Karen Thompson

so ive been using a basic RTL-SDR V3 dongle for probably two years now, mostly just poking around on aircraft and doing some wideband listening, a bit of APRS decoding and whatever. its been fine for that stuff but ive been getting more into HF monitoring lately and the direct sampling mode on the V3 is... okay. not great. a lot of images and the noise floor is kind of rough depending on the band. anyway someone at the club mentioned the SDRplay RSP1B and said it was a genuine step up for HF work. ive been looking at it and the specs do look better on paper — 1kHz to 2GHz, 10 MHz bandwidth, better dynamic range, all that. and it works with SDRuno which i know is their software but ive also seen people running it through SDR++ which is honestly what i prefer using anyway. my question is basically is it actually worth the ~$100 or so price difference or is it more of a sidegrade kind of thing. im not doing anything serious with it, no contesting, mostly just wanna copy some shortwave broadcasts and maybe mess around with decoding WSPR spots. if anyone has run both i'd be curious what you actually noticed in practice not just the spec sheet stuff

Welcome to the activation side of things, it's way more fun than just chasing trust me. Okay so the activation zone is the top 25 meters of vertical prominence, not a horizontal radius — so as long as you're within that vertical band from the true summit you're fine. Most rocky summits you'll still be well within it even if you're a little off to one side. Just don't set up halfway down the hill and call it good. For spotting, you absolutely should self-spot on SOTAwatch before you start, or at least ask someone to spot you. The RBN only picks up CW and digital so yeah that wont help you on SSB. A lot of activators will text a friend or post via the SOTA Spotter app if they have cell coverage. No signal up there? Then just start calling on a common frequency and hope for the best, plenty of people monitor 14.285 and 7.285 on SSB for SOTA activity. You only need 4 QSOs to qualify the summit so it usually doesnt take long once you find a clear frequency. For logging I just use a small waterproof notepad and a Fisher Space Pen, works even when its cold and wet. Some people use the HAMRS app on their phone which is pretty slick for SOTA logging.

so I finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, been meaning to do it for months and kept putting it off. I brought my KX2 and a wire antenna, nothing fancy, just wanted to get the 10 contacts and call it done honestly. well the spot I had picked out from looking at satellite maps turned out to be way more wooded than I expected and I couldn't get a good line for the EFHW I was planning to use. ended up just kind of draping it through some branches at a pretty ugly angle and fired it up. signals were okay I guess but nothing amazing. took me almost an hour to get the 10 contacts on 40m and I was starting to sweat it a little around contact 7 or 8. anyway it counted and I uploaded the log to the POTA website that night. just wanted to share because I feel like everybody's activation posts online look perfect and I wanted to throw out there that a messy first one is still a valid one. already planning the next one and gonna scout the location better this time. any tips for finding good spots in parks that actually work for wire antennas?

i went through the exact same thing lol ended up with the 7300 about eight months ago and havent regretted it. the waterfall alone changed how i operate, i can see activity on 40m at a glance and it makes band conditions way more intuitive. only thing i'll say is get a decent external speaker because the internal one is pretty mediocre, makes a bigger difference than you'd think for long operating sessions. for FT8 the USB audio integration is really straightforward too, way less hassle than i expected setting it up with WSJT-X.

hamstudy.org is honestly probably enough if you do it consistently, thats basically how i passed mine. just keep grinding the practice tests until you're consistently getting like 85% or better and you should be fine on the real thing. the electrical theory looks scarier than it is, a lot of it is just memorizing the formulas and when to apply them, you dont need to deeply understand why ohms law works the way it does just know how to use it on a multiple choice test lol the HF stuff once you have the ticket is way more accessible than you'd think. i started out with a used IC-7300 and a random wire antenna strung up between two trees and made contacts into europe on 40m within the first week. propagation does a lot of the heavy lifting honestly. 20m is great during the day, 40m opens up really well at night. dont let anyone tell you that you need a tower and a beam to get started, a simple dipole or even a long wire will get you on the air and making real contacts

