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

so ive been putting together a field kit for ARES activations and im running into the usual power headache. right now im leaning toward bringing the honda eu2200i but honestly for a single HF station running maybe 100w it feels like overkill and the thing weighs like 47lbs which is fine for a vehicle deployment but we had a situation last month where we had to hike about a quarter mile to the actual command post location and that was not fun. the alternative ive been messing with is a 100ah lifepo4 battery with a 200w panel but the panel is big and floppy and getting it positioned right at an unknown site is always kind of a crapshoot depending on trees and time of day. the battery alone does fine for a few hours but if were talking a 12+ hour activation i get nervous about running the ic-7300 plus a laptop plus maybe a 2m mobile that somehow always ends up in the kit even when i say its not going in the kit. antenna side ive mostly sorted - got a 40/80m NVIS setup with a linked dipole and some surplus military masts that break down pretty small. the real question is whether anyone has done the math or just has real world experience on how long a 100ah lithium actually lasts running HF at moderate power with periodic tx and whether i should just suck it up and bring the generator anyway

So I finally got my ticket about 8 months ago and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some 2m local stuff. I keep seeing people mention QSL cards and LoTW and eQSL and honestly I'm a little confused about what the difference really is in practice and which ones I should bother setting up. I understand the basic concept — you're confirming the contact happened with the other station. But like, do people still actually mail physical cards? I thought that was mostly an old thing but then I saw someone at our club meeting get super excited about a card they got in the mail from Japan so maybe not. And then theres LoTW which I set up but I'm not totally sure I did it right because I uploaded my ADIF log and it seemed to work but I havent seen any confirmations come back yet. Is there a delay or something? Or do both stations have to upload for it to count? Also someone mentioned eQSL being different from LoTW and I honestly dont know what the distinction is. Is one better than the other for awards? I'm kind of interested in going for DXCC eventually so I want to make sure I'm doing this right from the start rather than having to go back and fix everything later.

i built almost the exact same thing last year, NE602 plus a LM386 audio amp and a random LC filter i copied out of an old QST article. honestly it worked better than i expected for a first attempt but the audio was pretty rough. one thing i did that helped was add a small ferrite bead on the audio output line before it hit the LM386 input, seemed to help with some of the RF trash getting in through that path. probably not the most scientific fix but it worked for me. the direct conversion thing is really fun to build even if its not the cleanest receiver in the world.

so ive been going back and forth on this for like two months now and i think i need someone to just tell me im wrong or right. my situation is a suburban lot, maybe 60x120 feet, house in the middle, trees on the back property line that go up maybe 40 feet or so. neighbor on the south side is close, maybe 15 feet from my fence. i was planning on putting up a half wave dipole for 40m, inverted vee style, fed at about 35 feet from one of those trees. the ends would slope down toward the corners of the yard. the math works out okay i think but the southeast leg would be running kind of toward the neighbors house and end up only like 8 feet off the ground near the fence. so now im second guessing and wondering if a vertical with a decent radial field would actually outperform that on low angles — like for working dx on 40. ive read a ton of conflicting stuff. some people say a low dipole is basically a cloud warmer and useless for dx, others say its fine. ive got access to a MFJ antenna analyzer and an nec2 modeling program but honestly i havent sat down and actually modeled it yet which i should probably just do. anyone run both and have a real opinion? not looking for a definitive answer just want to hear what people actually experienced

your IC-9700 is actually a solid foundation, dont sell that short. the receiver is decent and it does JT65 just fine through a computer. the 9 element yagi is the part that'll limit you the most -- for single yagi EME on 2m you really want something in the 15 to 17 dBd range minimum if you want to work more than just the big gun stations. a single 9el isnt going to hear much of anything except when you've got a perfect moon window and the other guy has a huge array pointed right at you. the LNA placement matters a lot, probably more than people realize when they're starting out. you want your preamp at the feedpoint, not in the shack -- every tenth of a dB of noise figure counts when youre trying to pull signals out of the noise floor that are like -25 dB or worse. something like an SSB Electronics or a homebrew GaAsFET preamp with around 0.3 to 0.5 dB NF is what most people are running. realistically with a single longer yagi, low noise preamp and JT65 you can work EME contacts. it wont be easy and youll spend a lot of time calling with no response but it does happen. check out the ON4KST chat during the ARRL EME contest weekend, thats where people coordinate skeds and youll get a feel for whos active and what stations they can hear

yeah this sounds like a classic audio routing mess honestly. when you have two things trying to grab or monitor the same audio device on windows you get exactly that kind of echo artifact, especially if one of them is doing any kind of loopback monitoring. i ran into almost the same thing when i had EchoLink and a remote SDR client both running on the same box — turned out EchoLink was monitoring its own output through the default recording device which happened to be the same virtual cable the SDR client was feeding into worth checking if VB-Cable or whatever virtual audio you're using has any mix settings that are feeding back on themselves. also if the IRLP node and the RemoteHams client are both set to the same default windows audio device thats almost certainly your problem. try assigning them to completely separate audio devices, even if you have to add a cheap USB audio dongle just to give one of them its own path. 40ms of latency on a link node will do weird things when it loops back through a remote SDR that has its own buffer delay on top

congrats on the DXCC, that's a real milestone especially with just a dipole for most of it. yes your LoTW confirmations absolutely count for WAS, same QSOs, you just apply separately through the ARRL awards system. just go into your LoTW account and you can apply for WAS directly from there once you have all 50 states confirmed. it keeps track automatically. WAZ is a different beast, thats the CQ magazine award not ARRL, so different system entirely. you need 40 zones confirmed and yeah some of those zones are a real pain to get, zone 1 way up in the arctic and a few others dont have a ton of activity. digital is actually great for WAZ because FT8 has opened up a lot of the harder zones compared to a few years ago when you were kind of waiting for expeditions. i wouldnt say its a CW only thing anymore at all. worth chasing alongside WAS if you ask me, a lot of overlap in the contacts youll be making anyway.

what he said, but also dont stress too much about it early on. i wasted a lot of time overthinking the QSL stuff when i shouldve just been making contacts lol. get your LoTW cert sorted, set up TQSL, and just let it run. you can always go back and upload old logs once you get it working. eQSL i signed up for but barely use anymore honestly. the paper cards i still request sometimes for DXpeditions or when i work a new country for the first time, just feels right to have a card on the wall for those.

yeah what he said about hamstudy is pretty much the standard advice you'll get. one thing i'll add is dont skip the electrical math questions even if they seem hard, theres actually only a handful of formulas they test on and once you do each type a couple times they stick. power = voltage times current, ohms law, that kind of thing. the decibel questions honestly just memorize that 3dB is double and 10dB is ten times, that covers most of what they ask. i took mine at a club session last spring and the actual exam felt way easier than i expected after practicing. i think i second-guessed myself more than anything.

so ive been watching the solar flux numbers creep up over the past few weeks and finally decided to actually sit down and see what 10m was doing yesterday afternoon. honestly wasnt expecting much because every time ive checked lately its been dead as a doornail but wow was i wrong. started hearing stations from europe coming in around 1400 local and by 1600 i had worked a handful of italians and a couple spanish stations without even trying that hard, running like 100 watts into a wire dipole up maybe 25 feet. flux was sitting around 185 or so which i guess is pretty decent for where we are in the cycle. i know we're supposed to be heading toward solar max but i honestly havent been paying close enough attention to know how good it can really get. is this kind of opening normal for this flux level or did i just get lucky with the right ionospheric conditions? and does anyone have a good way to predict when these things are gonna happen, ive been looking at DXMaps but sometimes the spots show up and the band is already dying by the time i tune around