Michael Thomas

JS8Call has a pretty dedicated following but yeah its nowhere near the volume of FT8, thats just the reality of it. i check in on the JS8Call activity nets on 40 and sometimes 20 and theres usually a handful of people around especially evenings. the thing is the mode was kind of designed for async messaging too so people leave their stations running and you can send messages that get stored and relayed which is kinda neat if you think of it less like a contact and more like a slow email over RF. PSK31 is not dead but its definitely quieter than it used to be. i still work it occasionally and can usually find activity on 14.070 area on weekends. the problem is when the band is even slightly noisy PSK31 just falls apart compared to FT8 or even FT4, the sensitivity difference is huge. thats the whole weak signal thing — FT8 can pull signals out of the mud that PSK31 would never decode. if you want to actually chat though and dont mind slower contacts PSK31 still has charm to it, the waterfal is fun to watch with all those little traces running.

so ive been trying to get Winlink set up for a few weeks now and i think im close but not quite there. running a TNC-X into an old IC-7300 on 2m and i can connect to Winlink Express on the laptop no problem. the issue is when i try to actually connect to an RMS gateway it either times out or i get partway through the handshake and then nothing. looked at the gateway list and theres like 3 within 50 miles of me, tried all of them at different times of day and same result basically. i did get one successful session last tuesday where an email actually went through to my wife's gmail, which was awesome, but since then cant replicate it. i dont know if its a frequency offset issue or maybe my TNC settings or what. using the standard 1200 baud packet on 144.990 which is what the gateway list shows for most of these. is there some debug logging i can look at in Winlink Express to see where its dying? i feel like im so close but something is just slightly off.

yeah you pretty much just pick it up over time honestly, thats how most people do it. but to answer your question QRM is interference from other stations, like man-made noise, whereas QRN is natural static or atmospheric noise. QRZ means whos calling me, youll hear that a lot on CW especially. QSB is fading signal. there are literally hundreds of them but most people only use like a dozen or so in regular conversation so dont stress about memorizing all of them at once. 73 just means best regards, its kind of the standard sign-off everyone uses. 88 is love and kisses, usually only sent to close friends or significant others, you dont just throw that one around at strangers. some people have strong opinions about using 88 casually so just be aware of that. there used to be a whole Q code book published by the ARRL but honestly just googling a list and keeping it next to your radio for a while works fine, eventually it just clicks

ok so i passed my technician exam like 3 weeks ago and ive been reading through part 97 trying to figure out exactly what im allowed to do and i keep getting confused. like i understand the basic band plan stuff but some of the wording in the actual rules is really hard to parse. my main question i guess is around HF — i know tech has some HF privileges but is that just CW or can i do like SSB on 10 meters too? i thought i read somewhere that techs get a small slice of 10m phone but then someone at my club said no you need general for that. and also is there anything in part 97 that specifically says what modes are allowed or does that depend on the band plan published by the ARRL because those feel like two different things to me and im not sure which one is actually legally binding. sorry if this is a dumb question just want to make sure im operating legally

welcome to the hobby, also a newer ham here got my ticket about 4 months ago. the first time someone came back to me i legitmately forgot what i was supposed to say next, just total blank. had the whole thing practiced and then nope, nothing. the other op was really patient though which i appreciated

A callsign such as WØLPR might be "Whiskey Zero Long Playing Radio." Certainly easy to remember but if you use these phonetics on the air under marginal conditions, you'll probably just confuse the operator on the other end. Learned this the hard way during my first contest when nobody could copy my creative phonetics!

With the CQ World Wide DX SSB contest coming up October 25-26, I'm starting to get excited about what might be my first serious effort in the Single Operator category. CQ WW really is the heartbeat weekend of HF - 48 hours when the entire world speaks the same language: 'CQ Contest'. I've been working on improving my antenna setup since last year and curious what others are planning. Anyone have tips for a relative newcomer to the big contests?

yeah the question pool looks intimidating but a lot of the questions are honestly pretty easy once you just see them a few times. dont overthink it. i passed my tech on maybe 10 days of studying and i had zero electronics background going in. one thing i wish someone told me -- some of the questions about RF safety and operating procedures kinda just require memorization and there isnt really a logic trick to them, so just accept that and drill those. but a lot of the electrical theory questions actually make sense if you spend 10 minutes understanding what voltage and current even are. your neighbor probably just forgot that it felt overwhelming at first, happens to everyone who's been licensed a long time i think

i have basically the same radio in a similar situation lol, mine's in a Silverado. i just kept the mag mount and honestly havent had problems but i did put it more towards the center of the roof. heard that's better for the radiation pattern or whatever. i'm still pretty new to all this so take that with a grain of salt but it seemed to help for me at least.

I had something similar with my 7300 about a year after I got it. turned out to be a cold solder joint on the PA board, one of the driver transistor pins. wasnt obvious visually, had to use a magnifier and even then it was a tiny hairline crack. reflowed it and its been solid since. might be worth pulling the covers and having a close look before you send it anywhere, especially if the warranty is basically done. the board layout is pretty accessible once you get the lid off, just take your time with the connectors. that said yours sounds a bit different because mine would drop and not recover at all, not bounce back on power cycle. could also be the temperature protection circuit getting a false trigger somehow, theres a thermistor in there that feeds back to the processor. if its reading high for some reason the rig will throttle back even if the PA isnt actually hot.

lip mounts are always a bit of a compromise honestly, the ground plane situation is just never ideal especially tucked in a corner like that. i ran one for like two years on my jeep and 70cm was always the weak link. eventually i gave up and did a proper NMO through the roof and the difference was noticeable but i get why you dont want to drill if your wife already said no lol one thing that helped me a little before i made the switch was repositioning to the center of the trunk lid if thats an option on your truck, more metal around it seems to help a bit. also check that the lip mount is making really solid contact and isnt getting corrosion between the clamp and the paint — that'll mess with your readings too. 1.8 on 440 from a lip mount isnt terrible though, you'll still hit most repeaters fine

