Karen Thompson

so ive been running an old FT-450D for about 4 years now and honestly its served me fine but the waterfall on it is pretty rough and i keep hearing everyone rave about the 7300. was basically set on buying one this weekend but then my buddy at the club meeting last night goes 'well have you looked at the 7610' and now my brain is spinning again. my actual use case is mostly casual HF, some 40m and 20m ragchewing, occasional contests when i feel like it, nothing serious. i dont do any serious DX chasing or anything. the 7610 feels like overkill for what i do but i dunno maybe future proofing is worth the extra $700 or whatever the difference is right now. also my shack is just a corner of the spare bedroom so its not like im running some serious station here. anyone gone from a 450D to the 7300 and felt like it was actually worth it? or am i just chasing waterfall porn at this point

the stock mic on the 7300 is honestly fine but you really need to dial back the mic gain and let the TX bandwidth do some work. most people crank the gain and then the speech processor kicks in too hard and yeah it sounds like garbage. try setting mic gain around 50-60% and make sure the speech processor is either off or set conservatively — like compressor level no higher than 3 or 4 to start. the TX bandwidth setting in the menu is where a lot of people mess up too, default is kind of narrow, try widening it slightly to maybe 2400-2700hz and see if that helps the naturalness of the audio. also the bass rolloff on SSB is actually a feature not a bug — you dont want a lot of low frequency energy because it doesnt carry well and just muddies things up, but you want some warmth in the mids around 800-1500hz range. if someone said your lows were missing they probably just meant your voice sounded thin, which usually points to mic positioning or the eq curve being off. try talking across the mic not straight into it and see if that changes anything.

Self spot for sure, don't rely on the RBN alone especially if you're on a less active park. The app makes it really easy, just plug in your callsign and the park reference and it shows up on the map for hunters. A lot of people literally just watch that map all day waiting for new parks to pop up so you'll get contacts pretty quick once you're spotted. On the 10 contact thing — yeah you need 10 for it to count as a valid activation. If you only get 8 you can submit it but it won't count toward your activation total. Not the end of the world honestly, just means you didnt activate it. Some people try a second band if the first one is slow, that helps a lot. 40m on a weekday morning can be hit or miss depending on who's around but you should be fine with a decent antenna. Post to the schedule whenever, even same day is fine. A rare park will get attention regardless. Have fun, it's way less stressful than it sounds.

the latency thing on your current setup is probably mostly the audio stack honestly, RDP audio is just not designed for that use case at all. i went through the same thing before i found out about the proper remote rig software options. one thing i'll mention — there's also the W4MQ internet linking approach some guys use, kind of older but some people swear by it for specific rigs. but RemoteHams is probably the more actively maintained thing these days. 25/5 DSL should be workable but upstream is going to be your pain point when youre transmitting and sending audio back simultaneously, just something to keep an eye on if you notice dropouts specifically when you key up.

I completely missed it because I was at work! This is why I need to set up remote operation. With the ionosphere in flux, frequencies that were dead one minute can suddenly spring to life. These fleeting openings are part of the excitement of ham radio during solar peaks. Need to start monitoring the DX cluster more closely.

ok so i just passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and im still trying to figure out the rules around what frequencies i can actually use. i read through part 97 or at least tried to but honestly its kind of dense and hard to follow if you dont have a background in this stuff. my main question is about HF — someone at my local club said technicians get some HF privileges but then another guy said it barely matters because its such a narrow slice. and then theres the whole thing about phone vs CW and i got confused. also does the band plan stuff come from the FCC or is that like a separate thing that the ham community just decided on? because i see references to ARRL band plans and i wasnt sure if those are legally binding or just recommendations. sorry if this is a dumb question im just trying to not accidentally transmit somewhere i shouldnt be

the antenna spacing thing is real, dont underestimate it. i tried SO2R with my antennas way too close one year and spent about two hours troubleshooting why my 40m audio sounded like garbage before i realized my 20m amp was just splattering all over it. ended up just running SO1R that contest and felt dumb about it. feedline routing matters too, keep them separated as much as you can physically manage. one thing that helped me when i was first learning it — just use the second radio for receive only for a while. like tune around on it with headphones mixed in, dont even transmit on it, just get used to monitoring two bands mentally. its a weird cognitive load thing and it took me probably 3 or 4 contests before it started feeling natural instead of like i was just making mistakes on both radios at once

dayton is still worth it honestly. went last year with a buddy and yeah the outdoor flea market is hit or miss depending on weather but we found some really decent deals on coax and a few older HF rigs. the indoor stuff has gotten more commercialy but theres still a lot of cool vendor booths. only thing is parking is kind of a pain now compared to how i remember it being. if your driving 6 hours id say just do it, make a weekend of it

From a technical standpoint, band plans define specific frequencies to prevent interference, with the FCC dividing spectrum into bands for specific uses. The mode separations also help with receiver design - CW operators can use very narrow filters, while phone requires wider passbands. Always check current band plans before operating!

