Emily Thomas74

yeah what he said about the NE602 dynamic range is real, i gave up on using it as the first RF stage on anything near a broadcast band and just use it downstream after a proper filter and sometimes a JFET preamp if the band is dead. sounds backwards but the 602 as a product detector after a proper front end works way better in my experience.
also curious what your VFO looks like physically — is it in a separate enclosure from the rest of the board or just sitting on the same ugly construction ground plane? ive found that even just a small piece of PCB material bent into a wall between the oscillator section and everything else helps a lot more than you'd think.

so i got my general back in 2021 and spent most of my time just doing local stuff and some casual SSB on 40m but lately ive been getting really into DX and decided i want to actually go for DXCC. worked about 67 entities so far confirmed on LoTW which feels pretty good for someone who wasnt really trying until a few months ago.
my question is kind of basic maybe but i dont fully understand how the credits work when you upgrade from like basic DXCC to the higher endorsement levels. do you have to submit separately each time or does the ARRL just look at your LoTW confirmations and automatically bump you up when you hit the thresholds? i submitted my initial DXCC application already and got the certificate but now im confused about what happens at 150, 200 etc.
also started looking at WAS and WAZ too because apparently a lot of the contacts i already have count toward those too, which is cool. WAZ seems really doable actually once i looked at the zone map. is it worth chasing all three at once or does that just make everything more stressful

this is making me want to actually finish my ubitx that's been sitting on the bench for like 8 months. life keeps getting in the way but reading stuff like this reminds me why i got into this hobby. good on you for actually taking it outside, i feel like a lot of people build things and they never leave the shack.

yeah this is basically exactly what i do. N1MM stays closed unless im actually in a contest, Log4OM handles everything else. the WSJT-X integration is done through the UDP logging port and once you set it up right it pretty much just works, i havent had dupe issues in a long time. the trick i found is to make sure you're not also logging to an ADIF file in WSJT-X at the same time because then you end up importing the same QSOs twice if you're not careful about it.
the one thing N1MM does that Log4OM just cant match is the contest-specific stuff, rate meters, multiplier tracking, all that. for a serious contest weekend theres really no substitute. but for a random tuesday night working some DX on 17 meters Log4OM is way more pleasant to use honestly.

i just did this like two months ago lol, upgraded from tech after being one for almost a year. honestly i studied for maybe 10 days just using hamstudy and passed fine. the questions about like, impedance matching and stuff i just kind of memorized the answers for and figured id learn what it actually means later once i had a radio.
the HF thing is kind of overwhelming at first tho ngl, i got a used IC-7300 off QRZ classifieds and spent the first week just figuring out the menus. but making my first 20m contact was pretty cool, worked a station in florida from ohio which felt like nothing but still

Congrats on the first activation, 60 contacts on your first time out is really solid especially if you were self-spotting without much of a following yet. To answer your log question -- yes you upload directly to the WWFF website, woodsnwater.net is where most of the global program is coordinated but if you're in the US the KFF references are managed through the WWFF-USA program and they have their own upload portal. The format is just a standard ADIF file same as you'd export from any logging software. Make sure your reference number is in there correctly and it usually processes pretty quickly.
As for virgin references, yeah it's kind of bragging rights but there is a first activator award and some hunters specifically look for unactivated references so you do tend to get a small pile when you're the first one there. Worth checking the database before you go out honestly, you might have one closer to home than you think that nobody has hit yet. And yeah the hunters logging contacts with you are working toward their own awards on the flora fauna side, different tiers based on how many unique references they've worked. Pretty fun system overall.