Ashley Wilson81

so i finally decided to give satellite operation a shot after watching a few videos and reading about it for like two years. got my 2m/70cm setup working pretty well for terrestrial stuff and figured how hard can it be right. very hard apparently. im using a yaesu ft-818 with a cheap arrow antenna, tracking with gpredict on my laptop. the pass looked good on paper, AO-91 coming overhead at about 73 degrees max elevation. i could hear the downlink fine at the start, nice clear signal, got excited. but then i tried to work anyone and just... nothing. nobody could hear me. i was transmitting on the uplink frequency but i think i was off because of doppler and just not compensating right. so my question is do you manually tune while the pass is happening or is there software that handles this automatically somehow. i saw something about CAT control but i dont really understand how that works with gpredict. also does the arrow antenna need to be cross polarized or does that only matter for certain satellites. feel like im missing something obvious

yeah part 97 is rough to read, dont feel bad about that. so basically as a tech you do get some HF privileges, not a lot but some. on 10 meters you can run up to 200 watts and use phone (voice) between 28.300 and 28.500 MHz, and then there's a chunk of the band lower down where you can do CW and some digital modes. on 40 meters its CW only and just a small slice, same with 15m and 80m — honestly those CW-only segments are pretty narrow and most people dont bother unless they really want to practice morse before their general exam. the ARRL website has a frequency/privilege chart thats way easier to read than the actual regulation text, i'd start there. and yeah get your general, its not that hard and it opens up basically everything

So I passed my general last spring and joined our county ARES group back in the fall mostly because a guy at the club convinced me it was a good way to get more operating time and actually feel useful. Ive been going to the monthly nets and the occasional training exercise but next weekend is my first real activation — the county emergency management office is running a full-scale exercise with shelters and EOC and everything. I guess my question is what do I actually bring, like beyond the obvious radio stuff. I know ill need my HT and probably my mobile rig if they want me at a fixed position but what about like paperwork and logging stuff. Do people still use paper logs for this or does everyone have some laptop situation going. Also how formal is it, do I show up in like a vest with patches or just normal clothes. I dont want to look like a total idiot showing up either way. Our EC gave us a briefing sheet but it was pretty vague honestly. Just feeling a bit nervous about the whole thing and figured someone here had been through a few of these.

so ive been running an old Baofeng UV-5R for about two years now since i got my tech license and honestly it's been fine for just getting started but i keep running into little issues with it, mostly the audio on receive is kind of muddy and i had one instance where i think the TX was drifting off frequency a bit which caused some confusion on the local repeater. nothing catastrophic but you know how it is. anyway i started looking at actual name brand HTs and i keep going back and forth between the Yaesu FT-65 and maybe the Kenwood TH-D74 but that Kenwood is way overkill for what i actually do which is mostly just checking into the weekly net and some simplex when im out hiking. the FT-65 seems solid and people seem to like the audio quality which is my main gripe right now. does anyone actually own one of these and use it regularly? curious what the battery life is like in real world use not just what the spec sheet says

the FT-991 as a second radio is kind of a rough choice for SO2R just because the front end isnt exactly known for handling strong adjacent signals gracefully. not knocking it for general use but when you've got a running station hammering away on 20m and you're trying to pull weak ones on 15 with it sitting a few feet away, yeah thats gonna be messy regardless of filters. something with a better roofing filter situation would probably help a lot if you're serious about pursuing it. that said i kind of agree with taking a step back and asking whether the antenna situation is sorted first. ive seen guys with SO2R setups that were technically impressive but their antennas were so mediocre that a single radio op with a good yagi was still beating them. rate optimization kind of assumes you're already competitive on the RF side, otherwise you're just optimizing a weak signal problem

so ive been trying to get Winlink Express set up for a few weeks now and i keep hitting walls. my basic situation is i have a Kenwood TS-590SG feeding into a Signalink USB and i got the audio levels sorted out (i think) but when i try to connect to an RMS gateway it just sits there doing the handshake thing and then times out. im using Vara HF as the modem because everyone said thats the thing to use now instead of the old Pactor stuff unless you have the actual hardware dongle. the weird thing is i CAN see the gateway in the frequency list and the waterfall shows something happening when it responds, like there IS signal coming back, but Winlink Express just reports a failed session every time. ive tried like four different gateways, some close some far, doesnt matter. my dial freq is set correctly based on what the channel table says and i have the rig control going through COM3 which works fine for other software. is there something dumb im missing with the RMS setup on my end or is this a VARA configuration thing? i did buy the VARA license if that matters. its not a free version issue.

