John Williams

nice work getting it done. i've been chasing SOTA for about 8 months and from the chaser side, honestly self spotting really is the most important thing. i've sat there watching SOTLAS and seen activators pop up and within like 2 minutes they already have a pile calling them. if you dont spot you basically dont exist to most chasers unless someone happens to stumble across you which almost never happens on a busy band day. also just curious what frequency did you call on? 14.285 is pretty crowded and noisy, some people have better luck on 14.310 or just hunting around for a clear spot. and have you thought about adding 40m to your kit, sometimes when 20 is being weird 40 is way more productive especially for closer in contacts.

yeah rocky summits are the worst for that. i just use paracord and tie off to whatever boulders or scrubby trees are around, even a short guy line going two directions makes a big difference. once you get used to it you can set the whole thing up in like 5 minutes. 40m is where all the action is for SOTA for sure, good call switching over

so i've been building this 40m direct conversion receiver on and off for like 3 months now, kept putting it down and coming back to it. finally got it oscillating and i can hear signals which is great but the audio sounds... wrong somehow. like there's this low frequency rumble underneath everything and voices sound kind of hollow and phasey. the LO is a colpitts running around 7.1 MHz, mixing straight into an NE602 then into an LM386 audio stage. i think it might be RF getting into the audio section but ive shielded pretty much everything i can think of. or maybe its an issue with the product detector stage, im not totally sure. the rumble in particular is bugging me, its almost like 60hz hum but not quite. anyone built something similar and run into this? im pretty sure the power supply isnt the issue because it measures clean on my scope but what do i know lol

that first contact feeling is something else man, i still remember mine and that was like 15 years ago. dont let anybody give you a hard time about the baofeng either, we all start somewhere and getting on the air is what matters. once you get comfortable on the repeater you should try some simplex, totally different vibe when theres no machine in between you and the other guy.

2 yagis is definitely workable for EME in the JT65/Q65 era, it's not what it used to be where you basically needed a 20-foot dish or forget it. you're going to want at least 500w at the feedline, preferably more, and your noise figure matters a lot more than people realize — if your LNA isn't within the first foot or so of the feedpoint you're leaving real performance on the table. with two decent 12 dBd yagis and like 600-800w you should be able to work the big gun stations, the ones running 4 x 9 el or dishes. you won't be calling CQ and getting pileups but you can make contacts for sure. the main thing nobody tells you until you've actually tried it is how much the moon elevation window matters. you need a clear shot, and depending on your location and antenna mount you might only have a usable window for an hour or two and then you're done. so check your moon rise/set times and make sure your yagis can actually track — manual is doable but it gets old fast. i ran a fixed elevation array for a while and just waited for the moon to drift through, worked a few stations that way but it's not ideal. first EME contact is pretty surreal honestly. there's something about knowing that signal went up 384,000 km and came back and you decoded it. even on JT65 where it's just a screen full of text it still gets you.

Ditch all the props - switch off CW readers, Skimmer, any decoders. You'll never improve if you rely on these devices. Your ears and brain are the best decoders of CW. Practice with actual weak signals during contests rather than strong ones.

the impedance thing is real, inverted V at around 90 degree included angle comes in closer to 50 ohms so if your feeding it with coax its just easier to deal with. the radiation pattern difference between the two is honestly pretty small at typical backyard heights, both are NVIS-ish on 40m unless your apex is way up there like 60-70ft or more. at 35ft your flat top isnt exactly punching out low angle DX either so the practical difference between the two is probably in your head a little. the sag issue on a flat top is annoying though. ive fought that for years. inverted V actually handles wind loading better in my experience because the ends can move more freely without stressing the center insulator. that alone might be reason enough to switch if your current setup is always pulling weird on the feedpoint.

A callsign such as WØLPR might be "Whiskey Zero Long Playing Radio." Certainly easy to remember but if you use these phonetics on the air under marginal conditions, you'll probably just confuse the operator on the other end. Stick with standard unless conditions force a change.

This is actually a pretty common gotcha with the D710. The thing to check is whether the stations you're trying to message are RF-only or if they're also connected to the APRS-IS somehow. APRS messages on RF work fine between two stations that are both on RF in the same coverage area, but if the other guy is, say, running an Kenwood HT with a low power setup and his packets are only barely making it to an igate that's receive-only, then your message might be hitting the IS just fine but there's no two-way igate in his area to push it back out to RF where he can hear it. Also check your message retry settings on the radio. The D710 will retransmit unacked messages but I think by default it only tries a few times before giving up. If the path is even slightly congested you might just be losing packets. Try reducing to WIDE1-1 only and see if anything changes — sometimes the extra hop actually hurts more than it helps depending on your local digi layout.

