Amanda Williams

so we've got a county ARES exercise coming up in about three weeks and i've been tasked with setting up the primary HF station at the EOC staging area which is basically a parking lot with nothing but a 120v outlet that may or may not actually work. last exercise that outlet was dead for the first two hours so im trying to figure out a backup plan that doesnt involve me running back to my truck every 20 minutes right now im thinking either bring my honda eu2200i and just run everything off that, or go with a lifepo4 battery bank situation. the radio is an ic-7300 so figure 20-25 amps peak on transmit, mostly doing winlink and some voice on 40/80. probably 6-8 hours of operation with maybe 30% duty cycle on tx. i also need to power a laptop and a little fan cause this is july and it will be miserable the generator option is obvious in terms of capacity but its loud and i hate dealing with the fuel and the 2200i isnt that quiet once it gets under load. the battery route is cleaner but im not sure a single 100ah lifepo4 gets me through the whole day comfortably with the laptop drawing too. was thinking maybe two batteries and a solar panel but finding a good mounting solution for the panel in a random parking lot is always kind of a pain also separately - what are people doing for portable HF antennas in a situation where you cant put anything in the ground and have maybe 30 feet of horizontal space. was gonna bring my buddipole but honestly ive had mixed results with it on 40 and below

I just passed mine about three months ago so I was basically in your exact situation not that long ago. I used the Ham Radio Prep app which costs a few bucks but I thought it was worth it, the explanations are pretty clear and it gamifies it a bit which kept me from getting bored. took me maybe 3 weeks of casual studying, probably an hour a night but not every night. the electronics questions look scarier than they are, once you see them a few times you just kind of memorize the answers even if you dont fully get the concept behind them. thats fine, you pick that up later when you actually start using the radio. good luck with it

so the tech exam really isnt that bad, i was stressing about it way more than i needed to. HamStudy.org is what i used, just ran through the question pool every day for like two weeks and i was getting 90%+ before i even went in. the actual question pool is public knowledge so youre literally studying the exact questions that could show up on the test, they just get shuffled around and some wrong answers swapped. for finding a test session you want to look up your local ARRL affiliated club, most of them run VE sessions pretty regularly. some places do walk-ins but most want you to register ahead of time so just email or check their website. bring a valid ID and like 15 bucks cash usually. the hardest part for most people is the electrical theory questions but honestly even those arent too deep at the tech level.

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you, been lurking on the EME reflectors for a while now. from what ive gathered the minimum people usually talk about for a realistic shot at digital EME on 2m is something like a single long yagi, 7 or 9 elements at minimum, and at least 100 watts at the feedpoint — meaning after your line loss. so if youre losing 2-3db in that coax run you need to account for that in your amp sizing the azimuth/elevation rotor situation is something nobody warned me about until i started asking around. you need to be able to track the moon obviously and if your current setup is just a az rotor for HF antennas that might not cut it. theres some guys doing it with creative fixed elevation setups and just waiting for the moon to pass through their window but thats pretty limiting i havent made my first contact yet so take all this with a grain of salt lol but thats what ive been reading on the moon-net mailing list

that consistent offset thing is usually a datum issue or sometimes a display glitch in how aprs.fi renders the coords. the D710G internal GPS should be outputting WGS84 which is what everything expects, but worth double checking your GPS settings in the radio menu — there's a geodetic datum setting buried in there somewhere and if it somehow got set to something other than WGS84 that would explain a fixed directional error like you're describing. also just to rule out the obvious — are you sure the lat/lon in your beacon is formatted correctly? the APRS position format is picky about degree/minute encoding and ive seen radios that had slightly wrong configs spit out coords that look right on the display but are subtly wrong when decoded. you can check the raw packets on aprs.fi by clicking the raw data tab and manually decode a position to verify. if the raw coords match where you actually are then its a display issue, if they're off then its coming from the radio config.

