Robert Taylor

could also be something boring like the ISP at the remote site doing traffic shaping or throttling UDP after a few minutes. had a buddy with a similar setup and his ISP was the culprit, totally random disconnects that looked like a device issue but wasnt. worth throwing wireshark on it if you can get access to a machine at the remote end just to see if the packets are actually making it out or dying somewhere upstream.

oh man i did my first activation like two months ago with almost the exact same setup, FT-818 and a dipole. honestly just go do it, you'll figure out most of it in the field. i was way overthinking it beforehand. the 4 QSO minimum sounds intimidating but once you get spotted the pile up comes pretty quick, at least on 40m in the morning. one thing i wish someone told me — bring way more battery than you think you need, the 818 eats through them faster than i expected especially if youre scanning around a lot before you find a clear spot

the AGC mod is worth it imo, at least if you do any SSB on crowded bands. the stock AGC on the 857 is a bit aggressive and you get that pumping effect when there's a strong signal nearby. the mod basically changes a couple resistors to slow the attack a little, i think R1159 and R1162 but dont quote me on that, check the actual mod writeup because i cant remember the exact values i used. made a noticeable difference on 20m during a contest weekend. also since youre already going in there — if you havent already swapped the fan for a quieter one thats another easy one. the stock fan is loud and the replacement is maybe a 5 dollar part. some people add a small resistor to drop the voltage slightly so it runs slower at idle. i did that and the noise floor in my shack dropped enough that i actually noticed it on voice operation.

js8call is worth it but yeah the learning curve is real and the activity thing is a genuine problem depending on when you're on and what band. 14.078 is the main watering hole and i find mornings on the east coast are pretty decent, evenings hit or miss. the store-and-forward stuff for emcomm purposes is actually pretty cool once you get your head around it — you can leave a message for someone and it'll get relayed if another station hears it and has the right settings turned on. the interface honestly isnt that bad once you stop comparing it to wsjt-x because its doing something completely different. think of it more like a slow chatroom thats also a mesh network. i ran it alongside my normal ft8 sessions for a few weeks before it clicked. the 15 second timing periods mean youre not racing to respond and conversations actually happen even if theyre slow. if you like psk31 for the conversation aspect js8call will probably scratch that itch better than ft8 ever could. psk31 obviously has better throughput for casual ragchewing but js8call will pull through conditions that would kill a psk31 qso, which is the whole point.

one thing nobody mentions is that a lot of the RMS gateways you see in the list are just not that active or have crappy upstream internet connections. i've had way better luck sorting the list by distance and then checking the last heard timestamp -- if a gateway hasnt been heard in like 6 hours during normal operating times thats a red flag. also some gateways run on specific schedules or their sysops just dont maintain them well. also worth trying telnet mode first just to confirm your winlink account is actually set up and messages route correctly before you blame the RF side. if telnet works fine then you know the account and software config is good and its purely an RF/vara problem. took me a while to think of that but it narrowed things down fast.

so ive been putting together a go-kit style setup for a local ARES exercise this weekend and im going back and forth on the power situation. the event is about 6 hours of actual operating time, maybe more if things run long, and ill be running an IC-7300 plus a small laptop for winlink and maybe a second VHF radio if needed. right now i have a 100ah LiFePO4 battery that i picked up last year and it's been solid for shorter stuff but im not sure if thats gonna cut it for a full day especially if i end up running higher power on HF. ive also got a 2000w inverter genny that i could bring but honestly it feels like overkill and the noise thing is always a headache at these events, people complain and then you gotta move it far enough away that the extension cord situation becomes its own problem. the antenna side is pretty settled, im going with a linked dipole for 40/80 and maybe 20 if i can get it high enough, center fed with some cheap coax i need to probably replace at some point. support is a 31ft spiderbeam pole which has been great. thinking about rigging it as an inverted V off the pole. anyway the main thing im trying to figure out is whether that 100ah battery is realistically gonna do 6+ hours with that radio load or if i should just suck it up and bring the genny. anyone run similar setups and have a feel for the actual draw?

congrats on the first one, 47 contacts is a solid debut especially if you werent self-spotting aggressively. for the log submission yeah you basically upload to the WWFF logbook of the world system and then KFF pulls from that or you can submit through the KFF side, ive found just doing it through the WWFF portal covers both but double check the KFF website because they updated their process a while back and i havent activated since spring so things might have shifted slightly. the zero activations thing is totally normal, a lot of references got added to the database from geographical data imports and nobody has ever actually gone out there with a radio. so yes you are likely the first, which is kinda cool. you can sometimes find old expedition reports on the WWFF facebook group or the reflector if youre curious but officially if the logbook shows zero youre the first recorded activation. 80m late afternoon can be great for picking up nearby hunters who are chasing awards and just getting on after work, its kind of a different crowd than the daytime 40m pileup. depends how patient you are and whether your antenna is decent on 80, an EFHW cut for 40 is gonna be a bit of a compromise but probably workable with a tuner.

