Michael Miller

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and just starting to get into DX chasing and i gotta say the whole cluster spotting thing is kind of overwhelming at first. i've been using DXwatch in one browser tab and then the QRZ logbook in another and sometimes the DX spots on QRZ seem like they lag behind DXwatch by a few minutes? or maybe im just imagining it. not sure if theres a better workflow here. also is there a way to filter out spots on DXwatch so i only see stuff i can actually hear from the midwest? i keep seeing spots for like JA stations that are clearly not going to be workable from Illinois at 2pm local time but they clutter up the list. i know about band filters but is there more granular stuff i can do. some guys in my club mentioned DX4WIN and DXKeeper but those seem like a lot to learn just for casual DXing. anyway if anyone has a setup they like for tracking spots on a laptop while operating i'd love to hear what works. still figuring all this out.

im in basically the same boat as you, got licensed in the spring and the net thing confused me too at first. what helped me was just finding one specific net on a local repeater and sticking with it every week until i felt comfortable. like once you know the format for that one it starts making sense for others too. the W1AW code practice and bulletin transmissions are also worth looking up if you havent already, not a net exactly but it's a scheduled on-air thing that feels good to actually tune into on purpose.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took my ft-818 and a linked dipole up to a W6 summit near me, wasnt the hardest hike but still pretty rough with all the gear. managed to get my 4 contacts pretty quick actually, had a couple guys spotted me on SOTAwatch before i even finished setting up which was kind of amazing, i guess the chasers really are watching all the time. anyway couple things i was confused about. the summit reference, do i have to log it exactly as it shows on the SOTA database or is there some flexibility there? i put W6/SC-042 in my log but i want to make sure thats right before i submit. also i had one contact that was kind of marginal, the guy said he got me but i could barely hear him, does that count or do both sides have to copy each other clearly? i know there's rules about this stuff i just dont want to get my first activation invalidated. also for future reference, is there a way to self spot if you dont have cell service? i know some people use APRS for this but im not totally sure how that works. the summit had decent coverage but i want to plan ahead for ones that dont.

also worth checking if your radio has any kind of ALC or if you're overdriving the mic at all because that can make your signal even wider than it should be and then you've got splatter going all over the place which is a whole other problem on top of the band edge thing. i learned this the hard way when someone finally told me my audio was pretty rough. but yeah what the other guy said about keeping a buffer from the edge is solid advice

so ive been wanting to get my ham license for probably two years now and i keep putting it off but im finally doing it. i downloaded some study guide pdf i found online but honestly its kind of overwhelming, theres so much stuff in there about like ohms law and propagation and i dont even know what half of it is relevant to yet a friend told me to just use hamstudy.org and do the flashcard thing until i pass the practice tests, is that actually how most people do it or is there more to it than that. i dont want to just memorize answers without knowing what any of it means but also i dont want to spend six months studying either, i just want to get on the air any tips on what to actually focus on? some of the electrical theory questions look really hard but im not sure if theres a lot of them on the actual test or just a few

so ive been trying to get Winlink going for a few weeks now and i think im close but the RMS gateway stuff is tripping me up. i have Winlink Express installed and i can see gateways in the list but im not sure if im supposed to connect to the closest one geographically or if theres some other logic to it. some of them show really low frequency offsets and some show high, does that matter for HF connects? also when i send a message is it sitting in a queue somewhere on the gateway or does it go straight to the winlink.org servers? i ask because i sent a test message to my own callsign three days ago and it never showed up in my inbox. did the session complete successfully i guess is what im wondering, i saw the green progress bar thing fill up but then nothing came through. running a signalink with an IC-7300 on 40m, pat software actually no wait i switched back to Winlink Express. anyway any help appreciated

so ive been thinking about this for a while now and i can't decide if SO2R is actually worth the setup headache for someone like me who only does maybe 4-5 contests a year seriously. i run a K3 as my main radio and ive got an old TS-570 sitting in the corner doing nothing and i keep reading about guys using two radios to keep their rate up while they're listening on the run frequency but honestly my station is not really set up for it — single amp, antennas that would probably interact badly, and i'd need a bunch of band pass filters before any of this made sense. what i really want to know is whether the rate improvement is noticeable enough to justify the learning curve. ive done SS and CQWW single op and my rates are decent-ish for my location but i always feel like i'm losing time when i'm searching for mults during a slow period. like is that the actual use case everyone's talking about, running on one radio while S&P-ing for mults on the other? or am i misunderstanding the whole thing also curious how people handle the SO2R legality question in different contests since i know some of them have explicit rules about it now