so our ARES group has a county-wide exercise coming up and i've been tasked with setting up the primary HF station at the EOC staging area. we're going out to a park about 2 miles from the actual EOC and running a field comms node, basically just a liaison station on 40 and 80m for traffic handling plus some VHF for local nets. my question is mostly about power. ive been going back and forth on whether to bring the honda eu2200i or just run off a big battery bank. the rig is an IC-7300 which at full 100w is drawing maybe 20 amps, and we could be running 6-8 hours with maybe 30-40% actual transmit time so not continuous key-down or anything. i've done the math and a 100ah lifepo4 should cover it but my elmer keeps insisting we should have the generator as backup at minimum. for the antenna i'm leaning toward the chaparral... wait no, the end-fed halfwave on a 31 foot jackite pole, thrown up as a sloper toward roughly northeast since thats where most of our check-ins will be coming from. last time i tried to put up a dipole at a park it took forever and the trees werent cooperating. anyone done something similar and have opinions on the generator question? also wondering if the sloper orientation even matters that much at typical NVIS distances, probably talking 50-200 miles here

so ive been licensed about 3 months now (technician) and I keep hearing about these nets on my local repeater but every time I think about checking in I freeze up and just listen. I know its probably simple but I genuinely dont know what the protocol is. like do I just say my callsign when the net control asks? do i have to say my name and location every time? and is there some kind of list I should be on beforehand or do you just jump in? also someone at my club mentioned there was a special event station operating near me this weekend for some kind of historical thing but I have no idea how to find out about those in advance. is there a website or something that lists them? sorry if these are dumb questions, just trying to not sound like an idiot on the air

The RMS gateway showing active on the map just means it sent a beacon recently, doesnt necessarily mean its in a good state or that the sysop hasnt had issues. First thing id check is your audio levels in Vara FM — the transmit drive is really fussy and if you're overdiving it the gateway will just ignore the connect request. In Vara there's a little ALC meter and you really want to stay out of the red, like aim for maybe 50-60% on the drive slider and see if that changes anything. Also double check that your PTT is actually keying the radio. With the Signalink it should be handling that via VOX but ive seen setups where the delay is off and the radio doesnt key fast enough before Vara starts sending data. There's a TX delay setting somewhere in Vara FM settings, bumping that up a tiny bit sometimes fixes it. What baud rate are you trying? Some gateways in my area only do 1200 even though the default in Vara wants to negotiate higher.

yeah the spots aging thing is totally normal and honestly its one of the more frustrating parts of starting out with clusters. most of those spots are only good for maybe a few minutes depending on how pileup-happy the DX station is. DXwatch and DX Summit are both pulling from the same underlying cluster network more or less — the Reverse Beacon Network feeds into a lot of it too if the station is CW or digital. so you're not really missing anything by not having both open at once, i usually just pick one and stick with it. the QRZ spot feed is fine but i find it a little cluttered personally. what helped me a lot was filtering by band so i wasnt staring at spots on 10m when my antenna is basically useless up there right now. hamspots app is decent from what i remember, though i havent used it in a year or so — does the job if you want something quick on your phone without opening a browser.

So ive been seeing WWFF pop up more and more on the clusters and finally looked into it properly last week. Looks really cool, operating from nature reserves and parks and logging contacts in protected areas. I activated a POTA site last year so im sort of familiar with the general idea of portable operating but WWFF seems a bit different and I cant quite figure out the workflow. Like do I need to register the activation beforehand or can I just show up, operate, and then upload the log after? I know with POTA you can do a self-spot and it shows up on the hunters app pretty much instantly but does WWFF have something similar? Also how many contacts do I need for it to count as a valid activation, I thought I saw 44 somewhere but wasnt sure if that was for all references or just certain ones. Im planning to go out to a WFF reference thats maybe 20 mins from my house, its a state wildlife management area and I already confirmed its in the database. Probably gonna run my KX2 with a random wire up in a tree, should be fine for 40m at least. Just want to make sure I dont mess up the logging side of it because that seems like the part that trips people up.

had almost the exact same symptoms on mine a couple years back. turned out to be Q1024 on the PA board, one of the driver transistors. the finals were actually fine. the tricky part is the reduced drive makes it look like a final problem but if all bands are affected equally and the ALC is behaving normally, the driver stage is the first place i'd go. you can check bias voltage on the driver stage before you even pull the finals, saves a lot of headaches. there's a service manual floating around on the Yaesu yahoo group archive or miklor's site has some of the board layouts. the bias trimmer for the driver is worth checking too, they can drift over time especially if the rig ran hot for a while. what's your heatsink situation like, does the fan kick on normally?