IO-86 doesnt have a linear transponder its FM only just so you know, might be thinking of a different bird. AO-73 is linear though and its a good one to practice on when the attitude control is cooperating. i went through the same thing with gpredict and hamlib for like two weekends before i got it stable. turned out my hamlib rig model was wrong by one digit and it was sending commands to the radio but they werent taking. worth double checking that. also make sure the polling interval in gpredict isnt set too fast, i had mine at like 500ms and it was overwhelming my serial adapter.

passing traffic at an actual shelter during flooding is not nothing, thats real emcomm work right there. some guys in my group have been in ARES for years and never had an activation that wasnt a drill so you're already ahead of a lot of people just from that experience. one thing i'd say - get AREDN on your radar if your group uses any kind of digital infrastructure. not essential but it comes up more and more at the EOC level. or even just get comfortable with Winlink because a lot of served agencies are starting to expect that alongside voice.

I'm kind of in the same boat actually, hovering around 12wpm and feeling like my brain just refuses to go faster lol. One thing I read was that you're supposed to stop thinking of letters and start hearing whole words as sounds, like how CQ or 73 just sounds like one thing after a while. I havent really figured out how to get there yet but maybe thats the thing you're missing too? idk just a thought. Also have you tried just listening to QSOs on 40m or somewhere, even if you can only catch every third word it might help your ear get used to faster stuff.

so i finally got around to building a proper 40m dipole instead of just using the random wire ive had up for like two years. cut it to the standard 468/f formula which gave me roughly 66 feet total, used some 14 gauge stranded wire i had left over from a fence project, and hung it in an inverted V off my pushup mast in the backyard. center is about 30 feet up and the ends are maybe 8 feet off the ground. feedpoint i just used a choke balun i wound myself, 10 turns of RG-8X through a FT240-43 toroid i ordered off ebay. swr came out around 1.4:1 at 7.150 which honestly isnt bad but im wondering if i should bother tweaking it down or just leave it. the ends of the wire are just tied off with some paracord to some fence posts and im not sure if the soil conductivity back there is affecting anything since its pretty rocky terrain out here in the high desert. also curious if anyone has thoughts on the wire gauge, 14 seems fine but ive heard people say thicker is better for lower bands, not sure if thats actually a real effect or just old timer advice that doesnt really matter at these power levels (running 100w)

haha welcome to POTA, forgetting something critical is basically a rite of passage. i did my first one without a pen to log contacts, ended up scratching callsigns into the dirt with a stick so i wouldnt forget them. the rain thing is real though, i keep a small ziploc bag in my kit now just for the radio, saved me twice already on longer hikes. 12 contacts on a compromised antenna in the rain is honestly not bad at all for a first one

yeah I did the same mod maybe 8 months ago. agree its worth it for digital modes, i was having issues with FT8 decode rate being slightly worse than expected and after reading around figured the oscillator drift during warmup was part of it. after the swap my decode numbers came up noticeably in the first few minutes of a session. the install is easy, honestly the hardest part is just not losing those tiny screws when you open the bottom panel lol. one thing i also did around the same time was the fan mod — there's a resistor swap that makes the fan kick in earlier and run a bit faster under load. doesnt make a huge difference thermally but its one of those things that makes you feel better about running the rig at 100w for extended periods. if you havent looked into that one its pretty trivial to do while you already have the covers off.

just passed my General like 6 weeks ago, same situation as you basically. the math on the test is not as bad as people make it sound, most of it you can just memorize the answer to without actually understanding how to do the calculation and you'll still pass fine. the part i actually found tricky was some of the operating procedures and band plan questions, stuff about which modes are allowed where on HF, that kind of thing. definitely go through those carefully 40m is great btw once you get on there, especially in the evenings, you can work some pretty decent distances even with a simple wire

yeah i went through the same confusion when i started. what helped me was just bookmarking spaceweather.com and also the NOAA space weather prediction center — they have these short term forecasts that kinda help you plan. i started keeping a little log of what the flux was on days i actually made DX contacts and after a few months you start to get a feel for it. also 10m can open really fast and close just as fast. like i had a crazy opening to japan last winter that lasted maybe 25 minutes and then just gone. so sometimes you really do just miss it. dont get discouraged, when 10m is cooking its genuinely one of the most fun bands there is

I just passed mine last month and the oscillator and filter questions were the ones that got me too at first. there are like 3 or 4 questions where you just have to kind of accept what the answer is and move on lol. but overall the pass rate for people who actually study is pretty good i think for me the reason i did it was honestly just to have the full ticket. i dont want to look back in 10 years and think i never bothered. the CW requirement being gone made it way more accessible and the extra sub-bands on 80 and 75 are actually useful if you ever get into DXing because thats where a lot of the DX pileups happen, at least from what ive seen so far

