Tom Anderson

ive been wanting to get into POTA and this kind of post makes me want to just go do it already. i have an old FT-817 sitting in a box that i havent really used much and i think i keep overthinking what antenna to bring and whether 5 watts is enough. sounds like it works though

so ive been going back and forth on whether to make the drive, its like 2.5 hours for me and gas isnt cheap. but i've got a bunch of old gear piling up in the shack that my wife keeps giving me the look about and figured maybe i can offload some of it. anybody else planning on going? also does anyone know if the Fairborn club is doing their usual table near the entrance or did that change this year

i did something similar but with a full pi 4 because i wanted to also run js8call and wsjt-x in the background. probably overkill but whatever i had it sitting around. the antenna switching thing i just punted on and bought one of those cheap 8 port HF antenna switches that takes BCD input, ran that from the GPIO directly with just some 1k resistors in series and honestly havent had any RF issues but im only running 100w so maybe thats why. higher power id definitely look at isolation more carefully like the other guy said.

oh man same thing happened to me last spring and i went down a serious rabbit hole. i started checking prop forecasts on spaceweather.com every morning like its the weather channel lol. the solar cycle is climbing right now so honestly the next couple years should be pretty wild for 10 and even 6m if we get lucky with sporadic E on top of F2 propagation. i dont fully understand all the mechanics still but ive learned enough to know when to at least turn the radio on and check

yeah running N1MM just for contests is pretty much the standard thing to do, dont overthink it. most guys i know keep N1MM for anything contest related because its just built for that, the rate display alone is worth it when youre trying to grind out a SS or a sprint. then Log4OM or whatever for the shack log. after the contest you export the ADIF from N1MM and import it into your main log, takes maybe five minutes if you set up the import filters right. the WSJT-X thing is annoying, i had the same band/mode import issues for a while. turned out i had the ADIF mode field mapping wrong in Log4OM, FT8 was coming in as some generic MFSK entry. there's a thread on the Log4OM groups.io about fixing that, worth searching. once i fixed the mode map it started flagging dupes properly. still manually verify my LoTW against Log4OM maybe once a month just to keep things honest, five minute job with the sync tool built in.

so ive been doing terrestrial stuff for years, mostly HF, but finally got curious about working through the LEO satellites after watching a video of someone working SO-50 with just a handheld. that got me down a rabbit hole and now im more interested in the linear transponder birds like FO-29 or AO-73 rather than the FM ones because honestly the FM ones seem like they'd get pretty crowded fast. my question is mainly about the doppler correction situation. i understand the concept — the satellite is moving toward you so the frequency shifts up on downlink, away from you shifts down, all that. but in practice do people just manually tune while they're in the pass or do you actually set up software to do it automatically. i have a IC-9700 so i think it can be CAT controlled but ive never set that up for anything moving before. also using a fixed yagi right now, not a tracking mount, is that going to be a total dead end for linear transponder work or can you make it work if the pass geometry is decent. any advice appreciated, been lurking this forum for a while and you guys seem to know your stuff

i had almost exactly this happen with an NE602 build a while back. ended up being that my audio stage was oscillating at RF frequencies, the 386 is notorious for that. there's a 10 ohm resistor and 0.047uF cap in series that you put from pin 7 to ground on the chip, most designs leave it out but it makes a huge difference with stability. might not be your exact issue but its worth trying before you tear the whole thing apart

clock sync is almost certainly your problem. windows time sync is not good enough for FT8, you need something like Meinberg NTP or just use Dimension 4 — either one will get you within a few milliseconds which is what the mode actually needs. if your clock is off by more than a second you'll transmit outside the decode window and nobody hears you even if your RF is perfectly fine. happened to me when i first started and i spent two days thinking my antenna was garbage. your frequency sounds right, 7.074 with audio in that range is exactly where you want to be. ALC barely moving is correct. go fix the clock first and i'd bet you start getting replies pretty quick.

hamstudy.org just do that, seriously dont overthink it. i passed in like 3 weeks only studying maybe 20 minutes a night. the ARRL book is good if you actually want to understand the stuff but for just passing the exam its overkill imo

yeah 10m has been something else this solar cycle, we're definitely riding a good peak right now. i worked a VK on 10m SSB last thursday with just my little vertical and 100 watts, signal was 59 both ways which still kind of blows my mind. been telling the guys at my club for months to get their antennas sorted before conditions start rolling back and now theyre finally listening lol on the 7760 thing, ive been following that pretty closely. the japanese release has apparently been out for a bit but US distribution keeps slipping. the form factor is interesting, kind of unconventional with the detached head unit design but i get what theyre going for if you want to mount it properly in a vehicle or a clean shack setup. price rumors are all over the place, some people saying north of five grand which is oof but thats just how it goes these days i guess. still running my 7300 and honestly not complaining

psk31 nostalgia is real lol. i miss when 14.070 was just wall to wall psk signals on a weekend afternoon. that was actual ragchewing over digital, people would go back and forth for 20 minutes. now its a ghost town most of the time which is kinda sad. i tried JS8Call last winter and made a handful of contacts but it did feel like work to find someone. FT4 is somewhere in the middle i guess if you want slightly more throughput than FT8 but same basic format. doesnt really solve your problem of wanting a real exchange though. RTTY contesting is still pretty alive if you havent tried that, thats at least got some chaos and energy to it even if its not a conversation either.

