David Davis41

That latency sounds brutal for CW! Consider adding a remote-controlled power switch at the remote site - learned this the hard way when my IC-7300 locked up during a contest. What's your backup plan if the RemoteRig boxes crash?

went through this exact same decision like 18 months ago. short answer is yes the RSP1B is noticeably better on HF, but how much you care depends on what youre doing with it. the dynamic range improvement is real, not just spec sheet numbers. i had a local AM broadcast station that would just wipe out a chunk of the band with the RTL-SDR in direct sampling, and it got a lot more manageable with the SDRplay. the front end is just better designed for HF work, the RTL dongle was never really meant for it. that said if youre running SDR# and happy with your workflow, SDRuno (which is what SDRplay pushes you toward) has a bit of a learning curve and honestly i find it slightly annoying to use compared to SDR-Console. you can use the RSP1B with SDR-Console though so thats what i ended up doing mostly. just something to be aware of before you make the jump. for WSPR decoding specifically i dont think youll notice a huge difference unless youre in a noisy RF environment. but for actually listening and monitoring across HF the improvement is worth the money in my opinion.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general) and everyone keeps telling me i need to try a contest to really get comfortable operating. CQ WW SSB is coming up at the end of october and i figured maybe i'd give it a shot but honestly the whole thing is kind of overwhelming to look at from the outside. like i get the basic idea, you make contacts and log them and theres some kind of multiplier system for zones or countries or something. but i dont really understand how you actually operate during one. do you just sit on a frequency and call CQ contest or do you tune around and answer other peoples CQ? also is it rude to jump in as a total newbie when all these serious contesters are going at it? i feel like id be in the way also been looking at Field Day results from this past june and SOTA stuff too, those seem a little more relaxed? or am i wrong about that. anyway any advice on just getting started would be great, even if its just "dont worry about your score just get on the air" which is probably the answer lol

honest answer — at a casual pace SO2R is probably more distraction than help. the gains really do come from using that dead time between CQ replies to work a mult or a run on the second radio, but if you're not already running fast enough that you have consistent dead time, you end up just splitting your focus for no real gain and your run rate actually drops while you learn the workflow that said the filtering thing is real and non-negotiable. i tried it with just a single low-pass on each radio years ago and it was a disaster. the 4o3a bandpass filters are worth it if you go this route but you also need to think about the antenna situation — two radios into the same antenna is just asking for pain, ideally you want separate antennas on different bands which naturally gives you some isolation before the filters even kick in if i were you id pick one contest, maybe a shorter one like the sprint or even a state QSO party, and just try the two-radio setup with whatever filtering you can cobble together. worst case you learn what you need to fix, best case it clicks faster than you expected

ok so ive been licensed for about 4 months now (general class) and i keep seeing references to nets and special event stations but honestly i still dont fully understand how any of it works in practice. like i know what a net is in theory but actually checking in feels intimidating. do you just key up during the preamble and say your callsign? or do you wait for the NCS to ask for check-ins and then just jump in? also the special event stations thing confuses me even more. i found one listed on the ARRL site for some historical anniversary thing happening next weekend and it says you can get a certificate if you make contact. so you just... call them like any other station? is there anything special you have to do or say, or is it literally just make the QSO and then send in a log or something? sorry if these are dumb questions i just dont want to embarrass myself on the air

oh man i was exactly where you are maybe two years ago. the thing that finally cracked it open for me was stopping trying to copy every single character and just letting it wash over me for a while. sounds counterintuitive but i spent about 3 weeks just listening to W1AW practice sessions at 13wpm while doing something else, not even trying hard to copy, just getting my ears used to the rhythm of it. then when i actually sat down to copy it felt less like decoding and more like hearing words. also the biggest thing nobody told me early on — ditch the paddle and just listen for a while before worrying about sending. your receive speed is what matters for actually having QSOs, your sending can lag behind. and honestly once you can copy at 15 or so the QSO part clicks into place faster than you think. stick with it, the jump from 5 to 12 feels impossible and then suddenly it just happens over like two weeks if you keep at it daily even for just 15 minutes.

