Michael Miller

i just got my tech in march so this is pretty fresh for me. i used hamexam.org mostly and watched some youtube videos from a guy called Ham Radio Crash Course, that helped a lot for the concepts i couldnt quite wrap my head around just from reading questions. the electricity and antenna questions tripped me up at first but once i got the basic formulas down it clicked. the test itself is 35 questions and you need 26 right so theres some room for error. i was so nervous at the session but honestly the VEs were super chill about the whole thing, it wasnt like a DMV experience at all if thats what you're picturing.

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.

ok so ive been listening on HF for a few weeks now with my new technician ticket and people are throwing around all these weird codes and abbreviations and i cant figure out half of them. like what is QRM vs QRN, i see those a lot. and what does 73 mean, somebody explained it once but i forgot. also people say things like QSL and QTH all the time.
is there a list somewhere or do you just pick these up over time? i tried googling but i get like wikipedia pages that list hundreds of them and most of them nobody actually uses so i dont know which ones to bother learning

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.

oh man i just did my first one last month at a wildlife refuge near me and it was so much fun. i was nervous about getting 44 contacts but ended up with like 67 in about two hours which surprised me. there seem to be a lot of hunters on the wwff frequencies who are looking for new references so once you get spotted the pileup comes pretty quick. i was on 40m SSB mostly.
one thing i wasnt expecting -- some chasers will ask you to confirm the exact reference number like KFF-xxxx so have that handy. i fumbled it the first couple times and had to look it up on my phone mid-qso which was a little embarrassing but everyone was patient about it

Why not do early bird pricing? $20 if paid 2 weeks early, $25 at the door. Gets you advance commitments and helps with planning. We've had good luck with that approach.

so I passed my general exam about three weeks ago and I've been using my sequential callsign that the FCC assigned me, which is fine but honestly it's kind of a mouthful and I'd really like to get something shorter or maybe use my initials if thats possible. I've been reading about the vanity callsign system and I'm getting a bit lost.
from what I understand there's like a window system where certain applicants get priority — like if you're applying for a call that belonged to a close relative who was a ham, or if you hold a higher class license. but when I just looked at the 1x2 and 2x1 calls available in my district a lot of them show as unavailable or in some kind of queue. does that mean someone already applied or are they just not released yet?
also I wasnt sure if there's a waiting period after getting your initial sequential call before you can apply for a vanity. someone at my club mentioned something about that but couldnt remember the details. any help appreciated, this is kind of confusing to navigate on the FCC ULS site

congrats on getting it mounted, doing the coax run down the A pillar is always the part that makes people give up halfway through lol. the Tram 1185 is honestly a solid antenna for what you're doing, nothing fancy but its efficient and the NMO mount with a roof drill is the right way to do it so you're ahead of a lot of people already. for local repeaters and regional simplex it'll do just fine. if you ever get deep into weak signal work you might want to look at something with a bit more gain but dont worry about that for now.
the fan on the FTM-400 yeah thats just how it is, mine kicks on pretty fast too especially in the summer. its not a problem its just the radio doing its thing. some guys put a little foam or velcro pad around the body unit to dampen it slightly but i wouldnt stress over it.
and yes running direct to battery with an inline fuse is exactly right, good job there. a lot of people tap into the fuse box and wonder why they have noise issues or voltage drop

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

I've been thinking about this lately. DXCC gets all the attention, but WAZ (Worked All Zones) seems more logical for actually "working the world" since it requires you to work stations in all 40 geographic zones. With DXCC, you could work 100 countries that might not be spread worldwide - lots of European and Caribbean entities clustered in small areas.
WAZ sounds easier at 40 zones vs 100 countries, but apparently it's harder because you literally have to reach every corner of the globe. Anyone else working on WAZ? How does it compare?

im in almost the same boat as you, been licensed about a year and just started actually paying attention to this stuff a few months ago. one thing that helped me was downloading the DXCC entity list and just keeping it open while i operate so i can cross check. also there's a website called Club Log that's really useful, you can upload your ADIF log and it tells you what entities you've worked and which ones are confirmed vs just worked. saved me a lot of confusion honestly. the 40 or 50 countries you've already worked might be more entities than you think once you start sorting it out properly

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.

ok so i passed my technician exam about three weeks ago and ive been reading through Part 97 trying to figure out what im actually allowed to do. the study material kind of glossed over some of this stuff and now that im trying to actually get on the air im second guessing myself on a few things.
like i know techs have HF privileges on 10m but im not totally clear on what modes are allowed there vs what general/extra class guys can do. and then someone at my club mentioned something about needing to identify every 10 minutes and at the end of a contact but i thought it was just every 10 minutes? and does that apply to simplex on 2m too or just HF, i genuinely cannot find a straight answer on this.
also someone told me you cant use your callsign with a portable designator like /M or /P anymore and the FCC got rid of that requirement but then someone else said you still can if you want to. who is right here lol