ive been on RemoteHams for a couple years now and honestly for the connectivity side of things its solid, the RCForb client they use is not the prettiest software but it does work and the latency is usually acceptable for SSB, less so for CW unless your connection is really clean on both ends. the SDR remote thing is newer and i havent used it as much but from what i played with it streams the IQ data pretty decently, better than i expected over a 25Mbps uplink at the remote end your concern about third party dependency for emcomm is valid though. what i do is run RemoteHams as the primary because its convenient, but i also have a WireGuard VPN tunnel set up as a fallback that my buddy can walk me through enabling if the RemoteHams connection craps out. that way i have two paths to the radio. the dynamic DNS issue you mentioned -- i just use a cheap VPS as a jump host and that basically solves it, radio end connects out to the VPS so it doesnt matter what my home ISP does on the echolink/IRLP combo idea, yeah people do run both at the same site, usually on a separate node machine. i wouldnt say there's a huge advantage tying them together architecturally unless you have a specific use case but there's nothing stopping you from having both

so ive been meaning to do this for literally two years and after the last storm knocked out power for four days i finally got serious about it. put together what i think is a decent go-kit but im sure ive forgotten something obvious because thats how these things go right now i have my FT-891 in a harbor freight case with a 40ah lifepo4 battery, a cheap PWRgate knockoff for power distribution, resonant dipole for 40m that i can string up between whatever trees or poles are around, coax, a handful of SO239 adapters, my logging notebook and pens, headlamp with extra batteries, a roll of electrical tape and some zip ties. also threw in a copy of my license and my ARES contact sheet. been doing some reading and i keep seeing people mention stuff like a ground rod which i hadnt really thought about, and also some kind of antenna analyzer maybe? not sure if thats overkill for a kit or if its actually useful in the field when youre trying to figure out why something isnt resonating the way it should. also wondering if i should have a second radio in there, like a handheld at minimum, just to have a local vhf option while the HF is running. anyway if any of you have gone through this process and found something you really wish you'd had when you actually deployed, id love to hear it. trying to not learn that lesson the hard way

so ive been following the icom IC-7760 situation for a while now and it seems like dealers are finally starting to get firm dates, at least thats what my local shop told me last week. guy there said he had a few pre-orders already and was expecting them sometime this quarter but wouldnt give me a straight answer beyond that. anyone else heard more concrete info also completely unrelated but 10m has been absolutely nuts this past week or two. worked a pile of stuff i normally cant touch on a regular afternoon, got into south america easy and even had a couple of JA stations call me which almost never happens from here. cycle 25 really seems like its picking up steam and if you havent been on the HF bands lately you might want to dust off whatever you have and give it a shot curious if anyone went to hamvention this year and heard any other news about upcoming gear from the other manufacturers, felt like i missed out not going

haha the shaky first QSO is a right of passage man, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. i remember mine, i said my callsign wrong twice and then forgot to say over and just held the mic in silence for like 3 seconds. the guy on the other end was super patient about it. you got the hard part done, it gets way easier from here. get yourself on HF when you upgrade and youll really get hooked

so ive been messing around with this idea for a while now and finally starting to put it together. basically i have a 4-port antenna switch and i got tired of manually swapping between my 40m dipole, the vertical, and my 2m/70cm colinear every time i change bands. figured an arduino could handle the relay switching if i feed it band data from the radio. my rig puts out band voltage on the accessory port, different DC voltages for different bands, which is pretty common. the plan is to have the arduino read that voltage through a voltage divider into an analog pin and then trigger the appropriate relay. got a 4-relay module from amazon that seems to work fine in testing with just a battery and some jumper wires. where im running into trouble is the code side. im decent with hardware but my programming is... lets just say rusty. ive got it reading the voltage and printing to serial monitor but the logic for mapping voltage ranges to relay outputs is kind of a mess right now. also not sure if i need any debouncing or delay logic when switching bands so i dont hot-switch the antenna while transmitting. anyone done something similar? happy to share what i have so far if someone wants to look at the code. also wondering if a pi would have been a smarter choice since it can run python which id be more comfortable with but the arduino felt simpler for just reading a pin and flipping relays.

