Ashley Anderson

so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now, mostly just listening around on SDR# and occasionally poking at ADSB stuff with dump1090. works fine honestly but i keep reading people saying the SDRplay RSP1A is a massive step up and worth the extra $120 or whatever it is now.
my main uses are just general HF listening through a upconverter, watching the 2m/70cm bands, and occasionally i try to decode some APRS or NOAA weather fax. nothing super serious. im not doing any transmitting with it obviously. the RTL noise floor has been bugging me on HF especially, even with the Ham It Up upconverter i still get some birdies and the dynamic range just feels kinda mushy compared to what people describe with better hardware.
has anyone actually done a side by side or switched from one to the other? is the SDRplay difference noticeable enough on HF that itd actually improve what im doing or am i just gonna end up with the same limitations because my antenna situation isnt great anyway. running a random wire off the back of the house right now, maybe 40 feet of it.

34 QSOs on your first activation is honestly a solid number, a lot of people struggle to get the 10 minimum the first time out just because of nerves or antenna issues. sounds like you did everything right.
for the two-fer logging, the way it works is you just log each QSO twice in your ADIF file, once with each park reference. when you upload to the POTA website it'll sort it out. some folks use HAMRS or Fast Log Entry and those handle it pretty cleanly. just make sure you're actually physically inside both park boundaries when you operate or it doesnt count, some of those overlaps are smaller than they look on the map and its worth double checking with the satellite view on the parks website before you go.
the pileup thing gets easier, just take your time and dont be afraid to say "please stand by" if you need a second. hunters are generally very understanding, theyre just happy youre out there activating.

yeah the IC-9700 is actually a solid starting point, good receiver, low noise floor which matters a lot for EME. the preamp situation is where people get religious about things though — you really want a low NF masthead preamp, like sub 0.5 dB if you can manage it, because by the time that signal comes back from the moon it is absolutely in the noise floor.
single yagi on 2m EME is doable but honestly you're going to be limited to working the big guns, the stations with the large arrays or dishes. not saying its impossible but your contact rate will be frustrating if you expect it to be like FT8 on 20m. most people do a 4-yagi cross-polarization setup as a reasonable minimum for actually having consistent QSOs. the mechanical side of it, the H-frame, the rotor with moon tracking, thats where the cost and effort stacks up fast.
for software yes WSJT-X with JT65A is what basically everyone uses on 2m EME. you want to make sure your system clock is synced tight, like within a second, because the timing really matters. look up the online EME logger too, that shows whos on and where the moon is relative to your location and theirs, it helps a ton when youre first starting out trying to figure out windows.

Just passed General and ready to dive into HF! I've narrowed it down to the IC-7300 or FT-891 as my first rig. The 7300 seems to be the gold standard for beginners at around $1100, but the 891 at $650 is tempting for the budget. My main question is about power supplies - I'm seeing conflicting info on current draw specs. The 7300 shows 22A max but what's the realistic operating current for 100W output? Same question for the 891 at 20.5A max.
Also curious about the built-in tuners - how well do they handle random wire antennas or do I need to invest in an external tuner right away? Any other gotchas between these two rigs I should consider?

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, been chasing for about 6 months and figured it was time to stop watching from the sidelines. picked W4C/CM-073 mostly because its only like a 2 mile hike and i didnt want to bite off more than i could chew for my first time out
brought the KX2 with a 49:1 unun and maybe 35ft of wire thrown up into a tree, worked better than i expected honestly. got my 4 contacts pretty quick once i spotted myself on SOTAwatch and the pile got surprisingly lively for a random tuesday morning. ended up with 11 QSOs total including a S2S with some guy in Colorado which felt pretty cool
my questions are kind of all over the place -- first, is there a standard way people handle the log upload? i used SOTA CSV logger on my phone but when i went to upload it got confused about some of the times, think i had a couple entries where i forgot to note UTC vs local. also wondering if there's any unwritten etiquette about how long you stay on a summit before moving frequencies, felt weird just disappearing after i cleared the pile. and last thing, does the activation zone thing vary by summit or is it always the 25m vertical rule? someone in another group told me it depends on the summit reference but i couldnt find a clear answer on the SOTA database

I was in the same boat not too long ago, kind of overwhelmed by all the award tracking stuff. One thing that helped me was just setting up a LoTW account properly and making sure every QSO gets uploaded even if you dont expect a confirmation back. you'd be surprised how many confirmations just show up weeks later out of nowhere. for WAS i actually found it easier to chase than DXCC just because you have more control, like you can specifically hunt for states you're missing instead of waiting for some rare DX entity to come on. good luck with it, its a fun rabbit hole to fall into

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been trying to figure out the whole QSL confirmation thing and honestly its more confusing than i expected. like i thought you just sent a card in the mail and that was it but apparently theres like three different systems now and some awards only accept certain ones?
so far i set up an eQSL account because someone in my club mentioned it and it seemed easy enough, uploaded a bunch of my logs and got some confirmations back which was cool. but then someone else told me i really need to be on LoTW if i want to go for DXCC or WAS someday. i went to the ARRL site and the whole certificate process for LoTW looks kind of intimidating honestly, do you have to mail them something physically to get set up?
and then theres still people sending actual paper cards through the bureau or direct mail and i kind of love the idea of getting physical cards but i dont even know how the bureau works or how much it costs. is it worth doing all three or do most people just pick one and stick with it? sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out what the norm is

so ive been licensed for about three weeks now (technician) and everyone keeps telling me to just get a baofeng to start and thats fine but then i go look online and theres like a hundred different models and some people swear by the UV-5R and others say get the UV-82 and then someone in my local club said just skip all that and get a yaesu FT-60 and now im completely turned around
my main use case is going to be hitting the local repeaters, maybe some simplex with my buddy who just got his ticket too, and eventually i want to do some SOTA stuff but thats way down the road. budget is probably around $50-80 but i could stretch to maybe $100 if something is really worth it
honestly just want something that wont frustrate me to death while im still learning the basics. the menu systems on some of these things look like a nightmare from the youtube videos ive watched. any thoughts appreciated, sorry if this gets asked all the time here