the shadowing is real but honestly for just hitting repeaters it probably wont kill you. i ran a lip mount on the bed of my tacoma for a few years and yeah there were spots where i'd lose a repeater just as i crested a hill heading into it but i always figured that was terrain not the antenna position. moved the antenna to the cab roof eventually and it did seem a little more consistent but im not sure i could say definitively it was the mount location vs just normal path variation. if you're going NMO and committing anyway i'd just do the cab roof. resale argument is kind of weak, a clean NMO hole with the right grommet is barely noticeable and you can plug it if you ever sell. the bed rail thing always seemed like a compromise to me, you get a worse ground plane AND the shadow issue.

so ive been at this for about three weeks now and i can decode FT8 all day long, dozens of stations showing up in WSJT-X, everything looks right in the waterfall. but when i transmit i get zero responses. not one. ive checked the audio levels like four times, the ALC is barely moving which i think is correct, and my radio shows it's actually transmitting — the power meter swings and the TX light comes on. running a FT-991A into a end fed half wave on 40m, about 30 feet up. computer is connected via USB and i set the CAT control up, it keys the radio fine. i think my signal is just... not getting out? or maybe my timing is off? i read something about clock sync being critical for FT8 and i did run the windows time sync but i dont know if thats accurate enough. also not sure if my dial freq is set right, im on 7.074 and transmitting in the 1000-1500hz audio range on the waterfall. any ideas what im overlooking here would be great, starting to feel like im invisible on the air

so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about two years now, mostly just poking around on aircraft, some weather sat stuff, and occasional HF with the direct sampling mod. works fine honestly but ive been eyeing the SDRplay RSP1A for a while and cant decide if its worth the jump. main thing im curious about is the noise floor difference on HF. my RTL-SDR is... okay i guess, but anything below 10 MHz is pretty rough even with a decent antenna. im running SDR# right now and tried SDRuno briefly when i borrowed a friends unit at a hamfest. the software felt heavier but the receive quality on 40m was noticeably better, like i could actually pull out signals that were just mush on the dongle. anyone gone through this upgrade path and have thoughts? also curious if SDRuno is the only real option for the RSP series or if people are using HDSDR or something else with it. i know gqrx works on linux but im on windows so that doesnt really apply

so ive been chasing summits for about six months now and finally decided to stop being a coward and just do my own activation. picked out a local summit that's only like 4 points but the hike isnt too brutal so figured it was a good starting point. W4C/CM-059 if anyone knows the area. anyway my main question is about the timing. i know you're supposed to post a spot on SOTAwatch before you go up but how far in advance do people usually do that? like do i post it the night before or morning of? i dont want to put it up too early and then have chasers waiting around and i end up being late because the trail took longer than i expected. also im running an FT-818 with a random wire antenna, probably just throw it up in a tree or use my trekking pole. planning to work mostly 40m and maybe 20m if conditions are decent. is 5 watts usually enough to get my 4 contacts or should i bring a small amp just in case. trying to keep the pack light but i also really dont want to hike up there and fail the activation you know. any tips appreciated, ive read most of the stuff on the sotadata site but real world experience is always different

omg yes i just got my technician last month and everyone kept telling me to try 10m but every time i listened there was nothing there and i thought maybe my radio was broken lol. then two days ago i turned it on and it was like a totally different band. heard a station from spain just clear as a bell. i dont have HF privileges yet for voice but i did manage to make a FT8 contact into europe which i could not believe. my first ever DX contact ever. pretty exciting for someone just starting out.