so i just passed my general a few weeks ago and got assigned one of those sequential calls, which is fine but its kind of long and clunky to say on the air. i started looking into the vanity callsign process and honestly the FCC ULS stuff is a bit overwhelming to read through. from what i can tell you basically just apply for whatever call you want thats available and then there's like a filing window and then... they pick randomly if multiple people apply for the same one? or is it first come first served? ive seen conflicting stuff online and cant figure out which is actually true. also does it cost money now? i heard they started charging a fee not too long ago but dont know if that applies to vanity apps too or just new licenses. any help appreciated, been going back and forth on whether its worth bothering with

so ive been doing a lot of hilltop activations lately, mostly 2m and 70cm, and im trying to decide if lugging a yagi up there is actually worth it over just using my diamond X50 on a painters pole. the X50 is dead simple and works fine for local repeaters but when im trying to work simplex or hit distant stations during contests or just good tropo conditions it obviously falls short the thing is i built a cheap 5 element yagi for 2m a while back from a design i found online and it works but its kind of a pain to aim and i feel like half the time im just guessing which direction to point it especially if i dont have a buddy on the other end telling me signal strength. also transporting it without bending anything is annoying has anyone gone the route of like a small moxon or a 3 element yagi that folds down or something that hits a decent compromise? or do you all just bring the collinear and call it good unless youre specifically doing EME prep or whatever. genuinely curious what people are actually using out in the field vs what they say they use

yeah what he said. i remember my first one i showed up way overpacked and stood around for like two hours before anything happened lol. the waiting is real. your EC should have a briefing at the start that explains assignments so just pay attention to that and ask questions if something isnt clear, nobody expects you to already know everything thats kind of the whole point of the exercise. the main thing is just showing up, a lot of people sign up for ARES and then disappear when an actual activation comes around so the fact that youre going counts for a lot.

so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 with an upconverter for HF stuff for about a year now and honestly its been pretty decent for what it is. but ive been eyeing the SDRplay RSP1B and wondering if the jump in performance is actually noticeable in day to day use or if im just GASing out and should put that money toward a better antenna instead. main thing i care about is being able to actually dig stuff out on 40m and 80m at night when the bands are busy and the noise floor gets ugly. the RTL-SDR with direct sampling mode is fine but i can tell it gets a bit wobbly when theres strong signals nearby, had a local AM broadcast station wiping out a chunk of the band the other night which was annoying. heard the RSP1B has better filtering and a proper 14 bit ADC which should help with that but i honestly dont fully understand how much of a real world difference 8 bit vs 14 bit actually makes in a crowded band situation. running SDR++ on a slightly older laptop, nothing special. would the RSP1B even be usable or would it choke the CPU? anyone actually switched from RTL-SDR to SDRplay and have opinions either way?

yeah ive done almost exactly this, took me a few weekends but it works really well now. the 24vac motor side is actually not that bad once you get your head around it — you basically just need a couple of relays to switch the two legs and make sure you have some logic in the code to never energize both directions at once or you'll have a bad time. i used a solid state relay board i got off amazon for like eight bucks and it handles it fine. the brake line on the ham-iv needs a little extra attention too, there's a delay you need to build in or it'll jerk. for the GS-232 stuff there's actually a library on github that handles most of the parsing already, cant remember who wrote it but search arduino GS-232 rotator and you'll find it. saved me a ton of time. as for the pi vs just a cheap esp8266 — honestly the esp8266 or esp32 can do a simple web interface no problem and its way simpler than running a whole linux box for that one job. pi is nice if you want to do more with it later i guess.

yeah the listening thing is huge and most guys skip it completely. ive worked some rare ones over the years and the single biggest mistake i see is people transmitting before they even know where the dx station is listening. they just hear the pileup noise and start calling blind. on 40m split i actually use a beverege for rx when the band is long, it narrows things up enough that i can pick out where the DXpedition is actually digging. makes a noticeable difference. without it everything kind of blurs together especially late in the evening when there's 400 guys all running 1500 watts into a small slice of spectrum. the pattern thing you described is real. good DXpedition operators especially the big ones like WRTC-caliber guys, they're very deliberate about where they move their listening frequency. if you can figure out the rhythm youre way ahead of the random callers.

