Michael Thomas

so ive been chasing SOTA for about 8 months now and finally decided to stop being lazy and actually do an activation. planning to hit W4T/SU-001 this saturday, its not the most exciting summit but its close and i figure a good first one to not embarrass myself on. my plan is to bring the KX2 with a 40m link dipole, probably set up around 10am local and run 10 watts. ive been watching other peoples spots on SOTAwatch and i know i need to self-spot or have someone alert ahead of time. my question is more about the logging - do i need to log during the activation or is it okay to reconstruct from memory after? i know you need 4 QSOs to qualify and im not worried about that part, just wondering if there's a strict rule about contemporaneous logging or if writing it down on a napkin counts lol also does the summit reference go in the comments field on ADIF or is there a specific field for it? i use HAMRS for portable logging and i cant figure out where to put W4T/SU-001 in there

so ive been doing a lot of SOTA and general hilltop stuff lately and my rubber duck situation is obviously not cutting it anymore, no surprise there. i had a 2m yagi i built like 10 years ago from an ARRL handbook design but it got destroyed in a move and i never replaced it. been thinking about either building something new or just buying one of those cheap tape measure yagis everyone seems to love for fox hunts and portable work. the thing is i want something that also does 70cm so i'm not dragging two antennas up a hill. the dual band yagis i've seen online look a little sketchy in terms of how the elements interact — like, does the 70cm performance actually suffer much when you add it to a 2m design? or is this one of those things where its fine in practice even if the theory looks messy. i've modeled a few things in EZNEC but i'm not confident im setting it up right for dual band stuff. also open to hearing if anyone just uses a collinear for portable work instead. i know the gain pattern is totally different but maybe for general operating its more practical than a directional antenna you have to aim all the time

so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now, came from an old Kenwood TS-450 that i ran for probably 12 years so this is kind of a big jump for me. figured id post some impressions since i spent forever reading threads like this before i bought it. first thing — the waterfall is just as useful as everyone says. i was skeptical honestly, thought it was a gimmick but being able to see where activity is on 40m without just spinning the dial around is actually a pretty big deal for how i operate. picked up a few dx stations i would have just tuned past before. the touch screen takes some getting used to. i keep accidentally bumping the wrong thing when im trying to adjust the rf gain, just muscle memory from the old rig i guess. also the menu system is deep, like really deep, ive probably only figured out maybe half of what's in there. one thing thats bugging me though — im getting what sounds like a low level hum on receive on 80m, doesnt seem to be there on 40 or 20. not sure if its a grounding issue in the shack or something with the rig itself or maybe just my antenna situation. running an inverted V at about 35 feet fed with ladder line into a tuner. anyone else run into anything like that?

wait is this the one that was rumored back in like january or is this a totally different announcement? i saw something on one of the facebook groups but couldnt tell if it was legit or just someone speculating. either way ill probably stick with my 7300 for now since i just finally got the audio interface sorted out for digital modes and i really dont want to start over lol

LMR-400 at 60 feet on 2m is totally fine, dont let anyone convince you otherwise. youre looking at maybe 1.5 dB of loss at 144 MHz for that run, which yeah isnt zero but for local work and casual tropo its not going to make or break anything. hardline is great if you can get it cheap or free but the connectors are a pain and for what youre doing the 400 is completely reasonable. i ran a similar setup for years before i upgraded and never felt like i was leaving much on the table. just make sure your connectors are done well, weatherproofed, and that you support the cable properly so it doesnt flex at the feedpoint. thats where most people lose more than they ever would to cable loss anyway.

Welcome to one of the more confusing parts of the hobby honestly. So the short version: LoTW is the gold standard if you care about ARRL awards like DXCC or WAS. The certificate process is a bit of a pain but its not as bad as it sounds — you dont need a notary anymore, you just mail a form with a copy of your license to ARRL and they send you back your certificate files. Took maybe 3 weeks for me. eQSL is fine and some people really like getting the digital cards, theres even an Authenticity Guaranteed tier that counts for some awards, but yeah most of the serious award chasers are focused on LoTW. That said a lot of DX stations upload to both so why not use both. For FT8 specifically almost everyone is uploading to LoTW automatically through WSJT-X or through their logging software, so a big chunk of those 200 contacts are probably already confirmed or waiting for the other station to upload. Once you get your LoTW cert set up and upload your log you'll probably see a bunch of confirmations come in pretty quick. Physical cards are kind of a separate thing — some people love them and collect them, others never bother. I still send and receive paper cards but mostly for DX that feels special, not for every FT8 contact.

dont overlook putting some flyback diodes across your relay coils if that module doesnt already have them built in, most of the cheap amazon ones do but worth checking. inductive kick from the relays can mess with the arduino inputs over time, had that happen on a different project and it took me forever to figure out why things were acting weird intermittently.