so ive been building a simple direct conversion receiver for 40m, nothing fancy just the classic NE602 mixer feeding an LM386 audio stage. got it breadboarded last night and i can actually hear stations which is exciting but the audio is really noisy and there's this constant hum that i cant seem to shake. the VFO seems stable enough, im using a colpitts oscillator with a 2N3904 but honestly im not 100% sure my coil winding is right. wound it on a T50-2 toroid, maybe 25 turns or so, i kind of eyeballed the inductance. the hum is pretty clearly 60hz related i think, goes away a tiny bit when i touch the ground plane with my hand which tells me something isnt right with grounding maybe? im powering it off a wall wart right now which is probably not helping. im wondering if anybody has gone through this with the NE602 before because everything i read says its a pretty sensitive chip and easy to overload. anyway not sure if its a shielding thing or a power supply thing or just my layout being terrible

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state wildlife management area near me, KFF-something, i looked it up on the wwff.us site beforehand. ive done a bunch of SOTA but this was my first flora fauna thing and honestly the vibe is pretty different. what i wasnt expecting was how relaxed the whole thing felt compared to SOTA. no summit anxiety, no worrying about weather windows, i just found a nice spot near a pond, threw up my linked dipole between some trees and started calling. had my KX2 running about 10 watts and the pile was actually decent, way more than i expected for a reference that probably doesnt get activated that much. ended up with 44 QSOs over about 2 hours, mix of 40 and 20 meters. logged everything in my paper log and then uploaded to the WWFF portal later which was a little confusing but i figured it out. only thing i didnt know going in was that you need 44 contacts minimum for the activation to count as valid which i barely squeaked by on. anyway just wanted to share, if you havent tried it and you like the outdoors operating thing its worth looking into. way more references than summit locations in most areas at least around here.

so ive been working on getting my FT-857D installed in my F-150 for about three weekends now and i finally got everything bolted down and ran the power cables direct to the battery with an inline fuse, which everyone says to do and yeah it makes sense. the radio works great on HF but on 2m and 70cm im getting this annoying whine in the audio that changes pitch with the engine RPM. like when i rev it up the noise goes up too, classic alternator whine i think? but ive also got some kind of buzz that doesnt change with RPM and im not totally sure what thats from. antenna is a Diamond NR770HB on a mag mount right now, sitting on the roof. the coax is just routed through the door seal temporarily. im using RG-8X for the run which is maybe like 8 feet total. the power leads are about 5 feet on each side and i havent done any ferrite chokes yet because i wasnt sure if that was actually necessary or kind of overkill. has anyone dealt with this? wondering if i should start with ferrites on the power leads or if the coax routing through the door is actually causing some of the issue. also not sure if a mag mount is even a great ground plane on a modern truck with the plastic bed cover situation im dealing with

oh man i went through the exact same thing when i first started checking into nets, felt like everyone could tell i had no idea what i was doing lol. one thing that helped me was actually asking the net control after the net closed if i was doing anything wrong. most net controls are super happy to give you a quick pointer and it doesnt slow down the net. mine actually spent like 20 minutes on the air with me after one night just walking me through stuff, really nice guy.

The General license grants access to additional HF bands including 160, 30, 17, and 12 meters, plus expanded portions of existing bands for worldwide contacts. Focus on understanding WHY the privileges exist - it makes memorizing the band plans much easier!

congrats on the first contact with the homebrew rig, thats always a great feeling. i remember my first QRP contact felt way more satisfying than any DX i'd worked with a kilowatt at a club station. something about knowing you built the thing and its actually working out there. for POTA with the QCX, yeah it's a great combo. i'd suggest maybe looking at a simple end fed halfwave instead of the random wire if you haven't already, the EFHW you can tune it for the band you want and you'll probably get a bit more out of those 5 watts. also worth grabbing one of those small magnetic loop antennas if you ever end up in a spot where you cant throw a wire up, parks can be weird about that sometimes depending on the ranger. the battery choice is solid too, lipo gives you good capacity for the weight. just keep an eye on the voltage, those QCX finals dont love getting too much and a lipo can sag weird if you push it. enjoy the activations, its a different hobby once you go portable honestly

yeah what you're describing is completely normal, almost everyone hits that wall where they know the dits and dahs on paper but real audio just sounds like noise. the big thing people get wrong starting out is learning the rhythm as a kind of mental translation step instead of just reacting to the sound directly. Koch method basically means you start with only two characters, learn them at full speed like 20wpm even if youre a beginner, get really comfortable until you can copy them without thinking, then add one more character. the key is the character speed stays fast even when the overall word spacing is slow. that way your brain never builds the habit of counting dits and dahs, it just learns the sound as a whole shape. for resources honestly lcwo.net is what most people use for koch training, its free and you can track your progress character by character. some guys swear by the just learn morse code app too. the other thing id say is get on the air as soon as you have maybe 10 or 15 characters down, even just listening to qrs nets or the cw portion of 40m late at night. hearing real operators is different from any app and it helps a lot faster than you'd think.

