John Williams

so im putting together a portable setup for a county ARES exercise this weekend and ive been going back and forth on the power situation for a few days now. the site we're using doesnt have shore power so were looking at either running a generator or going battery with solar backup. my main concern is the generator noise — both RF and acoustic — because were gonna be trying to work some digital modes (js8call mostly, maybe some winlink) and last time someone brought a cheap harbor freight genny to one of these things the noise floor was just brutal, like S7-S8 on everything. we have access to a honda eu2200i which ive used before and its pretty quiet electrically if you bond it right, but its also kind of overkill for what we need if were mostly running a 100w hf rig and a laptop. thinking about supplementing with a 100ah lifepo4 and a small renogy panel to top it off during the day. that way we can run the generator for maybe an hour in the morning to top the battery and then shut it down during actual operating periods. antenna side im planning on a buddipole in vertical config for 40m and maybe stringing an ocf dipole between some trees if the site cooperates. anyone done something similar for an emcomm exercise? curious if the buddipole vertical on 40 is actually useable or if its just gonna be a compromise on compromise at that point

yeah paper QSLs absolutely still count for DXCC, you just have to get them checked at an ARRL card checking session or mail them in directly, its just slower and more of a hassle than LoTW. the bureau can take a really long time, like 6 months to over a year for some countries, thats totally normal unfortunately. some rarer entities wont even respond at all so LoTW is way better when the other station uploads. WAS and DXCC are completely separate awards with separate applications, yeah. WAS is all 50 states, WAZ is the 40 CQ zones. DXKeeper does track all of this if you set it up right and its connected to LoTW — it'll show you confirmed vs worked for each award category which is really handy. i'd honestly just focus on getting your LoTW account set up properly first if you havent already, that'll make everything a lot clearer once you can see whats actually confirmed in there

i was in the same boat not too long ago tbh. what helped me was just finding one of those frequency allocation charts that has all the license classes color coded. theres a few floating around online, just image search arrl band plan and youll find something you can actually read without falling asleep. the actual part 97 text is useful once you know what youre looking for but its not really meant to teach you anything, its just the legal language.

yeah i was in the same boat not long ago. one thing i'll add is that uploading to LoTW after every session becomes pretty routine once you get the hang of TQSL, i basically just do it at the end of every operating night. the certificate setup process is the annoying part but you only do that once. the physical cards are kind of a joy though honestly. i wasnt expecting to care about them but when a nice card shows up from somewhere far away it's just satisfying in a way a digital confirmation isnt. i ordered cards from a place called UX5UO which a lot of people use, pretty affordable. and yeah just send one back when you get one, no big deal. most people just appreciate the gesture.

so ive been licensed about 14 months now and a buddy at the club keeps telling me i need to try CQ WW this october. i did field day with the club last june which was a blast but that felt more like a big camping cookout with radios honestly. people kept handing me a mic and saying work that station and i had no idea what i was doing but it was fun. CQ WW sounds way more serious. like people are running 1500 watts and have stacked yagis and i'm sitting here with my IC-7300 and a wire dipole in the backyard. is it even worth bothering or am i just going to spend the whole weekend frustrated because i cant break any pileups. i guess i could do search and pounce the whole time but i dont really know the exchange format yet either. do i need logging software beforehand or can i just use paper for a casual effort also totally unrelated but has anyone done SOTA activations in the northeast, thinking about doing a few before winter hits

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, been chasing for a few months and kept telling myself id get out and actually climb something. picked a relatively easy summit near me, W6/SC-305 i think, not a lot of elevation but enough to count. brought the ft-818 and a linked dipole that a guy at the club helped me build, got it strung up between two scrubby trees and started calling on 40m. honestly wasnt sure i was gonna get the four contacts needed but i ended up with like 11 QSOs which felt amazing. even had a couple of chasers who clearly already knew i was up there because they came back instantly when i called, which was cool to see how the whole spotting system works in practice. posted a self-spot from my phone before i started calling and i guess that does most of the work. anyway questions: does the summit reference always have to match exactly what's in the database or can you approximate? i thought i was on the right peak but the GPS was bouncing around a bit near the top. also whats the deal with activator points vs chaser points, i saw something about bonus points for winter but i dont fully understand how it all works. and is there a minimum time you have to operate from the summit or can you just get your 4 and head down?