not dumb questions at all, everyone goes through this when they first get serious about it. so for DXCC the short answer is confirmed contacts count, not just worked ones. you need the QSL card or LoTW confirmation to submit for credit. that said dont throw away those older contacts — if even some of them are in LoTW already you might be surprised how many confirmations you already have sitting there. log into LoTW and check your account, a lot of stations upload their logs retroactively so something from a year or two ago might already be confirmed without you knowing. as for WAS and WAZ, yeah those are totally separate award programs and most people just chase them all simultaneously honestly. when you work a new state or a new zone you're making progress on multiple things at once, thats kind of the fun of it. i'd suggest setting up Log4OM or DXKeeper or whatever logging software you prefer and just let it track everything in parallel. once you get the workflow down it becomes second nature. welcome to the rabbit hole by the way, DXCC will absolutely consume you haha

so ive been spending a lot more time on 40m this past month or so, not really sure why i drifted over there but the band has been really decent in the evenings and i keep running into the same handful of guys doing ragchews which is honestly kind of nice. feels like a neighborhood almost. im usually a 2m/70cm guy mostly because thats what most of the local club activity is on but theres something about hf that just hits different when the conditions cooperate. anyone else been noticing good openings lately or is it just my part of the country

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and mostly do HF but ive always been fascinated by EME ever since i watched a presentation at a hamfest maybe 3 years ago. finally decided i want to actually try it instead of just reading about it. problem is im not sure where the realistic entry point is for someone without a massive yagi array in their backyard. right now i have a 100w radio and i was looking at 2m since thats where most of the activity seems to be? i know the path loss is something insane like 250dB which just seems impossible to overcome but people clearly do it so im missing something. ive been reading about JT65 and how the digital modes kind of changed everything for small stations but i still dont fully understand what the minimum viable setup looks like. like is a single 15 element yagi with 100w even worth pointing at the moon or am i just wasting my time until i can run a kilowatt and a 4 yagi array also how do you even know when to call, is there a calling frequency on 2m EME or is it all coordinated through like a dx cluster or website ahead of time

yeah i dont think theres any world where Log4OM replaces N1MM for contesting, they kind of do different things. Log4OM is more like a shack management tool that also logs, N1MM is pure contest machine. i run WSJT-X into Log4OM UDP all the time for FT8 and once you get it working its pretty seamless, QSOs just show up. but if youre in a contest running 200 an hour you want N1MM, full stop. just keep both and stop trying to make one do everything

so i've been messing with Winlink Express for about two weeks now and i finally got it to connect and send a test message to myself but im still pretty fuzzy on how the whole gateway selection thing actually works in practice like i understand conceptually that theres RMS stations you connect through and they relay to the internet and then to the recipients email, but when i open the channel selector it shows me like 20 stations some with good SNR some with garbage and i just kind of pick one that looks okay and hope for the best. is that really how people do it or is there a smarter way to pick also i set up my Vara FM and its running on a 2m connection to a local gateway thats maybe 30 miles away, works fine most of the time, but i tried the HF side (Vara HF) and i get connected but then the session just drops mid-transfer like 40% of the time. not sure if thats a propagation thing or something with my settings. running an IC-7300 and i have the audio levels set per the setup guide i found somewhere, ALC barely moving any tips from people who actually use this regularly would be great, especially for the HF reliability issue

so i was just spinning the dial on my 857d last night kind of half paying attention while making dinner and i started hearing stations coming in from all over the place on 10 meters. worked a guy in brazil without even trying, just threw out a call and he came right back. signal was like 59 plus, almost blew my headphones off honestly. ive been licensed since 2019 and i dont think ive ever really experienced a proper solar cycle peak before, like i knew it was coming but actually sitting there and hearing it is something else. for you newer hams who maybe got licensed during the doldrums when 10m felt like a dead band — this is what people were talking about when they said wait for the cycle to come back around. also noticed the FT8 spots on pskreporter were just absolutely packed, like the whole band lit up from late afternoon into the evening. curious if anyone else has been spending more time up there or if theres specific times that have been working better for you. i usually work ssb but might have to dust off the digital modes more if its going to be like this for a while.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and finally starting to get into chasing DX a little more seriously. i downloaded a bunch of apps and bookmarked a ton of sites and now im kind of overwhelmed honestly. right now i have QRZ pulled up on one tab and DXwatch on another and im not totally sure if im using them together the right way or if im just duplicating effort. like on QRZ the cluster spots update pretty fast but i notice sometimes DXwatch has spots that QRZ doesnt show and vice versa. is that normal? are they pulling from different networks or something? i thought they all fed from the same place but maybe not. also does anyone use any phone apps for this stuff? i saw something called DX Toolkit and also Ham Radio Deluxe has some cluster stuff built in i think but i havent tried it yet. just wondering what everyone actually uses day to day, not looking for anything fancy just something reliable that doesnt crash every five minutes

so ive been running FT8 for about 8 months now and i love the weak signal stuff, managed a bunch of DX i never wouldve touched on SSB with my setup (100w and a dipole up about 25ft, not exactly impressive). but i keep seeing people mention JS8Call like its this whole other thing and i finally downloaded it last weekend to mess around. honest question though — is JS8Call actually meant to replace the ragchew side of things or is it more of an emcomm/store-forward deal? i tried calling CQ a few times on 40m and got basically nothing for like an hour, then one guy came back but his signal was way down in the noise and i could barely follow the conversation because messages kept getting missed and we had to repeat stuff. felt clunky compared to just hopping on PSK31 which at least feels like an actual conversation even if it needs a better signal. maybe im just not patient enough or hitting the wrong times. does JS8Call even have an active user base on 40 or should i be checking different bands