Log4OM is definitely still maintained, they actually put out updates pretty regularly. i switched to it from Ham Radio Deluxe a couple years ago and havent looked back. the WSJT-X integration works via UDP, you just point WSJT-X at the Log4OM port and QSOs come right in, no manual importing. took me maybe 20 minutes to set up and ive never had to think about it since. as for N1MM, i mean its the gold standard for contesting no question but if youre only doing a few contests a year the learning curve might not be worth it for everyday logging. the interface is pretty no-frills and its really optimized around rapid contest QSO entry. you can use it for general logging but it feels a bit like using a race car to drive to the grocery store. Log4OM is just more comfortable for mixed use imo. that said plenty of guys run both and use N1MM only when a contest is happening, which is totally reasonable if you dont mind switching apps.

Been experimenting with different beacon strategies on my D710GA setup. Smart beaconing adjusts rate based on speed and direction changes, which sounds great in theory but I'm seeing some issues in practice. Fixed 5-minute beacons: Consistent coverage, predictable bandwidth usage. Smart beaconing: Works well above 5mph but seems problematic for pedestrian speeds - sometimes goes 20+ minutes without beaconing when stationary. For emergency communications work, is reliability of fixed intervals worth giving up the efficiency of smart beaconing? APRS should give general landscape picture within 10 minutes but smart beaconing can create gaps.

so ive been messing with winlink for about three weeks now and i think i have the basic idea down but theres something im clearly missing about how the whole gateway thing actually works. i set up pat on my linux box and got it talking to my IC-7300 through direwolf for packet but i keep having messages just sit there and not go anywhere. my understanding is that when i connect to an RMS gateway im basically using someone elses node to relay the message up to the CMS servers, and then the recipient either polls for it or their own gateway pushes it to them? or something like that. i get fuzzy on the last mile part. anyway the actual problem is that i open a session, it connects, i see the handshake happen and then it just disconnects without sending anything. the message is still sitting in outbox. i cant tell if this is a timing issue or if my callsign isnt registered right or what. using VHF packet 1200 baud on 144.990 and i can see the RMS beacon so i know the frequency is right at least. anyone run into this?

oh man this is timely, ive been thinking about doing my first one for months and keep putting it off. what antenna setup did you use exactly? i have an end fed but im not sure if its practical to deploy solo in a wooded area without help. also did you have any issues with the public or park rangers asking what you were doing? that part kind of makes me nervous honestly

yeah 50ft of RG-8X on 70cm is definitely costing you. if i remember right youre looking at something like 3.5-4dB loss over that run at 440MHz versus maybe 1.5 or so with LMR-400. thats real, thats not marginal. on a repeater that your barely hitting thats the difference between being readable and being in the noise. did the swap myself a couple years back, same kind of situation, and the improvement on 70cm was honestly pretty obvious. 2m barely changed which is kind of what you'd expect. if youre going to redo the run i'd also ditch that right angle adapter and just make a gentle loop in the coax instead, those things are lossy and mechanically kind of sketchy long term. LMR-400 is a pain to work with in tight bends but it's worth it, or LMR-240 if you need more flexibility and your run isnt longer than it is.

okay so ive been licensed about four months now and i keep seeing people talk about QSL cards and LoTW and eQSL and honestly im not sure i understand the difference or if i even need to worry about all three. like i made maybe 30 contacts so far mostly on 40m ssb and a couple on ft8. do i need to be doing all of them or is one enough? i signed up for LoTW because someone at my club said that was the most important one but then i saw people posting pictures of physical cards they got in the mail and those look really cool honestly. i guess my main question is — is LoTW just for awards and the physical cards are more of a hobby within the hobby thing? and what even is eQSL, is that separate from LoTW or the same system with a different name sorry if this is a dumb question, the club guys kind of gloss over it like everybody already knows