dual band is 100% worth it dont let anyone tell you otherwise, at least half the repeaters in my area are on 440 and if you only have a 2m radio you're just missing stuff for no reason i started with a UV-5R and honestly it was fine but i did eventually replace it with a Kenwood TH-D74 which is way overkill and i dont recommend spending that much right away lol. somewhere in the middle is probably the sweet spot for you

I run a 4x17el array on 2m and even that took me a while to get consistent QSOs going. the path loss on EME is brutal, something like 252 dB on 2m, so every dB you can squeeze out of your system actually matters. that said i worked my first moonbounce QSO with a borrowed 2x9el setup and 100w so it definitely is doable with modest gear now that JT65 is the thing everyone uses. one thing nobody told me when i started was how much the moon's position relative to perigee vs apogee changes your path loss by a couple dB and that actually makes a difference on a marginal station. there are good resources on the WSJT-X site and the VHF contesting groups usually have EME nets or email lists where the regulars will literally help you plan your first attempt if you ask. people in that community are generally pretty welcoming to new stations because more activity is good for everyone. just dont expect it to happen fast, my first actual completed QSO took three separate moon passes before we got all the exchanges through

so this has been bugging me for a few weeks now. picked up a used 7300 off a local guy, he said it was 'working fine just needed a new owner' which yeah i know, red flag in hindsight. anyway it receives great, selectivity is good, all the DSP stuff works, but when i key up im only getting maybe 8-12 watts out regardless of what i set the power to. doesn't matter if im on 40m or 10m, same thing. ALC looks normal on the meter, at least i think it does, never had a 7300 before so im not 100% sure what normal looks like. i pulled the covers and nothing looks obviously burnt or scorched. the finals look okay visually but i havent done any real measurements yet. my thought is maybe the driver stage is limiting it or something in the ALC feedback loop is clamping the output early. has anyone dug into one of these for a low power issue? im comfortable with a soldering iron and have a decent DMM and a scope, just dont want to go poking around blindly if someone already knows the usual suspects on this radio.

so anyway this was confusing to me too when i first got my ticket. what finally clicked for me was realizing the cluster is basically just people posting "hey i just worked this station on this freq" in real time, thats really all it is. so yeah if someone spotted a BY station on 14.225 twenty minutes ago, good luck finding them still there. some of the more rare DX you might have a better shot because they operate for longer periods but for a lot of stuff you really do have to move fast. i use the DXlabs suite on my pc and it has cluster integration built in which is pretty nice, pulls spots right into the logging software. might be worth looking at if you ever want everthing in one place instead of a bunch of browser tabs.

yeah i was in the same boat not too long ago lol. one that got me was QSB, thats fading, like when a signal fades in and out. and QSY means change frequency. those two come up a lot. honestly just spending time listening to nets helped me more than any chart

yeah those sites do overlap quite a bit, they're all pulling from the same underlying DX cluster network more or less, just different interfaces and filters. DXwatch is nice because it has the band and mode filters right there and you can set it to only show what you care about. the latency thing you're noticing is totally normal — spots can be anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes old by the time you see them, and if it's a pileup on something rare it'll be gone in a blink. honestly for a windows setup i'd look at something like Dx4Win or even just connecting to a telnet cluster directly through a terminal. but if you want to keep it browser based, DXwatch with the filters set tight is probably fine for learning. the big thing is dont just wait for spots, use it as a starting point and then actually listen around the band yourself. you'll start to develop a feel for when a spot is fresh vs stale just from how the pileup sounds. takes a bit but it clicks eventually.

this is the kind of post I needed to read because our club is talking about doing our first real field exercise and I had no idea terrain would be such a big issue. I'm still pretty new and I just assumed if we had good antennas it would mostly work out. guess I was wrong about that. how did you end up setting up the relay on Miller Road, did someone just drive up there with a handheld or did you have a more permanent setup?