so our ARES group finally did one of those full-on simulated disaster exercises saturday and i have a lot of feelings about it. the scenario was a major flood event cutting off the northern part of the county, and we were supposed to coordinate with the EOC and two simulated shelter locations using only simplex and our backup repeater since the main one was considered 'down' for the drill. first hour was honestly kind of a mess. a few guys showed up without their go-kits fully charged, one of the HTs had a dead battery which like... come on, we all knew this was happening for weeks. net control had trouble keeping traffic flowing because people were jumping on top of each other and nobody remembered the tactical call procedures we practiced like three months ago. it's one of those things where you think everyone knows the drill until they actually have to do it under even mild pressure. the second half went a lot better once we slowed down and net control started being more deliberate about calling stations in order. the message passing to the shelter locations worked pretty well once we got into a rhythm, and the interface with the EOC liaison went smoother than i expected honestly. big lesson for me personally was that logging is way harder in a real scenario than just checking into a net. we were passing ICS-213 traffic and trying to keep a log simultaneously and i just fell behind. anybody else done these kinds of drills and have tips for staying on top of paperwork while also handling radio? i know some groups have dedicated logging people but we dont always have the bodies for that.

i went from a similar situation, older kenwood to the 7300, and the waterfall really does change how you operate. feels almost like cheating sometimes lol. i mostly do digital modes and having the scope open while running FT8 is super handy for spotting activity without constantly flipping around. one thing i noticed is the USB audio interface built in is pretty plug and play for digital stuff if you havent messed with that yet, saved me a ton of fussing with interface boxes. just make sure youre on the right firmware version first.

i just passed my tech like 3 months ago so pretty fresh for me lol. honestly i barely understood half the theory and still passed, i think i got a 91% or something. just did hamstudy every day for like 10 days, maybe 30 mins at a time. the questions repeat a lot once you been through it a few times and it starts clicking. dont stress too much about understanding every single thing, you can learn the why later once you actually have a radio in your hand and start messing around.

yeah the generator noise thing got me too at a SOTA activation a while back, different context but same headache. ended up just not using it. for anything under like 6-8 hours the LiFePO4 is honestly the move anyway, a 100ah at the 7300's typical draw you've got plenty of runway especially if youre not running full power the whole time. if you really need the gen for longer stuff maybe look at running it further away from the station and using a longer dc cable — ive heard guys run 50+ feet of 10 gauge and just treat the gen as a remote charger only, keep the radio on battery the whole time. havent tried it myself but in theory you isolate most of the conducted noise that way and the radiated stuff drops off with distance.

same thing happened to me lol. got my general in march and still get a little nervous on HF when theres a pile up going. 10 minutes on simplex is a solid first QSO honestly, some people just get a quick signal report and thats it. congrats on the ticket

yeah the HM-219 is a pretty mediocre mic honestly, its not terrible but it picks up a lot of low end and the IC-7300's default TX EQ settings dont really compensate for that. first thing id try is going into the EQ and cutting anything below like 200hz pretty aggressively, maybe 6 or even 9db on the lowest band. voice intelligibility on SSB really lives in the 300-2800hz range and anything outside that is just adding mud or hiss without actually helping people copy you. on the compression thing — the answer is really it depends on conditions. on a quiet band with a strong signal, no compression needed, just sounds unnatural. but when bands are rough or you want to punch through some QRM, a little TX processing helps. key thing is the ALC should be barely tickling on voice peaks, not averaging there. if its sitting at the ALC limit the whole time youre talking that means somethings overdriven upstream — could be mic gain too high. try dropping mic gain a few clicks and see if the audio cleans up on your SDR recording. the 7300 has pretty good monitoring tools, use them.

JS8Call is genuinely underrated but you're right that the speed thing takes getting used to. I run it on 40 and 80m and once you stop expecting it to be like a chat app it gets more enjoyable. the turbo mode helps a little but you lose some of the weak signal margin that makes it useful in the first place so it kind of defeats the purpose. RTTY for ragchewing is honestly still pretty solid if the band is cooperating, it needs a much better signal than JS8 to be readable and you lose it fast when conditions drop. i was running RTTY on 15m last winter during a good opening and had a 20 minute back and forth with a station in Bulgaria which was great, but theres no way that path would have held up for JS8 normal mode timing wise, conditions were moving too fast. so i think they serve different use cases more than one replacing the other. the store and forward relay thing in JS8 is really where it shines for anything emcomm adjacent, being able to leave a message that another station relays on is actually useful not just a gimmick.

You're gonna do great, honestly 10 contacts is not hard at all once you get spotted. Yes you should self-spot on the pota.app website as soon as you start operating, just put in your callsign, the park reference, your frequency and mode. Hunters check that page constantly and you'll usually start getting pile-up pretty fast, sometimes within a minute or two of spotting yourself. For calling CQ just say something like "CQ POTA CQ POTA this is [your call] activating K-4835" and people will find you. 40m is a solid choice for a wooded area, though honestly 20m works fine too so maybe jump up there if 40 gets quiet. The random wire should be totally fine, i activated a park last month with a piece of wire zip-tied to a fishing pole and worked 47 contacts. Dont stress about it, the hunters really want you to succeed and theyre very patient with activators.

lol a 45 minute qso about gardening sounds perfect actually. thats the stuff. i just got my general last month and im still kinda nervous to just call cq out of nowhere but reading stuff like this makes me want to just do it already