On the 7300, go to Menu > Set > Tone Control > TX > SSB. Set Bass to -2 for starters and Treble to +5. When using compression, aim for about 5 dB on voice peaks. Listen to yourself on monitor and adjust from there.

wait Hamvention dates are out already?? do you have the actual link for that because i want to book a hotel before everything fills up, last year i ended up like 40 minutes away which wasnt terrible but still. and yeah i keep hearing about 10m but i dont have a good antenna for it yet, still working on getting something up that isnt embarasing lol

yeah the first activation is kind of addictive lol. i remember mine, i was so nervous i forgot to log the band for the first four contacts and had to go back and guess. end fed halfwave is a solid choice for POTA, i use mine almost every time now. 40m in the morning is usually the sweet spot before it goes long on you.

What software are you using for the comparison? I've found CubicSDR easier to use than GQRX, and the ability to monitor multiple frequencies at once gives it an edge over GQRX for scanning applications. The RSP1B should definitely outperform the RTL-SDR on dynamic range.

oh man I had the exact same hum problem when I put my 5100 in my Tacoma last year. drove me crazy for like two weeks. turned out the issue for me was my power wire was running right next to the audio harness for a stretch inside the dash. rerouted it away from those and it went away almost completely. might be worth checking if thats the case for you too before you go buying anything

so i finally got my general ticket back in march and ive been mostly doing casual rag chewing on 40m and some FT8 when the bands are being moody. a buddy at my club keeps telling me i should jump into CQ WW SSB this october and i guess im just nervous about it because i dont really know what im doing in a contest environment. like i know the basics — you exchange signal reports and zones — but everything else kind of confuses me still. also is ARRL Field Day even comparable in terms of intensity or is that a whole different beast? i did Field Day with the club last june and it was chaotic but fun. trying to figure out if i should treat CQ WW the same way or actually study up more before jumping in. and has anyone been doing any SOTA activations to build up operating confidence before the big contests? someone mentioned that helps but i dunno if its just more of a different skill set entirely. anyway any advice welcome, even just like what logging software to have ready would help

dont worry about it too much, honestly most nets are pretty forgiving especially for newer hams. the format really does vary a lot from net to net. some want callsign, name, and location, some just want your call, and a few of the more formal traffic nets have a whole thing where you state whether you have traffic or not. best thing you can do is listen to a couple rounds before you check in so you can kind of mirror what everyone else is doing. as for the short suffix thing, yeah people do it on casual ragchew type stuff but for a net i'd stick to your full callsign at least until you're a familiar voice. net control needs to get it in the log and its just cleaner. you didnt do anything terrible, seriously, showing up and keying up is 90% of it for the first few times.

honest answer — it took me about 18 months from zero to solid 20wpm copying in real QSOs, but i wasnt super consistent about practice either. the thing that helped me most was switching from copying every letter to just writing down whole words when i caught them and letting the rest go. sounds wrong but it trains your brain to stop panicking about missed characters. also the Farnsworth method if you havent tried it — basically the characters come at 20wpm speed but with longer gaps between them. so your brain learns the sound of each character at the target speed without you having to process them that fast in a row. G4FON does this. i ran characters at 20 and spacing at 10 for a long time and it really did help the transition feel less brutal. the plateau you're hitting around 8 is super common, a lot of people call it the 10wpm wall even though it hits different for everyone. just keep going honestly.

the lifepo4 route is definitely the way to go for that kind of deployment honestly. ive been running a 100ah battleborn for two years now at field day and various SOTA activations and the voltage sag under load is pretty much a non-issue compared to SLA, like it stays up around 13.1-13.2v even when you're pushing it hard. two of them in parallel you should be fine for 8-10 hours running maybe 50-60% duty cycle on the 7300, i wouldnt run full 100w the whole time anyway in a comms exercise setting one thing i would say is make sure your parallel connection setup is done right, equal length cables from each battery to the bus bar or you end up with uneven draw and one battery doing most of the work. learned that the annnoying way at a deployment last spring the efhw on the 31 footer is a solid choice for 40m, we use almost the exact same setup and it just works. only thing i'd throw out there is if you haven't tuned it at the actual site before, give yourself extra time because ground conditions can shift the resonant point enough to matter if you're trying to run without a tuner

yeah the Es has been wild, i had a sked with a guy in Colorado on 6m Saturday and we ended up talking for like 45 minutes because the band just stayed open way longer than either of us thought it would. haven't seen it that good this early in a while honestly. my old FT-817 was doing just fine for it too, sometimes you dont need the fancy stuff. re the Icom rumors, i think people have been saying something is coming for like two years now so i wouldn't hold your breath. though i did see the TH-D75 from Kenwood is getting some attention lately if anyone wants a capable HT with APRS built in, not exactly new news but i ran into a newer ham at a club meeting last month who had no idea it existed so worth mentioning for the newcomers reading this.