yeah i've noticed the timing thing too but honestly i still struggle with it on phone pileups, the chaos is just harder to read than CW. on CW you can actually hear the spaces but on SSB everybody is just yelling and it turns into this wall of noise. i sometimes wonder if the DX op can even pull individual calls out of that mess or if its just whoever happens to hit a quiet moment. one thing i havent tried yet is working more on my audio, like actually spending time making sure my mic audio is punchy and clear. my current setup is kinda whatever and i bet im not standing out in the pile at all from an audio quality standpoint. do you run any processing on your TX audio or just let the radio do its thing

im kinda in the same boat as you actually so take this for what its worth but i started with an app called Ham Morse and its been pretty decent. also found some youtube videos where someone just reads through common QSO phrases in CW which helped me start recognizing real on-air stuff instead of just random letters. the thing that surprised me is once you get maybe 20 letters down it starts feeling less impossible, its really the first couple weeks that feel hopeless lol

oh man dont feel bad about the doubling thing, literally everyone does that when they're starting out. even guys who've had their ticket for years still step on people occasionally, especially on busy repeaters. net control wasnt calling you out to embarrass you, they just need to sort out who was talking. as for when to check in — most nets have a specific check-in window near the start where net control will say something like "now taking check-ins" or "please call with your check-in now." the "any traffic or late check-ins" part at the end is usually for people who joined late or have a message to pass. you can still check in then if you missed the main window, totally fine to do that. on the phonetics question, honestly just follow what the other stations on that particular net are doing. some nets are pretty relaxed and people just say their call and first name. others are more formal and want phonetics and QTH. listen for a few more sessions and youll get the rhythm of how that specific net runs. and once you do check in a few times net control will recognize your call and it becomes second nature pretty fast.

oh man i remember that feeling exactly, dont worry about it. the pause thing happens to new checkins pretty often, net controls are generally used to it. the format varies a little net to net but usually you just wait for them to ask for checkins, then unkey and give your callsign phonetically, your name, and your location. some nets also want to know if you have traffic or announcements. thats really it. after you check in just listen and wait for them to call you back. the handheld is totally fine, plenty of people run into nets on HTs. if youre hitting the repeater you're good. the baofeng gets a bad rap in some circles but if it works it works. just make sure your audio isnt too hot or too quiet, that tends to be more of an issue with those than anything else. try again next week, it gets easier fast once you've done it a handful of times.

yeah what he said about the spotter location thing is real, i learned that the hard way spending like 20 minutes trying to work something that a guy in Japan spotted and i couldnt hear a thing lol. HamAlert is also worth looking at if you havent already — you can set it up to send you a push notification on your phone when a specific callsign or entity gets spotted, which is great if youre waiting on a particular one for a new country. its free and works pretty well in my experiance

yeah I was the same way for like the first year of my license lol just kind of lurked on the frequencies without ever actually keying up. finally did it and honestly the hardest part was just pressing the PTT for the first time. after that it felt totally normal. the net control guys on local nets are usually pretty patient, at least in my experience. one tip — if you can find the net's website or info page beforehand sometimes they post the net preamble or procedures so you know what to expect before you even tune in

the TQSL certificate request thing tripped me up too when i first did it, just make sure the address you use matches your FCC license exactly or it can cause headaches. also clublog is another one worth knowing about, lot of DXpeditions use it and you can check if your callsign is in their log before anything even gets confirmed, saved me a lot of wondering more than once.

yeah the visual dots and dashes thing is generally considered bad practice for actually learning to copy by ear, you end up counting dits and dahs in your head instead of just hearing the character as a sound which slows you way down later. the koch method basically just means you start with two characters at full speed, like 20wpm or whatever you're aiming for, and you only add a new character once you can copy the current set with something like 90% accuracy. the idea is your brain learns to recognize the rhythm of each letter rather than trying to decode it consciously for software a lot of people swear by lcwo.net which is free and lets you do koch training right in the browser, and there's also the Just Learn Morse Code program that's been around forever. i used a combination of both when i was learning. the other thing i'd say is don't drop your practice speed to something like 5wpm thinking it'll be easier, it won't, because slow code sounds completely different from fast code and you'll just have to relearn it anyway. 15-20 minutes a day consistently is honestly plenty, the key word being consistently