Dave Parker

Our repeater offers all three systems full-time and we believe we're the first in Wisconsin to do so. AllStar gives the best audio quality but EchoLink sees the most casual use. IRLP is rock-solid reliable but limited to RF-only access.

so we finally got enough people together to run a half-day SET and honestly it was kind of humbling. we've been doing weekly nets for a couple years now and i figured we had a pretty good handle on things but actually simulating a real disaster scenario made it obvious real fast where the gaps are.
the scenario was a prolonged power outage across the county after a major storm, EOC is up but several shelter sites need to be activated and we need to get traffic moving between them and the hospitals. sounds straightforward right. well about 20 minutes in we realized that three of our operators at the shelter sites had never actually done formal traffic handling, like they knew nets but not NTS-style formatted messages and it just kind of fell apart a little. not badly but enough that you could see how in a real event it would create problems downstream.
the other thing that surprised me was propagation — we'd planned to use a local repeater as the backbone but we had two shadow zones where HTs basically couldnt hit it reliably and nobody had thought through a workaround. we ended up improvising a linked cross-band setup which worked but that shouldn't be improvised during an actual emergency.
anyway curious if anyone else has done these and what kind of stuff caught you off guard the first time. we're already talking about doing another one focused on go-kit interoperability since everyone showed up with wildly different equipment

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.

honestly the first one is always a little nerve wracking but you sound way more prepared than most people showing up for their first drill. the fact that you already did ICS 100 and 200 puts you ahead of like half the volunteers i've worked with over the years, no joke.
the form stuff becomes muscle memory pretty quick. just write slow and legible, that's 90% of it. and dont be afraid to ask your EC or whoever your supervisor is for clarification -- in a real activation thats expected and in a drill its literally the point. nobody wants you guessing when youre not sure.
one thing i'd add to your kit -- pen. two pens actually. sounds dumb but you'd be amazed how many people show up without one. and a notepad separate from your ICS forms for scratch notes.

yeah the privileges table trips everybody up at first, dont feel bad. for technicians you get full privileges on 10 meters for phone, and then yeah theres a handful of other bands where you can do CW and some digital modes but not voice. 40, 15, and 80 meters have small CW-only windows for techs if i remember right, around 7.025 to 7.125 on 40 for example, but double check that because i might be slightly off on the exact edges.
on the ID thing your elmer is probably referring to the same rule you are, it IS every 10 minutes during a contact and then at the end of the transmission or series of transmissions. thats straight from part 97.119. the ARRL website actually has a pretty readable breakdown of the privilege table if you search for technician HF privileges, way easier than staring at the actual CFR. once you upgrade to general a lot of this stuff becomes kind of a non-issue anyway but knowing the rules is always worth it

i tried JS8Call last winter and gave up after like two weeks because i couldnt find anyone on 20m during my operating hours. might be a time zone thing, im on the west coast and was mostly trying evenings local time. maybe ill give 40m a shot, hadnt really thought about that.
FT8 scratches an itch but you're right that its not really operating in the traditional sense. feels more like a log filling exercise sometimes lol

the ALC thing is probably real, not in your head. from what i understand the stock firmware has some soft limiting that's tied to the band plan and when you open it up it behaves a bit differently near the edges. nothing dangerous just slightly different curve. i wouldnt sweat it unless your reports start coming back distorted.
on the fan mod — honestly for casual SSB and digital work i think its overkill. the 7300 runs pretty warm on long FT8 sessions at high duty cycle but i've had mine for 3 years, no fan, and the thermal management seems fine. now if you're running it at full power for extended periods then yeah maybe worth thinking about. i put a small piece of copper tape over the heatsink fins just to help spread a little more and that felt like enough for my use case.

congrats on the activation, getting those 4 QSOs is what matters and you got the points so thats a win. the antenna thing is real though, i struggled with the same stuff early on. i switched to a linked dipole on a 6m sotabeams carbon fiber pole and honestly it changed everything for me. you can set it up pretty fast once you practice at home a few times and it tunes great without an ATU on the linked bands. the EFHW can work well but you really need some height and a decent counterpoise situation which is hard on a rocky exposed summit.
also -- and i cant stress this enough -- post your activation spot on SOTAwatch before you leave the trailhead if you have any cell signal at all. chasers are watching and youll have people waiting for you when you get up top instead of calling CQ into the void. i started doing that and went from barely scraping 4 contacts to sometimes getting 20+ in a pile. the community is really good about watching for activators.

so ive been listening on HF for maybe 3 weeks now and i keep seeing people type things like QSL and QTH and QRZ in the logbooks and on websites and i honestly have no idea what half of them mean. i looked some up but then theres like a hundred of them and some of them seem to mean different things depending on context? like QRM vs QRN i still get those mixed up. also people on the air say things really fast and abbreviate everything so even when i do try to listen in on a QSO... see i just used one, i think... i cant follow whats happening. is there like a go-to reference people use or did you all just kind of absorb this stuff over time

yeah the wall wart thing is real but also check whether your ground plane is actually continuous — ive had builds where i thought i had a solid ground but there were these little gaps in the copper clad that were basically acting like slots and picking up all kinds of garbage. also how long are your leads on the audio section? the LM386 is notoriously easy to get oscillating if the feedback path isnt kept short. i had one that sounded like a motorboat for like two days before i figured out the output cap lead was running back over the input. anyway congrats on actually getting audio out of it, getting to that point is half the battle with these things.

congrats on the activation, getting those 4 QSOs is what matters and you got the points so thats a win. the antenna thing is real though, i struggled with the same stuff early on. i switched to a linked dipole on a 6m sotabeams carbon fiber pole and honestly it changed everything for me. you can set it up pretty fast once you practice at home a few times and it tunes great without an ATU on the linked bands. the EFHW can work well but you really need some height and a decent counterpoise situation which is hard on a rocky exposed summit.
also -- and i cant stress this enough -- post your activation spot on SOTAwatch before you leave the trailhead if you have any cell signal at all. chasers are watching and youll have people waiting for you when you get up top instead of calling CQ into the void. i started doing that and went from barely scraping 4 contacts to sometimes getting 20+ in a pile. the community is really good about watching for activators.

so i just passed my general last month and ive been looking into getting a vanity call. my uncle was a ham for decades and his old call is available (he became a silent key a couple years ago, still miss him) and i really want to get it as kind of a tribute thing. i went through the FCC ULS site and filed the application but now im just sitting here not sure what happens next or how long this takes.
from what i read theres like a window period where multiple people can apply for the same call and then its basically a lottery if more than one person wants it? or did i misunderstand that. and does being a family member of the previous holder give me any advantage or is that not a thing anymore. i thought i read something about that years ago but couldnt find current info.
also does my license class affect which calls i can even apply for, like can a general get any 2x3 or only certain ones. just trying to understand the whole process before i get my hopes up too much

You don't need to be an ARRL member to use the incoming bureau system which is great for new hams. Keep your QRZ.com email updated since many sorters use that to contact you if there are issues with your account.