yeah i had almost the exact same thing happen when i built a 40m direct conversion receiver, not a superhet but similar problem with LO leaking out the antenna port. what finally helped me was adding a bandpass filter right at the antenna input — nothing fancy, just a simple LC filter tuned to the band. cuts down on the junk getting in AND stops some of the oscillator from sneaking back out. might be worth trying before you tear the whole board apart.

haha yeah my first one i forgot the coax adapter and had to improvise with a piece of wire touching the connector which somehow worked for like 3 contacts before it fell apart. you figure it out. 6 QSOs is solid for a first activation honestly, some people dont even get their 4. the battery thing on the KX2 is real, i started carrying a small 3ah lipo and that thing lasts forever now compared to the internal pack

yeah the listening part is huge and honestly most people just dont do it. ive worked some genuinely rare ones — a few top 10 most wanted — and almost every time it came down to figuring out the operator's pattern before jumping in. some guys work strictly end of the spread, some work the bottom, some actually rotate through. you can usually figure it out in 15-20 QSOs if you pay attention. the timing thing you mentioned is real too, especially on CW. theres a window right after the final K or the sign where if you nail it your signal kinda stands alone for just a fraction of a second before the rest of the pile crashes in. its not always enough but it gives you a shot. on SSB i find calling slightly shorter than everyone else helps — like dont give your full callsign twice every time, just once, clean and loud. the DX op can pull a single call easier than two overlapping doubles. one thing i'd add is antenna polarization and timing of propagation peaks matter way more than running more power in my experience. ive broken piles running 100w while guys with amps were getting nothing because i was on the right part of the band at the right time. grey line stuff especially.

the pattern recognition thing you described is really the whole game honestly. most people just key up whenever there's a gap and wonder why it doesn't work. the ops on big DXpeditions especially — those guys are running thousands of QSOs and they get into a groove. if you can figure out their groove you're halfway there. one thing i've had luck with on SSB is being really deliberate about how i send my callsign. not faster, not slower, just very clean and precise. a lot of pileup callers get sloppy under pressure and end up sounding like mush in a wall of noise. the DX op picks out the one that's clearest not necessarily the loudest. on CW it's even more pronounced — a clean fist or clean keying at a moderate speed stands out from the guys hammering away at 30wpm when the dx is only sending at 20. for the big DXpeditions i think timing matters more than anything else. listen for which continent they're favoring, and if they're doing that thing where they call for NA only or EU only, wait for your turn rather than trying to bust through when they're not even listening for you. seems obvious but you'd be amazed how many people just call constantly regardless.

the band edge thing is basically this — your signal isnt just the frequency you tune to, it actually has some width to it depending on the mode. so if youre doing SSB on 40m and you tune right to 7.125 your actual signal is spreading a few khz around that. the concern is if you get too close to the bottom of the general portion (which starts at 7.175 for phone i think, double check that) part of your signal might bleed into territory youre not licensed for or into the CW segment below. most guys just give themselves a comfortable buffer, like dont tune closer than 3-5 khz from any edge just to be safe. 7.125 should be totally fine for general phone, thats well inside your allocation. the very bottom of 40m down around 7.000-7.025 is CW only and you dont want to be doing voice down there regardless of license class.

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. so the short version is yeah, anything below 7.175 on phone is extra class only. the folks you're hearing down there are either extras or they're just not paying attention to the rules, both happen more than you'd think. the band edge thing is a real practical concern more than a hard legal line in most cases. the idea is that if your signal has any sidebands or if you drift even a little, you dont want to end up outside the allocation entirely. on 40m the upper edge is 7.300 and if you're running USB and you park your dial right on 7.300, your actual transmitted signal is going to be 2-3 kHz above that depending on your voice. so the suppressed carrier is what the dial shows, not where your audio is actually going. staying a few kHz inside the edge just gives you breathing room. most experienced ops wont go above about 7.295 or so for that reason.

