Jessica Davis

honestly the store and forward thing confused me too for a while. the way i understand it now is basically any JS8Call station that hears a message meant for someone else will hold onto it and retransmit it if that station shows up later or if another path opens up. its kind of like a really slow packet network almost. cool in theory and ive seen it work but yeah in practice the network is thin enough that you cant always rely on it. i still run FT8 probably 80% of the time when im doing digital just because thats where everyone is. but for portable ops or just wanting to actually say something to somebody JS8Call is fun. had a 20 minute back and forth with a guy in Finland last winter on 30m which would have been literally impossible on FT8 format. that alone sold me on keeping it in the rotation.

so i finally finished my first scratch built QRP rig, been putting it off for about two years because it seemed intimidating but honestly it wasnt that bad. built a 40m CW transceiver based on a design i found in one of the older QST issues, running somewhere around 4-5 watts out. got my first contact with it last tuesday night into ohio from here in virginia which i was pretty happy about given the conditions lately. anyway i have a couple questions for people who do this regularly. first off im getting a little bit of key click that i didnt have with my commercial rig, not sure if thats something in my keying circuit or if its just par for the course with homebrew stuff. second thing is the whole efficiency question — im using a 7805 regulator to drop from 12v down to the supply voltage and i know that thing runs pretty warm. someone at the club mentioned i should look into a switching regulator instead but i dont really know where to start with that. is it worth the hassle for portable ops or am i overthinking it

so i was just sitting down with my coffee saturday morning and figured id spin the dial on 10 meters just out of habit, not really expecting much, and wow. stations were coming in from europe like crazy, i worked a couple italians and a station in spain without even trying that hard. propagation was genuinely good for like 3 or 4 hours which honestly i havent seen on that band in a while. my antenna is nothing fancy either, just a dipole up about 25 feet so if i was hearing it that well it must have been really cooking. anyway while im here — has anyone been keeping up with the Yaesu FT-710 stuff? i keep seeing it pop up in reviews and im curious if people actually have hands on experience with it or if its all just youtube guys who got a free unit. also heard rumblings that icom might be doing something new in the HF space but cant find anything solid on that, might just be forum speculation. just curious what everyone's been hearing lately.

so i finally got fed up with the old controller for my yaesu G-450A and started messing around with an arduino mega to build something smarter. been at it for about 3 weeks now and honestly its both the most fun and most frustrating thing ive done in the hobby in a long time the basic idea is pretty simple — read the pot voltage from the rotator, convert it to degrees, and then drive the motor relay outputs based on where i want to point. sounds easy right. except the pot in mine is super noisy and i keep getting jitter in the readings so the thing keeps hunting back and forth by like 2-3 degrees even when its supposed to be stopped. ive got a 10uf cap across the pot leads and tried averaging 50 samples in the ADC loop but its still twitchy. running it through a voltage divider to get the 0-4.5v range into the arduino 5v ADC the longer term goal is to tie it into a raspberry pi 4 that would run hamlib rotctld and maybe flrig, so i could have the whole station automated — point the antenna based on what dx cluster is showing, log it, the whole deal. ive seen a few projects online doing similar stuff but most of them are half documented and you cant really figure out what they actually did anyone gone down this path and have tips on the noise issue specifically? or just general thoughts on the arduino/pi combo for this kind of thing. im running arduino IDE 2.x and the pi is on bookworm if that matters

oh man i spent way too long confused about this same stuff when i was starting out. one thing that helped me was realizing the spots on DXwatch are coming from a whole network of cluster nodes around the world and sometimes theres duplicates or spots that are like 20 minutes old mixed in, so you kind of have to learn to read the timestamps carefully before you run to the radio thinking somethings still on frequency QRZ lookup habit is a good one to keep, you can see the entities flag and sometimes the operators bio will tell you if theyre a serious DXpeditioner or just someone on vacation with a radio which can help you guess if theyll be on for a few hours or a few weeks

WAS is probably the best place to start honestly, especially with a wire and 100 watts. you'd be surprised how many states you can work on 40 and 20 meters even with a modest setup. i had a G5RV up maybe 25 feet when i started working toward mine and got it done in under a year. the key is just being consistent and keeping an eye on the spots on DX clusters. DXCC is a longer haul but 100 entities isnt impossble either — you can rack up a good chunk of them just from normal operating without even trying that hard, the caribbean and europe are pretty easy gets on 20m when conditions cooperate. WAZ i'd honestly leave for later, getting your head around the ITU zones takes a bit and the award requires all 40 which means you really need to work some of the tougher ones eventually. start logging everything from day one and get yourself an LoTW account set up if you havent already. electronic confirmations make the whole process so much easier than waiting on paper QSL cards, though i do still love getting a nice card in the mail

