Dave Parker

yeah the net control handoff thing is huge and I think almost every group underestimates it until they actually try it live. we ran into the exact same thing a couple years back during a SET exercise. everybody kind of assumes there's always going to be someone experienced at the helm and then when that person isn't available suddenly nobody wants to step up or they step up but dont really know the standard procedures well enough to keep traffic moving smoothly. what helped our group was just making net control rotation a regular thing during our weekly nets, not just for emergencies. even if its a slow Tuesday night with five check-ins, we'd have a different person run it each time. took maybe six months before it started feeling natural for more people. also the dead battery thing is a perennial problem honestly, we eventually made a rule that if you show up to a drill with gear that isnt ready to go youre basically just an observer that day, which sounds harsh but it got people taking the prep part more seriously. sounds like you got a lot of good data out of it though, the exercises that go a little sideways teach you way more than the ones where everything goes perfectly.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and everyone keeps telling me i need to try a contest but honestly the whole thing feels kind of overwhelming. like i was looking at the CQ WW calendar and there's the SSB leg and the CW leg and i dont even know which one to attempt first. im running a pretty modest setup, just a Yaesu FT-891 into a wire dipole up about 30 feet, nothing crazy. someone at my local club mentioned ARRL Field Day which apparently already happened but theres another one next year obviously. they said its more beginner friendly but then someone else said CQ WW is actually fine for newcomers if you just focus on search and pounce and dont try to run a frequency. i honestly dont even really know the difference between running and S&P in practice, like i get the concept but when youre actually in the pile i imagine its different. also what about SOTA activations — do those count toward any of these contests or is that a completely separate thing? my buddy does SOTA stuff and loves it but im not sure how it fits into the bigger contest picture. anyway just looking for some advice on where to dip my toes in without totally embarrassing myself on the air.

oh man i was just looking into WWFF last week so this is timely. i didnt realize the 44 QSO thing was specific to WWFF, i thought POTA was 10 and assumed WWFF was similar. good to know before i go out and have the same problem. what antenna setup were you using with the buddipole on 40m, did you do the longer element config? i always struggle to get a decent match on 40 with mine below like 25 feet

yeah what he said about Field Day. i did my first one two years ago with basically no idea what i was doing and it was fine, people were super patient. just show up and tell someone its your first time and they'll set you up. SOTA is completley different vibe though and honestly if you like being outside its worth looking into separate from the contesting stuff. you dont need much either, i started with just a little QRP rig and a wire antenna and it works suprisingly well from a hilltop.

JS8Call is definitely thinner on activity but its not dead, you just kinda have to know when to look. 40m seems to pick up in the evenings US time, and there's a loose group that hangs around the standard calling frequencies — I think its 7.078 for 40m. The heartbeat feature helps a lot once you get a few people in your contacts list, basically lets you see whos active without having to manually check. The Normal speed is fine for most HF use. Slow mode is for when conditions are really rough or you're doing something like 160m or dealing with heavy QRM. I've used Turbo a couple times on 20m when the band was wide open and it moves along pretty quick but honestly Normal hits a nice balance between speed and sensitivity. Your point about it feeling more like a real contact is exactly why some people prefer it. FT8 is great for what it is but the 15 second turnaround and the structured message format means you're never really talking to anyone. JS8Call at least has some personality to it. I had a ragchew with a guy in New Zealand last winter that went almost 45 minutes, propagation was marginal but the mode just kept pulling it through.

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (general) and everyone keeps telling me to check into a net but honestly i dont really know what to expect. like i know roughly what they are but what actually happens when you check in? do you just say your callsign and thats it or do you have to talk to people? im a bit nervous about transmitting in general still and the idea of jumping into something with a bunch of people listening feels pretty intimidating theres a local 2m net on tuesday nights that my elmer mentioned, think its a traffic net or something. would that be a harder one to start with? or should i look for something more casual first. also ive been seeing mentions of special event stations online and i have no idea how those are different from a regular net. are those something beginners can participate in or is that more of an advanced thing

So last weekend was my first real activation with our county ARES group and i figured id share how it went because when i was searching around before joining i couldnt find many posts from people just talking about what its actually like on the ground. Background: ive been licensed about 14 months, got my General last spring, and joined ARES maybe 4 months ago after going to a few nets and meeting some folks. Did the ICS-100 and 200 online courses which they basically require now, and went to two training exercises before this. So there was a bad storm system that came through and the county EOC activated us to support the shelter that opened at the middle school. I was paired with a more experienced op — guy named Dave who has been doing this for like 20 years — and we basically handled message traffic between the shelter and the EOC for about 6 hours. Nothing too crazy, mostly welfare traffic and some logistics stuff, but it felt real in a way the exercises just dont. What surprised me was how much of it was just... waiting. And then suddenly things would get busy for 20 minutes and youd have to be really on your game with your logging and passing things accurately. Dave kept reminding me to slow down and read back everything which i was glad for. Anyone else remember their first activation? Im curious how different it is county to county because ive heard some groups are really well organized and others are kind of a mess.

