Mountain Ham

so ive been trying to get APRS working for a few weeks now and im pulling my hair out a little. running a TM-D710G in the shack connected to a vertical outside, and i can SEE packets coming in on the display, i can hear the digipeaters doing their thing, but my own position just never shows up on aprs.fi no matter what i do. ive got the path set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which seems to be what everyone recommends and my callsign-SSID is set correctly as far as i can tell. beacon interval is every 2 minutes. TX audio is going out, i can see the TX light flash. honestly not sure what to check next, its like the packets are going into the void. one thing i noticed is that sometimes the radio beacons and i dont hear anything come back from a digi, not even an echo. but other times i do hear a digi respond. so maybe its intermittent? or maybe im just not understanding how the path works. any ideas appreciated, this has been bugging me for like 3 weeks at this point.

omg yes i had the same experience yesterday, i'm pretty new too and i just randomly left my radio scanning on 10m while i was doing stuff around the house and came back to like 5 people calling me from places i'd never worked. i didnt even know what to do at first lol. what website do you use to track the solar flux? i've just been kind of guessing

JS8Call is fantastic for actual conversations! It extends FT8 with keyboard messaging, relays, and network communication using the same robust 8-FSK modulation. Much more engaging than PSK31's current activity level.

WAZ took me way longer than DXCC did, just a heads up. some of those zones are genuinely rare and you might wait a long time for an activation. zone 2 was the last one i needed and i sat on 39 zones for like two years. so if youre newer i'd probably start with WAS or DXCC mixed just to get the momentum going and understand how the whole confirmation system works before you get into zone chasing which can be kinda maddening

I was terrified my first time too! Now I'm a regular and even fill in as NCS occasionally. The formal procedures help everyone stay organized during real emergencies. Just remember to keep your initial check-in brief - call sign and location is usually sufficient unless they ask for more.

yeah drill the hole man, the mag mount cable situation drives me crazy too and i always end up with a chewed up jacket after a year. ive got a tram 1185 on an NMO on my 4runner and it honestly outperforms every mag mount ive tried just because the connection is solid and the ground is actually the roof not some rubber suction cup situation. tacoma roof is thin-ish but totally doable with a step bit, just go slow

omg yes i was on 10m too and i had no idea what was happening at first lol, im still pretty new to HF and i just got my general a few months ago so i havent really seen a real band opening before. my elmer told me 10m was kind of hit or miss near the bottom of the solar cycle but we're heading up now i guess? it was actually kind of overwhelming trying to figure out who to call. ended up just listening mostly but i did make one contact with a guy in Chile which is the furthest i've ever reached so that was pretty cool for me even if its normal for everyone else here

the band edge thing is actually really important and a lot of new generals get caught on this. your carrier frequency isnt the only thing that matters — an SSB signal takes up maybe 2.4-3 kHz of bandwidth, so if you set your dial to 7.300 you're actually splattering signal above the band edge and technically out of your allocation. most people say stay at least 3 kHz below the upper edge to be safe, so like 7.297 or lower if you're on upper sideband. as for the 7.175 vs 7.225 thing, the FCC updated the allocations back in 2012 i think and generals got a chunk of the phone portion expanded down. so 7.175 is correct for where general phone starts now, 7.225 was the old limit. the ARRL band plan chart on their website should have the current version, just make sure youre not looking at a cached old page or something.

JS8Call definitely has a learning curve compared to FT8, mostly because you have to actually be patient and watch for activity rather than just clicking a callsign. the heartbeat feature helps a lot once you get it configured — basically it lets the software announce your presence automatically so other stations know youre around even if you step away. 7.078 should be active but honestly activity levels vary a ton by time of day and band conditions. i usually have better luck on 40m JS8Call in the evenings, like after 0100z or so when the band settles down a bit. PSK31 isnt totally dead but its definitely quieter than it used to be. 14.070 on 20m still has some life in it on weekends. the thing about PSK31 is you really can have a flowing conversation, people will talk about their antenna setups and the weather and whatever for 20 minutes, its actually kind of nice. you need a pretty decent signal though, its not going to punch through like FT8 will. if weak signal is your main concern FT8 or JS8Call will always win that game.

Definitely upgrade that antenna! The Nagoya NA-771, at just under 16 inches, is close to a quarter-wave vertical antenna and much more efficient than the typical rubber duck antenna shipped with most handheld transceivers. Be careful though - because this antenna is so popular, unscrupulous vendors are selling counterfeit antennas. Consult the Nagoya website for information on how to identify fake antennas.

Welcome to the hobby! The tone gets filtered out on most repeaters, so you won't hear it on the output. Normally the receive tone is filtered out and the transmitter re-generates the tone. Double-check you're programming TX tone, not RX - that's the common mistake.

the x50a is a solid antenna, no issues there. the thing is you're probably only getting around 3 dBd on 2m with that antenna so a longer collinear isnt going to get you dramatically more — maybe another 2-3 dB if youre lucky and the pattern stays clean. for a 55 mile path to a repeater input thats probably not gonna make the difference you need. honestly a yagi pointed at that repeater is the right answer if that link matters to you. doesnt have to be huge, even a 5 element yagi on 2m is going to give you 7-8 dBd and a tighter pattern which is exactly what you want for a specific path. you could just mount it fixed in that direction and keep the x50a for everything local. two antennas, a duplexer or a switch, done. i ran something similar for years before i put up a rotator — the fixed yagi actually worked better for that one path because i wasnt constantly fiddling with anything