To answer your first question — no, it's just one credit per entity regardless of how many QSLs you have for it. DXCC is about confirming entities, not contacts, so once you've got that entity confirmed through any method it counts once and that's it. The lotw confirmation and the paper card are both fine but you only need one of them to claim the credit. When you apply you'll basically be presenting your confirmations and the ARRL verifies you've actually worked those entities. As for WAS alongside DXCC — honestly yeah do both. With a dipole at 30 feet you might find WAS is actually easier to fill in during lower solar flux periods when DX is quieter, especially on 40m. Lots of stateside activity on 40 in the evenings. Dont overthink the strategy thing, just work what you hear and let the awards sort themselves out over time. That's kind of the fun of it.

honest answer? it adds chaos first, then eventually helps your rate, but the chaos phase lasts longer than people admit. i ran single radio for probably 8 years before going SO2R and even with that background it took me two or three serious contest weekends before i stopped hurting myself with it. the cognitive load is real — you're basically managing two completely separate operating tasks simultaneously and your brain really does have to build new muscle memory for it that said the 7300 and 450D combo is workable to start. the big thing people underestimate isn't the radios, it's the audio management and the interlock. if you transmit on both simultaneously even for half a second you're going to have a bad time. i use a behavioral interlock setup in N1MM+ with a hardware backup, don't skip the hardware backup. the software one has saved me zero times, the hardware one has saved me several on your specific situation — tribander plus a 40m dipole is actually a decent starting point for SO2R if you can get them oriented so they're not broadside to each other. you'll still get some bleedover on 40/15 when they're both open but it's manageable with filtering. the real problem will be 20 and 15 simultaneously since they're both on the tribander. so you're kind of doing SO2R on a budget antenna-wise which limits what bands you can actually run concurrently i wouldnt wait until everything is perfect to try it though. just go in with low expectations for the first contest, log whatever you can, and pay attention to where it breaks down operationally

yeah the Canary Islands (EA8) is definitely a separate DXCC entity from mainland Spain, so that contact counts as its own entity credit. good catch on your part. the basic idea with DXCC is you need confirmed contacts with 100 different entities to get the basic award, and LOTW is the easiest way to get those confirmations — if the other station is also uploading to LOTW and your logs match up, it just confirms automatically and you can see it in your account. you don't need to do anything special during the contact itself. WAS is totally separate — that's Worked All States, so 50 US states confirmed. WAZ is Worked All Zones, which is 40 CQ zones worldwide. they're independent awards, you apply for them separately through ARRL or CQ magazine depending on which one. most people do end up chasing more than one at a time just because a lot of DX contacts help with WAZ and DXCC simultaneously. honestly the best thing you can do right now is just make sure every contact goes into LOTW. even your old ones if you have the logs — you can upload them and some of them might already be confirmed waiting for you.

One tip: have your call sign, name, and general location written down in front of you. When you're nervous it's easy to forget the basics! Most nets are fun, often involving round-table style discussions, so relax and enjoy meeting your local ham community.

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i mostly lurk on some of the local nets and occasionally make a few contacts on 40m when im feeling brave enough. one thing that keeps tripping me up is all the shorthand people use. like i get that 73 means best regards or whatever but then someone will throw out QRM or QSB or say something like OM and im just sitting there going okay what does that even mean. i found a list online but there were like hundreds of Q codes on it and i honestly dont know which ones people actually use versus which ones are just historical or whatever. is there like a short list of the ones that actually come up in normal conversation? also are some of them more CW specific or do people use the same ones on phone too. sorry if this is a basic question i just feel like everyone assumes you already know this stuff

so ive been running Log4OM for a while now mostly because it looks nice and handles my everyday qso logging pretty well, links up with QRZ no problem and the awards tracking is decent. but every time a contest comes around i feel like im fighting it a little. its not really built for that fast paced stuff where youre running a pileup and just need to slam calls in quick without thinking about it. started messing with N1MM last contest season and yeah okay i get why contesters swear by it. the macro system is nuts once you figure it out and the bandmap integration is way better than i expected. but man the interface looks like it hasnt been touched since like 2003 and half the settings are buried in menus that dont make any sense until someone explains them to you. my current situation is i run WSJT-X for FT8 and that logs to ADIF fine, i just import into Log4OM after a session. works okay. but when i do a contest with N1MM i end up with a seperate log i have to merge later and its kind of a mess. anyone found a good workflow for keeping everything in one place without losing your mind? or do most of you just accept that contest logs live in N1MM and everyday stuff lives somewhere else

yeah the single yagi thing is real but there's a big asterisk on it. you can absolutely complete contacts on JT65B with a single long yagi like a 15-17el and 100-200w but you're basically dependent on the other station being a big gun. someone with a 4x yagi array or a 3m dish can hear you just fine when you're pointing at the moon, but you're not gonna hear them unless the geometry is good and everything lines up. the weak link is almost always your receive side. the IC-9700 is actually a solid radio for this, good noise figure and the built in SDR stuff helps. what you really want to focus on first is a good preamp at the feedpoint, like an SSB Electronic or a Kuhne, something with a noise figure under 0.5 dB ideally. that single upgrade will do more for you than doubling your power output in a lot of cases. the path loss math is brutal but the JT65 modes really did open this up to stations that would have had zero chance in the CW days. honestly just get yourself set up on 144.174 and watch the spots on the EME2 logger for a while before you even try transmitting. you'll get a feel for who's active and what kind of stations are making contacts on any given day.