im probably not the best person to ask because i just use N1MM for everything and kind of accepted that the UI is ugly lol. but the WSJT-X sync issue is real, i had the same problem and didnt realize for like three months that my FT8 contacts werent making it into my main log. just double check that ADIF logging is turned on in WSJT-X and pointing somewhere sensible, thats usually the culprit

went through this exact same thing like 8 months ago lol. the waiting is the worst part. mine took 7 days and i was refreshing ULS like a maniac the whole time. once it shows up you can technically operate before the physical license arrives in the mail, the ULS listing is what counts. one thing i'll add is there's a site called ae7q.com that has a really good vanity call search tool if you start getting into that whole rabbit hole. you can look up what calls are available, when licenses are set to expire and go back into the pool, all that stuff. i spent way too much time on it before i decided to just keep my sequential call for now

so ive been working on my CW for about 6 months now and im finally starting to feel comfortable copying at around 15wpm but my sending is still kind of a mess. i picked up a used Bencher BY-1 paddle a few months back and its honestly a beautiful piece of hardware but something about my timing just feels off when im actually in a QSO versus just practicing with the keyer in sidetone mode. im running a KX3 with the internal keyer set to iambic mode B, speed at 15wpm, weight at about 50. i keep getting these weird squeezed dits when im transitioning between letters, like my thumb isnt releasing fast enough or something. its hard to describe but it almost sounds like the letters are running together even though individual letters sound fine when i practice them slowly. anybody else gone through this? not sure if its a paddle tension issue, my technique, the keyer mode or what. im open to basically any advice at this point because it gets frustrating when the other op asks for repeats and i know its my sending not the band conditions

honestly the Extra isnt as bad as it looks at first glance. i was in a similar boat, no engineering background whatsoever, work in insurance. what i did was just grind through the question pool on hamstudy.org every day for about six weeks, maybe 20-30 minutes a day, and i passed on my first try. the thing is a lot of the harder theory questions you can learn to recognize the right answer pattern without fully understanding the math behind it. like yeah it helps to understand why a LC circuit resonates the way it does but you can also just kind of absorb the relationships through repetition. the part i actually found hardest was the rules and regs stuff because theres just a lot of it and its kind of dry. the theory at least has some logic to it once it clicks. the sub-bands you get access to on 160, 60, 40, 15 and a few others are genuinely worth it if you do any HF operating at all. just start going through the pool and see how fast you pick it up, you might surprise yourself

went through the same thing last year. just do it tbh. the hardest parts for me were the filter stuff and some of the propagation theory but you dont need to understand it perfectly you just need to recognize the right answers. some people will tell you to actually learn it all and thats great but realistically most people are pattern matching by the end anyway and thats fine, the knowledge fills in over time as you actually use the radio more the extra bands on HF are noticably cleaner during busy weekends so theres that at least

oh man W4T/SU-031 is a nice one, i chased somebody off that summit maybe two years ago. you're gonna have a great time. one thing i'd add — bring more wire than you think you need for the EFHW, trees never cooperate the way you imagine they will at home lol. also if you have time check the recent activation logs on sotadata for that summit before you go, gives you a sense of what bands people have been using and roughly when they got their contacts. sometimes thats more useful than anything else

so anyway i went through this exact thing last year and what got me back was trying something completely different — i picked up a cheap HT and started messing around with APRS just to have a project. didnt even care that much about APRS specifically but having something to fiddle with and learn snapped me out of it. maybe find a new mode or something you havent tried yet, like FT8 if you havent gone down that rabbit hole or even just scanning some local repeaters to see whos around.

honestly the technician exam is not that bad at all. the question pool is public, which is the big thing most people dont realize at first — the actual questions on your test come word for word from a pool of 423 questions so youre not studying blindly. i used hamstudy.org and just did practice tests every day for maybe 2-3 weeks and passed no problem. it does have some electronics stuff like ohms law and basic antenna theory but nothing crazy, more like high school level if even that. the harder part for some people is the regulations sections, like band privileges and what you can and cant do as a tech. just keep drilling the practice tests until youre consistently hitting like 80 percent or better and youre probably fine. the passing score is 74 percent so 26 out of 35 questions.

Same thing happened to me after I upgraded to General last spring. Passed the test, got all excited, then life got in the way and I barely touched the rig for months. My elmer actually called me out of nowhere just to say hi and it got me motivated again. Sometimes thats all it takes I guess.

so ive been messing around with remote station control for about a year now, mostly using RCForb client to connect to my shack at home while im at work. works pretty well for HF but i started thinking about whether i could tie in an SDR on the same box and have it feed the panadapter over the same connection. the latency is already annoying enough on SSB phone, im just wondering if adding an RTL-SDR or maybe an Airspy into the mix is going to make things worse or if it kind of runs independently enough that it doesnt matter. also separate question but related — anyone tried linking a RemoteHams node into something like Echolink or IRLP so you can bridge the remote station to a local repeater? i know thats kind of a weird hybrid thing to do but ive got a buddy who doesnt have a license yet and wants to listen in on some of the stuff i work on 40m, figured maybe there was a way to do it without giving him full control of anything. not even sure thats legal or practical im just thinking out loud here.

