doing it that way for maybe three years. the ADIF import into Log4OM after a contest weekend takes like two minutes and ive never had duplicates cause problems. its a bit of a workflow thing to get used to but honestly it doesnt bother me anymore. the N1MM and WSJT-X UDP thing really is solid though, i'll give your buddy that. when i was trying to do FT8 contacts during a contest period and log them in Log4OM at the same time it was a mess. ports conflicting, contacts not showing up right, eventually i just gave up and accepted that N1MM owns the radio during contest weekends. the rest of the time Log4OM gets control and everything talks to WSJT-X just fine through the standard port 2237 setup. the cabrillo issue you mentioned sounds like it might have been a exchange field problem or something with the contest definition file being out of date, that happened to me once with the county hunting stuff. worth checking if Log4OM had an update around that time.

went through this whole thing last year so I feel you. one thing that helped me was using one of those callsign lookup sites that lets you filter available calls by district and format — I spent like an evening just going through what was actually open before I even decided what I wanted to apply for. some of the calls that sound good are already taken obviously but there are more available ones than you'd think if you're flexible. I ended up getting mine on the first try but it wasnt a super popular combination so I think that helped. if youre going for something that a lot of people are probably watching then yeah it can take multiple attempts. just dont get too attached to one specific call right away is my advice, have like a short list of a few you'd be happy with

i just passed mine last month actually. the math questions were the ones that slowed me down the most, stuff like calculating the resonant frequency or figuring out the -3dB bandwidth on a filter. if your algebra is decent its not terrible but i definitely had to look up how decibels work again because i had completely forgotten. HamStudy.org was a lifesaver tbh, just kept drilling until i was hitting like 85 percent consistently and then went and sat for it. passed with room to spare. the 75m phone segment alone was worth it for me since thats where a lot of the nets i wanted to check into were operating

so ive been lurking around ham radio stuff for a while now, mostly just listening to my dad talk about it when i was a kid, and i finally decided i want to actually get licensed. i dont really know where to start though. like i know theres a test involved and you have to study but i dont know if theres a book i should get or a website or what. someone at work mentioned hamstudy.org but i dont know if thats enough on its own or if i need to do more than that. also how hard is the test really, im not great at math or electronics stuff so im a little worried. any advice would be helpful, i dont want to spend a ton of money on study materials if i dont have to

yeah what he said about the coax first. but also — what feedline are you using and how long is the run? 25 feet of mast sounds fine but if youre running like 75 feet of RG-8X down to the radio thats eating into your link budget more than people usually think. on 2m the losses add up fast especially if its old coax thats been sitting in the sun for a few years. LMR-400 or equivalent makes a real difference on a run that long. might be worth trying that before you start swapping antennas around.

yeah asking for fills is nothing to be embarrassed about, thats literally what the procedure is there for. better to get the message right than to pass along garbage traffic that causes confusion at the EOC. ive heard stories of operators who were too proud to ask and the address on a welfare message came out completely wrong, not great one thing that really helped our group was doing tabletop exercises before the actual radio drills, just sitting around and talking through scenarios so everyone knows their role before they're trying to do it live. some of the older elmers in our group are really good at running those and they're a lot less stressful than being on the air with a net control timing you

this is actually really encouraging to hear as someone who just got licensed last year and kind of assumed 10m was always going to be a dead band. I set up my first HF antenna a couple months ago and haven't really had much luck above 20m so maybe I need to just start checking more often and be patient waiting for those openings. Does the flux number give you a pretty reliable sense of whether the higher bands will be open or is it more complicated than that? I feel like every time I think I understand propagation something doesn't behave the way I expected

hamstudy is honestly the right call, just stick with it. the way i did it was just ran through practice exams over and over until i was consistently hitting 90% or better, at that point the real test felt pretty easy. you dont really need to understand all the theory deeply to pass tech, some of it like the electrical formulas you can just memorize the pattern and move on. for the actual exam session, yeah they usually give you scratch paper, at least every VE session ive seen does. its 35 questions, multiple choice, and if you studied on hamstudy the real questions will look very familiar because the pool is public. just dont overthink it. most people who actually study pass on their first try. find a local club doing a testing session, a lot of them do walk-ins and the whole thing takes maybe 20 minutes once you sit down.