so i've been meaning to do this for like two years and after the storm we had last month that knocked out power for three days i finally got serious about it. i pulled out my old pelican case and started throwing stuff in but i feel like im definitely forgetting something obvious. what i have so far: my FT-857D, a coax jumper, my j-pole antenna rolled up in a bag, spare fuses, a notebook and pens, a copy of the local repeater frequencies. i picked up one of those 40ah lifepo4 batteries last fall so thats in there too with the anderson powerpole cables. i think i have a charger situation figured out but honestly not totally sure how long that battery will last running the radio at 100w vs like 25w, haven't actually done the math yet. what do i always see people forget? i feel like there's some dumb thing i'm going to leave out and not realize it until i actually need to use this thing in a real situation

the squished characters thing sounds like contact bounce to me, especially if the paddle is a no-name unit from a hamfest. cheap paddles sometimes have contacts that dont make a clean single connection — they bounce just enough to throw the keyer timing off. try cleaning the contacts with some deoxit or even a piece of plain paper pulled through slowly, and then really carefully reset the tension. too loose and you get bounce, too tight and your hand tires out quick. also check the keyer speed setting isnt drifting — some of those older MFJ units have a pot that gets scratchy over time, so the speed can wander a bit if the pot isnt making good contact. try rotating it back and forth a bunch of times to clean it out. as for building speed — yeah the jump ahead method actually does work, at least it did for me. the idea is your brain starts recognizing the sound of the whole character instead of counting elements. i went from plateauing at 15 to eventually getting comfortable around 22 just by forcing myself to copy 20 and accepting i'd miss a lot at first. dont try to write every character, just copy what you can and let the rest go by. took a few weeks but it clicked eventually.

check your digital modes settings and the USB audio stuff — i know that sounds dumb but ive seen people accidentally leave the radio in some weird pancked state after using wsjt or something and the receive processing gets all messed up. probably not your issue but worth ruling out in 30 seconds before you go digging into hardware.

i tried the SDR remote thing for a while and gave up on it tbh, not because the concept is bad but the software stack i was using kept falling over whenever my ISP burped. ended up just going with a straight remote rig setup and using some homebrew python scripts to restart stuff automatically when connections drop. less elegant but it actually stays up. the echolink comparison isnt really apples to apples btw, echolink and IRLP are linking repeaters or doing voice over IP to a handheld port essentially, the audio codec is optimized for voice and thats kinda it. remote rig stuff youre actually controlling a real transceiver and the audio chain is trying to preserve the actual received signal not just make voice intelligible. different goals. though i have seen people do weird hybrid setups where they link a remote sdr into an echolink node for monitoring which is kinda janky but creative i guess

i did almost exactly this with a nano a while back for my hexbeam controller, different application but same RF noise problems. what band data voltage levels does the 7300 actually put out on that port? i seem to recall some radios put out like 0-8v across different bands and you just do a voltage divider into an analog pin, but i wasnt sure if icom does it the same way. curious what your mapping looks like in the code

the hybrid approach is honestly what most of us settled on after a few of these longer deployments. run the generator for maybe 3-4 hours in the morning to top everything off, shut it down, run off battery the rest of the day. a good LiFePO4 bank with that load you're describing should get you 10-12 hours easy if you're not transmitting 100% duty cycle the whole time which you wont be. the CO thing is real though, don't dismiss it. had a guy at a county exercise a few years back who got a headache from exhaust seeping under the trailer door, turned out the genny was upwind and it was just barely drifting in. get a CO detector in that trailer regardless, like a cheap camper one, costs nothing and you'll sleep better. also on the eu2200i, that thing is rock solid for RF gear, i've run a 7300 off one for hours with no issues at all. just keep the fuel situation sorted and you'll be fine

honestly the technician exam is way more approachable than it looks at first. the question pool is publicly available and thats basically all thats on the test, so a lot of people just grind through it on hamstudy.org until they're consistently hitting like 80-85% and then go take it. that said i think actually understanding the material helps a lot with general and extra down the road, especially the electrical theory stuff. took me about 3 weeks of casual studying maybe 20-30 min a night before i felt ready. the ARRL technician study guide is decent if you like books but honestly the free sites do the job just as well. just find a local club doing a test session and sign up, the VE teams are usually pretty welcoming to first timers