so ive been using N1MM for contests for a few years now and it does what i need for that but for everyday logging its kind of a pain, the interface just feels clunky when im not in contest mode and i end up not logging half my QSOs which defeats the whole purpose someone at the club mentioned Log4OM and i downloaded version 2 a while back but never really got into it. then last week i was running some FT8 with WSJT-X and realized the ADIF import situation is kind of a mess if youre juggling two different programs. like i had dupes all over the place in my main log because i forgot to import the WSJT-X log before a contest and then imported it after and everything got weird so i guess my question is does anyone actually run Log4OM as their main logger AND still use N1MM for contests, or do you just pick one and deal with the limitations. also does Log4OM talk to WSJT-X any better than N1MM does, i know N1MM has that UDP thing but i never got it fully set up right

GOTA stations are fantastic for public outreach! During public hours, anyone who is newly licensed or unlicensed can participate and receive instruction. Make sure you have patient control operators who enjoy teaching. It's often the highlight of Field Day for many visitors.

yeah the timing thing is everything, honestly more than power. i run a KPA1500 so im not hurting on power but i still get beat out sometimes by stations i can barely hear because theyre just picking their spots better. the thing about listening to where the DX is actually pulling calls from — that takes real discipline. most people just watch the cluster spot and call on whatever frequency is listed and wonder why they never get through. 40m pileups are a different beast though. the QRM from broadcasters and the way propagation works on that band means you sometimes need to be more aggressive with your timing or you just get buried. i usually try to snipe right at the tail end of the previous QSO before everyone else starts calling, like half a second earlier than feels comfortable. works maybe 60% of the time on a good run. the real frustration is when the DXpedition op is sloppy and doesnt hold a consistent split — some of them wander all over and you just have to give up on a system and kind of freestyle it.

congrats on the first one, 12 contacts is totally respectable especially on 40m when conditions are being difficult. to answer your questions -- no theres no mode or band requirement for WWFF, you can work SSB CW FT8 whatever, they all count. some chasers actually prefer CW or digital but SSB is perfectly fine and honestly easier when youre also trying to manage being in the field. for the reference, if its already in the KFF database you dont need to do anything to register it, those references are managed by the WWFF national coordinator for the US which is ARRL affiliated i think. you can look up any KFF reference on the WWFF logger or parks on the air website and see if its already listed. if for some reason your forest isnt in there yet thats a whole different process but most state forests already have references. log submission goes through the WWFF logger at wwff.co -- you basically create an account if you havent, and upload your ADIF there. it doesnt replace LOTW or anything, its its own separate database for tracking activations and chaser credits. once its in the system the people who chased you will get credit automatically if they also log there.

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now, mostly HF stuff, some 2m SSB when conditions are good, but ive always been kind of fascinated by moonbounce and never really pulled the trigger on doing anything about it. started reading more about it lately and honestly it seems way more accessible than it used to be with JT65 and the weak signal stuff but im still kind of overwhelmed by the equipment side of things. from what i understand you basically need a serious yagi or dish setup for 2m or 70cm, a low noise preamp right at the feedpoint, and a decent linear amp to get your power up. ive seen people say you need at least 4 yagis and 500w to have any real chance on 2m EME but ive also read about guys doing single yagi EME with JT65 which sounds wild to me. is the single yagi thing actually worth it or is it just like a novelty where you can only work the big guns? also what kind of NF are we realistically talking about for the LNA, ive seen numbers like 0.3-0.5dB thrown around. and how do you handle the doppler and polarization rotation issues in practice, does the software handle most of that or is there manual stuff involved. sorry for the scattered questions, been going down a rabbit hole tonight

ok so im about 6 months into this hobby and ive been trying to figure out the whole QSL situation and honestly its kind of overwhelming. like i understand the basic idea — you confirm the contact with the other station — but theres like three different ways to do it and i cant tell if i should be doing all of them or just pick one or what. i signed up for LoTW because someone at my club said thats the one that counts for DXCC and other awards, which fine, but then someone else told me i also need eQSL if i want certain other awards, and then theres still people sending actual physical cards through the bureau or direct mail. im already uploading my logs to LoTW through TQSL which took me forever to figure out btw, but i havent done anything with eQSL yet. do most people just do LoTW and call it day? or is physical card stuff still worth doing? i got a couple cards in the mail from dx stations already and theyre actually really cool looking, didnt expect to care about that but i kind of do now. anyway just trying to figure out what the normal workflow looks like for most hams these days