dont stress too much about the LO leakage for now, like if youre just using it at home and not next to anyone it probably doesnt matter a ton. i built a similar thing last year and had the same hum issue and it turned out one of my ground wires had a cold solder joint that i couldnt even see without a magnifying glass. reflowed everything and it got way better. also the NE602 is pretty sensitive to supply noise so def try the bypass caps close to pin 8 if you havent already.

so ive been on SSB for a few years now and i keep hearing the same advice recycled over and over — speak across the mic not into it, compression is good, compression is bad, use a headset, dont use a headset. figured id start a thread where people share what has actually made a difference for them rather than just repeating stuff from a youtube video. for me the single biggest improvement was getting my mic gain set properly. i was running it way too hot thinking more level equals better audio and all it was doing was making me sound like i was transmitting from inside a tin can. pulled it back until the ALC was barely kissing on voice peaks and suddenly i started getting reports that i actually sounded like a human being. second thing that helped was a decent desk mic with a bit of proximity effect — the stock hand mic on my 7300 was fine but nothing special. also the TX bandwidth setting is something people sleep on. i had mine set to narrow because i thought that was polite and someone finally told me i sounded muffled. opened it up to about 2.8k and the difference was noticeable on both ends. yeah it takes a bit more spectrum but honestly on a clear frequency its not a big deal. curious what other people have found — especially on the processing side. im not sure where i stand on compression still. feels like it helps in a pileup but im not convinced its doing much for actual audio quality day to day.

so i finally did my first proper WWFF activation last weekend at a local nature reserve near me, KFF-XXXX reference if anyone's curious. been meaning to do one for ages and just kept putting it off because i was kind of intimidated by the whole logging and spotting thing. anyway i packed up my KX2 and a linked dipole, hiked in about 2km which was fine, set up under a big old gum tree and got on 40m. the issue i ran into was i totally forgot to spot myself on the WWFF spotting network before i started calling CQ, so the first like 20 minutes i was basically just talking to myself. once i figured out how to get a spot up on my phone (signal was marginal but workable) the pile up came pretty quick which was great. ended up with 44 QSOs which i know is enough to validate the reference so im happy with that. the logging side of things confused me a bit, i use HAMRS normally for POTA but had to figure out the WWFF specific submission format which took me a while when i got home. anyone got a good workflow for that? also wondering if its worth trying to qualify a reference that hasnt been activated before, there are a few near me that show as unactivated on the WWFF database

oh man i was using QRT wrong for months lol. i thought it just meant end of conversation. so if im working a net and need to drop out early i should say QRT? or is that only when im completely done for the night

congrats on the first one, that feeling when you get that 4th contact is pretty great. to answer your zone question yeah its purely based on topo, the activation zone is defined as within 25 meters vertical of the true summit so as long as sotamaps or the sota database is showing you inside the contour you're fine. nobody is coming out to check and the database pulls from proper elevation data. ive had people get weirdly paranoid about this and hike right to the cairn in terrible weather when they honestly didn't need to. for alerting, pre-announcing on sotawatch is really the way to go if you want a decent pileup. post an alert the night before or morning of with your expected time and bands and the chasers will have it on their screens. self-spotting via the reflector or the SOTA spotter app works once youre already on the air, a lot of people do both. on 2m FM just try simplex first, 146.52 is the national calling frequency in the US and you'd be surprised how many chasers monitor it specifically for SOTA. repeaters are hit or miss depending on the summit but simplex often works better than people expect from elevation.

I'd recommend taking some of the FEMA ICS courses too. Many hams pursue structured training through FEMA's Independent Study courses, such as IS-100 (Introduction to the Incident Command System) and IS-700 (National Incident Management System). These courses are often recommended or required for participation in ARES, RACES, or AUXCOMM. They're free online and really help you understand how emergency management works.