so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing SSB on 40 and 20 and i keep getting reports that my audio is either too bassy or sounds like im in a tin can depending on who im talking to. running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 which should honestly be a pretty decent combo but something isnt clicking right. ive messed with the TX equalizer in the radio a bit, cut some of the low end around 100-200hz and tried boosting a little around 2-3khz where speech intelligibility sits, and that helped somewhat but i still get inconsistent reports. one guy on 40 last week said i sounded great, next contact 20 minutes later different band conditions same settings and the other op said i was muddy. not sure if thats just propagation playing tricks or if theres more i should be doing on my end. also wondering about mic gain — ive read a bunch of conflicting stuff online about running it lower than you think you need vs peaking the ALC. my ALC is barely moving at my current settings and i read somewhere that a small amount of ALC action is actually fine but then someone else said keep it totally out of it. what are you all actually doing in practice, not the manual answer, the real answer

Beyond just frequency access, the knowledge gained studying for Extra really helps with antenna modeling, RF design, and troubleshooting. The privileges are nice but the education is the real value. Plus you can finally VE for all three license levels!

Struggling to get JS8Call working with my Flex 6500. Everything works fine with WSJT-X using localhost:60002, but when I try the same settings in JS8Call I get "Hamlib error: IO error while opening connection to rig". I've tested CAT and PTT - both pass. Audio is coming through DAX fine, I can see signals on the waterfall, but no decoding at all. Time sync is good via BTK timesync. FlexRadio 6xxx rig selected, Network Server set to localhost:60002, SmartSDR CAT configured with TCP port. What am I missing here?

so ive been at this for about four months now and im just kind of spinning my wheels. started with the ARRL code course tapes (yeah i know, old school) and got up to copying maybe 5 or 6 wpm pretty comfortably but every time i try to push past that i just fall apart. like my brain just stops working around 8-9wpm and i start trying to count dots and dashes again which i know is wrong but i cant help it. a buddy at the club said i should try the Koch method and i downloaded that lcwo.net thing but honestly im not sure im using it right. do you just sit there and drill individual characters forever or is there a point where you switch to actual words and QSOs? also how long per day are people actually practicing because i feel like i do 20 minutes and then im useless after that. anyway just looking for what worked for real people not just the textbook answer. im not in a hurry or anything, just want to get there eventually. 73

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been logging all my contacts in WSJT-X and then importing to HAMRS (yeah i know, everyone has opinions about logging software, not the point) and i keep seeing people mention LoTW and eQSL and i honestly dont fully understand the difference or if i need both or neither or what from what i can tell LoTW is run by the ARRL and its the one you need for DXCC credit? and eQSL is a separate thing that more people use casually? but then some guys at my club still send physical QSL cards through the bureau and i got one in the mail last week from a station in Germany which was honestly really cool, like a real piece of paper with his callsign and everything so my actual question is — do i need to be uploading to both LoTW AND eQSL, or is one of them enough for most purposes. and if i want to actually send paper cards how does the bureau system even work, do i go through my ARRL membership or is that a separate thing. sorry for the wall of text, just trying to figure out the whole confirmation ecosystem i guess

this is really cool to read, i just passed my technician like 6 weeks ago and ive been looking into ARES but wasnt sure if i was ready or experienced enough yet. sounds like they actually let newer people participate which is good to know. does your group do like regular training nets or is it mostly just showing up to activations? i found our local ARES group online but the website looks like it hasnt been updated since 2019 so im not even sure theyre active lol

congrats man, that first QRP contact really does something to you doesnt it. i remember mine was years ago with a homebrew 40m rock-bound rig and i think i actually yelled a little when the other guy came back to me. once you get that feeling you kind of stop caring about running a kw into a beam. for the portable battery thing, honestly the simplest thing i've found is just getting a decent capacity lifepo4 pack, something in the 10-20ah range. they hold voltage way better than regular lipo as they discharge so your radio stays happy and you dont get weird behavior when the battery starts dropping. i use a bioenno pack and have literally spent all day in the field with my KX2 and still had juice left. also worth picking up a small usb power meter so you can actually see whats going in and out, helps a lot with planning. the EFHW question is a whole rabbit hole, short answer is it works great if your 9:1 or 49:1 unun is decent quality. feedline radiation is real but usually manageable. plenty of people do sota and pota with them every day without issues.

oh man CQ WW is such a blast even if you're running barefoot into a modest antenna. honestly your first time through just do search and pounce, dont worry about running a frequency, you'll get frustrated trying to hold a pileup with 100 watts when there's EU stations running a kW into stacked yagis. just spin the dial, find someone calling CQ contest, give them your call and zone number and move on. that's it really. for logging definitely grab N1MM Logger+ before the weekend, it's free and it's what pretty much everyone uses. takes a little while to set up your station info but once you do it handles dupe checking automatically which saves your sanity. there's good youtube tutorials for it. your setup honestly sounds fine for working a bunch of domestic contacts and maybe some easier DX on 15 and 20 meters, just depends on the conditions that weekend. have fun with it, thats the main thing your first time