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, started working through LCWO about a month ago and its going ok i think. one thing thats helped me is just listening to actual CW on the bands even when i cant copy it yet, like just getting used to what it sounds like in a real environment with QSB and QRM and whatever. W1AW does code practice broadcasts on a schedule you can find on the ARRL site and they go through different speeds so theres something for beginners. also there is an app called Morse Mania that some people like, feels a bit more gamelike if the straight lesson format isnt doing it for you

the generator noise thing is a real problem and honestly most of the cheap inverter gennys are better than the conventional ones for RF but they still need work. what helped us was getting the genny as far away from the operating position as the extension cord would allow, like 50-60 feet minimum, and using a line filter right at the radio end. still not perfect but it knocked it down to workable levels. we used a tripplite isobar type filter and combined with the distance it got us down to maybe S2-S3 which you can work through. that said we've been slowly transitioning to LiFePO4 batteries for anything under 12 hours. two 100Ah battleborn or equivalent in parallel gives you a real comfortable margin for an 8 hour exercise even with the 7300 running hard. yeah the upfront cost is rough but hauling a genny, fuel, dealing with the fumes and exhaust placement near people — batteries win on the hassle side every time for exercises that long.

oh man i remember feeling the exact same way my first few check ins lol. i actually transmitted over someone by accident the first time and wanted to crawl under my desk but the NCS just asked me to repeat and moved on like nothing happened. its really not a big deal to them. i dont know about your specific net but a lot of them have a net preamble at the start that kind of explains how check-ins work so if you can catch the beginning of the net and just listen to that it usually spells everything out. also some clubs post their net schedules on their websites with the procedure written out which helps. theres a 2m simplex net in my area on tuesday nights thats specifically kind of low key and good for newer people if youre looking for something less intimidating to practice on while you get comfortable with 40

drilled an NMO in my Tacoma about four years ago and never looked back. yeah its a commitment but if you use a good quality mount, seal it properly with self amalgamating tape and maybe a dab of silicone on the inside, you wont have rust issues. the difference in the ground plane is real — i went from a similar SWR situation to basically flat on 2m. the antenna sits rock solid too, no wobble at all even on the highway. the mag mounts with NMO fittings are ok but the ground plane on a mag mount is never gonna be as consistent, especially on a truck cab where the metal isnt always centered under the antenna. if youre planning to keep this truck for a while just drill it. worst case you can always get a plug for the hole if you sell it.

im in basically the same boat as you, got my tech license like 6 weeks ago and the band privilege stuff was really confusing to me too. what helped me was downloading the ARRL band plan PDF and just keeping it open on my phone when im at the radio. also my elmer told me when in doubt just listen first and see whats actually happening on a frequency before you transmit anywhere near it

i'm sort of in the same boat as you, just started learning CW a few months ago and the iambic stuff is confusing to me still. i ended up just switching to single lever mode for now because i kept getting extra dits when i didnt want them. my elmers says it's a crutch but honestly it helped me focus on the actual letters instead of fighting my hands. might be worth trying just temporarily?

so ive been going back and forth on this for like two months now and i need to just pick something. currently running a baofeng on 2m/70cm and a crappy little sdr dongle for HF listening, which obviously isnt a real setup. finally have a budget around $900-1000 and im trying to decide between getting a new IC-7300 or hunting down a used FT-991A in decent shape. i know the 7300 has that waterfall display which everyone seems to love and the DSP is supposed to be really good. but the 991A does HF plus VHF and UHF all in one which would let me ditch the baofeng at least for home use. the thing is i mostly want to do HF, some SSB and probably mess around with FT8 once i figure out the interface stuff. VHF isnt a huge priority honestly. anyone run either of these for a while and have opinions? not looking for a marketing writeup just real world stuff. does the 991A audio hold up on SSB compared to the icom or is that whole thing overblown

ok so i just passed my technician exam last week and im waiting for my callsign to show up in the ULS database. someone at the club told me i should look into getting a vanity callsign instead of just taking whatever sequential one gets assigned to me, but honestly i dont really understand how any of that works. like from what i can tell the FCC just assigns you a call in the format for your district and you get whatever the next one in line is? and then separately you can apply for a specific call you want if its available? i guess my question is, is it even worth doing the vanity thing right away or should i just start operating with whatever i get assigned and worry about it later. i dont even know what calls are available or how to check that. also does the vanity application cost money now? i thought i remembered reading something about that changing a few years back. sorry if this is a dumb question, still figuring all this out

i did my first one about two years back and the thing that got me was just the radio propagation being weird that day — like we had planned everything around the local repeater and then there was some kind of issue with the machine and suddenly people were trying to go simplex and half the portable stations couldnt hear each other. nobody had really thought through a contingency for that and it kind of exposed how much we were assuming the infrastructure would just work. after that our EC made everyone practice simplex ops for like three meetings in a row which was honestly really good. not glamorous but super important.