Check your VARA HF log files - they'll show exactly where the handshake is failing. The VARA HF and radio settings are the same as while using Winlink Express... CAT control apparently works the way it should, frequency setting/readout and PTT works fine. If CAT is working but connections fail, it's usually an audio routing or timing issue.

73 question comes up a lot lol. just to add -- youll also hear stuff like QRP which means low power operation, and QRO is high power. QSY means changing frequency. theres also a bunch of abbreviations that arent Q codes at all, like OM means old man which is just how hams say dude basically, and YL is young lady, XYL is wife (dont ask). FB means fine business like thats great. and HI is ham radio laughter for some reason. its a whole language honestly, felt weird at first but after a few months on the air it just clicks. keep checking into that net, youll absorb it pretty quick

the doppler thing -- yeah there's definitely a sweet spot near maximum elevation where the rate of change slows down a lot. you'll be cranking the dial like crazy near AOS and LOS especially on a high elevation pass, but mid-pass on something like SO-50 at 70cm you can sometimes go 30 seconds without touching it and still be close enough. on a low pass like you described (8 deg is rough btw, i wouldnt sweat not getting through) the geometry is different and the rate stays pretty compressed the whole time since you never really get that overhead geometry. honestly just keep at it with heavens-above or grab gpredict if you want something more dedicated, it'll show you the doppler curve visually and it kinda clicks after you see it a few times the buzzing carrier is almost certainly someone with their squelch open keying their radio without realizing it, or a poorly programmed HT that fires the PL tone constantly. happens on every SO-50 pass it seems like. some people just have no idea their radio is even doing it

the wall you're hitting around 10-11 is totally real and almost everybody goes through it. what helped me more than anything was switching to Farnsworth timing — keep the character speed up high, like 20wpm characters, but stretch the spacing out so you have more time between them. that way your brain gets trained to hear the characters at actual speed from the start instead of having to re-learn them later. LCWO lets you set it that way if you havent already messed with those settings. for those stubborn letters, honestly the best thing i did was just make a short daily drill of just those problem characters over and over until they became automatic. like five minutes of nothing but Q Z Y X mixed in. boring but it worked. as for timeline — it took me almost a year to get solid at 20wpm and i was practicing more than you are. but i also had stretches where i barely touched it. dont get discouraged, the progress is real even when it doesnt feel like it. just keep showing up every day even if its only 15 minutes

our club is supposed to have a table but honestly I haven't seen anything confirmed on the email list. somebody should probably poke the club president before Thursday or we're just gonna show up with no setup again like in 2022 lol

so we finally got our county ARES group together for a proper tabletop exercise, been trying to coordinate this for like six months with everyone's schedules. the scenario was a major flooding event, levee breach, bridges out, cell towers down — pretty realistic for our area honestly given what happened back in 2019. what surprised me was how fast the communication plan fell apart in the simulation. we had this whole ICS structure mapped out, nets assigned, frequencies designated, and within like the first twenty minutes of the scenario people were just... going around the system. calling directly to whoever they thought had the answer instead of going through net control. i get why, it feels faster in the moment, but it creates this massive pile of uncoordinated traffic and net control loses situational awareness really quick. the other thing that caught us off guard was how much we'd assumed about interoperability with the county EOC. turns out they had updated their communication protocols sometime last year and nobody had looped in the ARES group. so we were referencing an outdated resource list the whole time. kinda embarrassing but better to find that out in a tabletop than during an actual event. anybody else done these kinds of exercises recently? curious what gaps you found in your own plans, especially around message handling and ICS integration. we're already planning a follow-up exercise that's more radio-on-the-air rather than just tabletop.