the inverting transponder thing threw me off for a long time too. one thing that helped me was just running gpredict with the doppler correction set up before i even tried to transmit — at least that way i could see what the software thought the frequencies should be in real time and check if my manual tuning was even in the ballpark. also 2.5w is fine for AO-73, people work it with less if the bird is at decent elevation. low passes are brutal tho

I was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago lol. I went with the UV-5R because I wasnt sure if id keep up with the hobby and honestly it's been fine. hits my local repeater no problem, people can hear me okay. the chirp programming thing takes about an hour to figure out but then its easy. the one thing nobody told me is that the antenna that comes with it is pretty mediocre, I got a nagoya NA-771 for like 12 bucks and it made a real difference. so factor that in if you go that route.

congrats on the general, that's awesome. okay so first thing -- don't stress about it, net controls have heard everything and they're not gonna judge you for being a little clunky the first time. most of them were there once too. as for format, most voice nets just want your call sign, first name, and location. something like "W5XYZ, Tom, in Oklahoma City" and thats usually enough. if theres a traffic net or something more formal they might want signal report or if you have traffic to pass, but for a basic ARES check-in you're probably fine keeping it simple. just speak clearly and don't rush. checking in late is totally fine. most nets have a late check-in period, the NCS will usually say something like "any late or mobile check-ins" at some point toward the end. just wait for that and jump in then. honestly the net control will probably appreciate that you waited for the right moment rather than just keying up in the middle of something. good luck tonight, let us know how it goes

so ive been licensed for about 8 years, mostly HF stuff with some 2m weak signal when conditions are decent, and ive always kind of looked at EME as this mythical thing that only guys with massive antenna farms and kilowatt amps can do. but ive been reading more about it lately especially with WSJT-X and JT65 and it seems like maybe smaller stations can actually work it now? not sure if im reading into that too much. my current setup on 2m is a single 9 element yagi and a 100w radio, M2 preamp at the feedpoint. i know thats probably not enough but i wanted to get a realistic picture of what a minimal workable EME station actually looks like these days. like if i wanted to start making contacts in the next year or so, what am i realistically looking at for an upgrade path. do i need to go 4 yagis minimum or can a 2 yagi setup with a decent amp actually get me somewhere with JT65. also curious how the scheduling side works, is there like a specific time you have to operate relative to moon position or is it more flexible than i think. ive read about perigee and stuff but dont fully understand how that plays into actual contact rates.

so ive been chasing 3Y0 and a few other rare ones for a while now and honestly pileups used to just destroy me. id throw my call in there for an hour and get nothing, watch other guys work them in like 3 tries and wonder what i was doing wrong. spent a lot of time reading about split operation and listening patterns and i think i finally get it. the big thing that clicked for me was actually listening to where the DX station is coming back to, not just randomly transmitting 5 up or wherever. like if you pay attention for a few minutes you can start to hear a pattern in where they're fishing, they tend to work their way up or down in a range and if you can anticipate that you can put your tx frequency right where they're about to look instead of where everybody else already is. also timing matters way more than i thought. waiting for the pileup to thin out a tiny bit right after a qso ends before you throw your call in seems to help. and running a bit more power than usual doesnt hurt obviously but i dont think thats the main thing, ive seen guys with 100w crack pileups when kw stations couldnt get through. anybody else have techniques that actually work? im still struggling with the really big ones, like when a new entity comes on and theres 2000 guys in the pileup it feels almost impossible without a yagi or something.

which kit did you end up building? im in the same boat been looking at a few different ones and cant decide. the torroid winding part is what keeps putting me off honestly, watched a few youtube videos and it still looks like black magic to me

so yeah its been a slow week and i just fired up the rig after dinner, nothing much happening on 20m so i dropped down to 40 and just been listening mostly. caught a couple guys ragchewing about the wx down in florida which was mildly interesting. anyway just curious what everyone else is up to these days, feels like the bands have been kinda weird lately. some days propagation is amazing and other days its just dead quiet which i guess is just how it goes but still. been a ham for about 12 years now and i still cant fully predict it

So after about three weekends of messing around I finally got my FT-857D mounted in my truck in a way I'm actually happy with. For anyone who hasn't done a serious mobile install before, it is way more work than the youtube videos make it look. I ended up running the power cable directly to the battery with a fuse right at the battery end, which I know is the right way to do it but man crawling under the dash and finding a grommet to run it through took forever. The negative went to a chassis bolt near the firewall and so far no noise issues at all which I was honestly a little worried about with a diesel engine. The head unit is on a RAM mount on the dash and the main body is under the seat. The antenna is a Tram 1185 on a lip mount on the hatch which probably isnt the ideal ground plane situation but its working decent on 2m and 440. SWR was like 1.3 on 2m and a little higher on 70cm but nothing crazy. Anyway just wanted to share because I remember how lost I was when I started planning this out. Happy to answer questions if anyone's doing something similar. It feels great to finally be able to hit the local repeaters while driving to work.