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. my 7300 is outputting maybe 30-35 watts max on 40m when i have it set to 100w, every other band hits right around where it should. checked the obvious stuff — ALC looks normal on the display, SWR on my antenna is fine, tried two different antennas just to rule that out. even borrowed a buddies wattmeter and stuck it right at the radio output so its definitely the rig and not downstream. i bought it used about 8 months ago and its been perfect until now. no idea if it was dropped or anything before i got it. started noticing it when i was having trouble breaking a pileup on 40 and thought it was propagation but then i actually checked the power output and yeah, something is wrong. anyone seen this on a 7300 before? im wondering if its a PA transistor issue or maybe something on the LPF board for that band. havent opened it up yet because honestly im a little nervous about voiding any warranty type stuff but i think im probably outside that window anyway. tempted to just send it to icom but the wait times i keep hearing about are rough.

yeah the JS8Call activity problem is real, the mode never quite hit critical mass the way FT8 did and i think thats partly because the whole weak signal advantage is kind of undermined when nobody's there to hear you anyway. i run it on 40m around 14078 (wait no thats 20m, i mean 7078) late evenings and sometimes it picks up but you really have to be patient. the PSK31 thing I totally get. i still jump on 14070 sometimes and theres usually somebody around, mostly older guys who have been doing it since the winlink days or whatever but they actually want to talk. decoding it visually on the waterfall is a skill that feels satisfying in a way that clicking a box in WSJT-X just isnt. the SNR requirements are obviously way worse than FT8 or even FT4 but if conditions are halfway decent on 20m you can still make it work. i wouldnt give up FT8 for it, just run them at different times depending on what im in the mood for honestly.

the bandpass filters are non negotiable if your antennas are anywhere close together, learned that the hard way during a CQ WW a few years back. thought i could get away with good antenna separation alone and spent the first hour wondering why my second radio sounded like garbage every time i transmitted on the first one. wasted probably 45 minutes troubleshooting before i just gave up on SO2R for that contest. 150-160/hr is actually solid for someone not running a big station, if you want to push that number up during a run the thing that helped me more than SO2R at first was just working on my exchange cadence and learning when to not chase every mult immediately. sometimes staying on a good run frequency and letting the rate ride is better than jumping to radio 2 for a mult thats only worth one point. the SO2R stuff really shines during the off-peak hours when the big runs dry up and you need something to do between the sporadic callers.

yeah the ALC thing is real, had the same issue on my 7300 when i first got it. also worth checking if you have the TX bandwidth set too wide — i think the default might be something like 2.4khz but some people run it wider thinking more bandwidth = better audio but on a crowded band youre just splashing on people and it doesnt actually sound better to the other station. one thing i dont see mentioned much is just monitoring yourself on a second receiver if you can swing it. even a cheap SDR dongle lets you hear roughly what you sound like on the air and it was kind of eye opening for me honestly. you think youre sounding great and then you tune yourself in and its like oh no

the touchscreen on the 7300 gets fingerprints all over it and thats my one actual complaint after two years of using mine. but yeah its a good radio. the spectrum scope is real useful when the bands are marginal and youre trying to find where activity actually is instead of just spinning the dial through static.

nice, which end fed you running? im trying to decide between building my own or just grabbing a sotabeams one for my first time out

yeah wind is the great equalizer up there, doesnt matter how dialed your station is if you cant get the antenna up lol. i use those cheap plastic tent stakes to anchor my feedpoint to the ground and that helped a ton, keeps the wire from whipping around while your trying to get the other end secured. congrats on the activation though, 4 contacts is 4 contacts and the first one always has something go wrong

Our club's been struggling with meeting attendance lately. We're down to maybe 8-10 regulars from what used to be 20+ just a few years ago. The old-timers show up religiously, but we're not attracting new faces or even keeping some of the newer hams engaged. We tried moving to hybrid Zoom meetings during COVID, but honestly the in-person energy just isn't the same. What's your club doing to keep meetings interesting and draw people in? Need some fresh ideas before our next board meeting.

yeah what he said about proximity effect, that got me too when i first switched from a desktop mic to a boom mounted one. completely changed how i was positioning it and made a huge difference. one other thing i'll throw out there -- have you monitored yourself with the receiver? like actually tune to your own frequency on a separate radio or even a cheap SDR dongle and listen to what youre putting out. i spent months guessing based on other peoples reports before i actually just set up my old RTL-SDR on the other side of the room and listened. turns out i had some weird processing artifact i never would have tracked down otherwise. kind of a pain to set up but worth it once.