so ive been doing CW for about 8 months now and im finally starting to feel comfortable enough to get on the air but something just feels wrong about how my sending sounds. like the dits and dahs arent quite... balanced? i dont know how to describe it. im using an old Bencher paddle i picked up at a hamfest and running it through my radio's internal keyer (IC-7300). speed is around 16 wpm which feels comfortable for me. when i record myself and play it back it just sounds sloppy compared to other guys on the air. ive messed with the weighting setting a little bit but honestly i dont even fully understand what that does. does it affect the dit to dah ratio or is it something else entirely. also my paddle tension might be too loose, i keep accidentally sending extra dits when i think im lifting off. any advice from people who have been through this would be great, kind of discouraging when your code sounds like mush

the wonky antenna angle probably didnt hurt you as much as you think, 40m is pretty forgiving especially if there were any decent band condx. i did one a few months back where my EFHW was basically sloping downhill and i still worked into europe somehow. just keep doing them, after like 5 or 6 activations you get a feel for how fast you can throw something up and what actually matters vs what you stress about for no reason

i did the rx mod on mine years ago and tbh for casual shortwave listening its fine but the 817 front end is pretty easily overloaded once you open it up like that, especially near broadcast stations. ended up adding an attenuator inline for MW listening. still glad i did it but just managing your expectations here — its not gonna turn into an SDR or anything.

yeah those QSOs absolutely count as long as you have the QSL cards or the contacts are in LoTW. the ARRL doesnt care when you made the contact, just that you can confirm it. so dig out those old cards and see what you've got. LoTW is really the way to go now, most serious DX stations upload pretty regularly and a lot of the rare ones do too eventually. you just need to get your own log uploaded with your certificate from the ARRL and then matches happen automatically when the other station uploads theirs. paper QSLs still work fine for DXCC if the station doesnt use LoTW, you just send them in for a manual check which costs a little money per card. WAS and WAZ are totally separate awards with separate applications and fees. no bundle that I know of. WAZ is the 40 zone one from CQ magazine actually, not ARRL, so that's a whole different organization to deal with. honestly just start by getting your LoTW account set up and uploading everything, then look at what you already have confirmed and go from there. 60 entities is a solid start, you're probably closer than you think.

honest answer — it depends a lot on how much the setup headache bothers you versus how much the dead time during contests bothers you. for me the dead time was killing me, sitting there spinning the vfo on a quiet band while radio 2 is just collecting dust is painful once you know there's a better way. the bandpass filter thing is real though, you absolutely need them if both radios are going at once or you'll have one receiving in the mud while the other transmits. i run a set of Array Solutions filters and they work fine but its another $300-400 you're looking at minimum if you go that route. the audio side is actually easier than i expected, N1MM has pretty good SO2R support and once you get the focus switching mapped out it becomes muscle memory. took me maybe two or three full contests before i stopped feeling like i was rubbing my stomach and patting my head at the same time. with a K3 and a 7300 you've already got the hard part figured out honestly. the K3 especially plays well in SO2R setups. i'd say try it in a lower stakes contest first, maybe a state QSO party or one of the shorter sprint formats where the pressure is lower and you can fumble around without it costing you much.

honestly your neighbor isnt wrong but hes also not telling you the full picture. a vertical with a good radial system will beat a dipole at 25 feet for low angle dx stuff, thats just kind of physics. but 60 radials is the ideal, not the minimum — even 16 or 20 decent length radials gets you most of the way there and the improvement curve flattens out pretty fast after that. so the labor isnt as insane as it sounds if you dont go full overkill on it. that said, a dipole even at 25 feet isnt useless, you're still making contacts and it has better high angle radiation which actually helps for regional stuff, nets, that kind of thing. if you mostly care about dx and can stomach laying down some wire, the vertical would probably open things up a bit. if you're happy with what you're working now, maybe dont fix what aint broke. i ran a similar setup for years before i finally went vertical and yeah it helped but it wasnt like night and day, more like a consistent improvement on marginal paths.

dont overcomplicate it with the pi if you dont need logging integration right now. i ran just an arduino mega directly to the pc via usb for like two years, wrote a little python script that presented it as a hamlib compatible rotator over a virtual com port. worked fine. the pi adds another thing that can crash at 2am during a contest lol

i was in your exact spot about 8 months ago and i went with the ft-65 based on similar advice and im glad i did. chirp works great with it which makes programming repeaters way less painful. the only thing i wish it had was a cross-band repeat but thats more of an advanced thing anyway. for just hitting repeaters and chatting with friends its been totally solid