so ive been thinking about this for a few weeks now and cant quite make up my mind. i do a fair amount of hilltop activations with the local club, mostly 2m and 70cm FM, sometimes SSB on 2m if conditions are decent. right now im using a telescoping j-pole which honestly works fine but i feel like im leaving some gain on the table especially when were trying to hit repeaters that are marginal from certain summits. the question is basically whether to build or buy a 5 or 6 element yagi for 2m, or just go with a decent collinear like a diamond X50 or X200 type thing. the yagi obviously gives more gain in one direction but the collinear is omnidirectional which matters when youre working multiple stations around you. i can build a simple yagi from some aluminum rod and a tape measure obviously but then i gotta point it and that gets annoying when youre also trying to log contacts and deal with weather. anyone done both and have a strong opinion either way? gear already have is an FT-60 and a TH-D74 so nothing fancy on the radio side, just want a better antenna situation for portable ops.

same boat here lol, been stuck at like 11wpm for what feels like forever. someone in my local club told me to just try copying text from ARRL W1AW practice transmissions on the air even if i can only get half of it, said something about how it just clicks eventually. havent tried it much yet but figured id mention it

yeah mixed is definitely the right call first, thats how pretty much everyone does it. get that first DXCC plaque and then the mode endorsements kind of fill in naturally over time as you keep operating. i chased phone and CW separately after getting mixed and it was a lot more fun having something to specifically hunt on each mode rather than just generically logging everything the LoTW vs paper card thing never really goes away unfortunately. some of the rarer entities only have paper options and some DXpedition teams are better about uploading than others. i usually give it 6 months after a major DXpedition before i start worrying, and for regular stations in rare countries i just accept that the bureau is what it is. some guys pay for direct cards to speed it up which can be worth it for a hard to get one but i wouldnt bother for common entities 87 confirmed in 3 years is solid by the way especially if youre on a modest station. what are you running antennas wise

the guys you're hearing below 7.125 on phone are probably just lids or maybe legitimate extras, hard to say. i'd honestly just bookmark the ARRL band plan page and tape a printed copy next to your rig, thats what i did when i upgraded. after a few weeks it just becomes muscle memory and you stop thinking about it. dont stress too much, youre clearly trying to do the right thing which puts you ahead of half the people already on the air lol

oh man congrats on the first contact. im also pretty new and have been eyeing QRP kits but wasnt sure if 5 watts would actually be enough to make contacts or if id just be frustrated spinning the dial. this is kind of encouraging honestly. what length did you cut your random wire to

congrats on the first one. the 44 QSO minimum trips people up all the time, you're not alone. i think it comes from the old SOTA thing where people expect a lower threshold but yeah WWFF is strict about it. once you get a few under your belt you kind of plan your setup around making sure you can hit that number comfortably, like picking a reference that might already have some chasers familiar with it. the portal upload is a bit clunky i'll admit, took me a couple tries to get the ADIF format right the first time. just make sure your log has the right exchange fields and it usually goes through fine. some people use HAMRS or Log4OM and they have WWFF export built in now which makes life easier. also worth checking out the pota.app spotting network since a lot of WWFF activators use it too even for non-US references. youll get more chasers that way for sure.

so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now, mostly just poking around on airband and occasionally looking at ACARS and ADS-B and whatever else catches my eye. its been a great little dongle for the price but im starting to feel the limitations, mostly on the lower HF stuff where the direct sampling mod only gets you so far. ive been going back and forth between picking up an SDRplay RSPdx or just jumping straight to a HackRF One. the price gap isnt huge if you consider what youre getting but theyre pretty different animals from what i can tell. the SDRplay seems more like a serious receiver and the HackRF is more of a do-everything swiss army knife thing but not quite as sensitive on receive. is that a fair read on it? im not planning to transmit anything with it, i just want better dynamic range and actual coverage down to like 1khz or whatever the RSPdx specs say. also running SDR# right now on windows and wondering if ill have driver headaches switching to either of these. ive heard the SDRplay API is pretty solid but the HackRF on windows can be a bit of a pain depending on the software. anyone gone through this comparison recently?

honestly same boat here, been at it maybe 5 months and the recording yourself thing is brutal but it really works. i use the Koch method with the LCWO website to practice receiving and i feel like that actually helped my sending too because you start to internalize what proper timing sounds like. also dont worry too much about what your elmer thinks sounds good — your own ear is what matters on the air lol. keep at it 15 wpm is solid for 3 months

Equipment failures may be a mere annoyance if you're only doing fun operating, but if it were a situation that really mattered, like in a disaster, a failure with no solution can have very serious consequences. I do monthly power-on tests and quarterly full deployments in the backyard.