Just got my Technician license last week and I'm finally ready to get on the air! I've been reading about proper operating procedures but still feel nervous about making my first contact. My local club says 2m FM is the best place to start. What's the best way to break the ice? Should I just jump in and call CQ or wait to hear someone else first? Any advice for a nervous newcomer would be really appreciated!

honestly for ragchewing and casual contesting the extra segments arent going to change your life but they do help on 20m and 40m when things get packed. the theory though, i'll say this — when i studied for mine i actually started understanding WHY my antenna was doing weird things and why certain filters matter for my radio. its not like you use the math directly but it kind of rewires how you think about the whole station. the exam is memorizable for sure, plenty of people do it that way and theres nothing wrong with that. i used the hamstudy site and just drilled questions for maybe 6 weeks and passed no problem. if youve been a general for 3 years you probably already understand more than you think

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been sitting on my Tech for almost a year and keep putting off studying. from what i understand the electrical theory part is the bit that trips people up, like calculating impedance or whatever. i found a youtube channel that walks through some of that stuff and it helped it click a little better than just memorizing. not sure which bands ill even use once i upgrade but 40m sounds fun for local-ish stuff at night from what ive read on here

honestly the antenna is the weak point more than the power for receive. 400w is decent but a single yagi means your receive is limited and EME is always about receive as much as transmit. if you can add a second yagi and H-pol you over you at least get some more gain and maybe some polarity flexibility which helps because faraday rotation is real and annoying. i went from one to two yagis and it made a noticeable difference even before i upgraded the amp. also make sure your feedline is not killing you, any coax loss between the antenna and the LNA is basically the worst thing you can do. LNA right at the antenna, that part isnt optional

so ive been sitting on this idea for a while now and finally started putting something together. basically i have 4 antennas — a 40m dipole, a vertical for 20/15/10, a 2m yagi, and a homebrew magnetic loop for indoor use — and im sick of physically going behind the radio to swap coax or flip the manual relay box i built like 3 years ago. it works fine but its just annoying especially during contests or when im doing some quick digital work and switching bands constantly. started sketching out an arduino mega setup with a bank of relay modules, some basic SWR sensing from a directional coupler i pulled off an old Kenwood tuner, and the idea is to have a little 16x2 LCD showing which antenna is selected plus forward/reflected. nothing fancy. the arduino would talk to the PC over serial and i wrote a small python script that listens to the CAT interface on my IC-7300 and automatically suggests the right antenna based on the operating frequency but i still want manual override on the physical box. the part im stuck on is the relay isolation. using those cheap 8-relay boards from amazon and the RF bleedthrough between channels is probably gonna be a problem at HF even with the relays open. thinking i need to either add some grounding on the unused ports or swap to actual RF relays but those get expensive fast. anyone dealt with this? or is it not as bad as im making it out to be?

yeah i just did mine like two months ago, used hamstudy and just kept doing practice tests until i was consistently hitting 90% or better and then went and took the real thing. felt pretty confident going in. the actual test felt easier than the practice ones honestly, i think because i was nervous and studied more than i needed to lol one thing nobody told me was to bring two forms of ID to the test session, i almost forgot and that wouldve been a whole thing

yeah post the pictures, always hard to diagnose layout stuff without seeing it. but my first guess with manhattan style builds and audio buzz is ground return paths -- like where is your audio ground actually going relative to your RF ground. ive had builds where i thought i had a solid ground plane but the currents were all looping around in weird ways and making noise. also is your VFO shielded at all? even a little tin can over it can help keep the LO from getting back into the audio chain. i built something similar last winter and spent about three weekends chasing hum that turned out to be my VFO radiation coupling into the output wiring. drove me nuts.

so i finally caved and ordered a raspberry pi zero 2 w after seeing a few posts here about shack automation and honestly i dont even know where to start. ive been playing around with an arduino uno for a couple years doing basic stuff like controlling a relay board for antenna switching but the pi feels like a whole different beast. my current setup is a fairly basic HF station, ic-7300 as the main rig and a kenwood 2m/70cm for local stuff. what i want to do eventually is get the pi talking to the 7300 over USB for CAT control and then maybe tie in some sensors — like a temperature sensor in the shack because the amp gets hot and ive been meaning to set up a fan that kicks on automatically. also maybe logging integration somehow but i havent thought that far ahead yet. has anyone actually done a full shack automation setup with a pi and is it worth the headache or should i just keep using the arduino for the simple stuff and not overthink it. feels like every project i read about online eventually turns into a 6 month rabbit hole and i end up with half finished stuff on my bench