Michael Thomas87

yeah special event stations are kind of their own thing — a lot of them youre just working them for the contact or a certificate, not really a net check-in situation. like last year i worked the 13 colonies event and that was just calling them like any other dx station, no net involved. but some special events do run nets so it just depends. check the event website usually they spell it out pretty well.

man i picked one up about three weeks ago and honestly the remote head thing is even better than i expected. ran the cable through the wall to my shack and the head sits right on my desk while the main unit is in the basement staying cool. the DSP is noticeably tighter than my old 7610, especially on CW when the band is crowded — i was running it during a contest weekend and could pull out signals i wouldve just given up on before. the one thing that took some getting used to is the menu layout is a bit different, some stuff got moved around from where you'd expect it. nothing a week of use wont fix though. enjoy it, you're gonna love the receiver on 10 right now with conditions the way they are.

im kind of in the same boat as you, working toward 100 confirmed and just started messing with cluster spots a few months ago. one thing that helped me was the DX Heat website, its not a cluster exactly but it shows like a visual heat map of whats active by band which made it way easier to understand whats going on before i even looked at a spot list. might be worth a look if you havent seen it yet

I ran that exact split for about two years. N1MM for any serious contesting, Log4OM for everything else including WSJT-X. The ADIF import into N1MM after a contest weekend was fine, never had major duplicate issues as long as you're careful about which log file is the master. Log4OM's WSJT-X integration really is noticeably better for day to day digital stuff, it just picks up the QSOs without you having to think about it. The workflow sounds messier than it actually is in practice. Only real annoyance I had was making sure my award tracking in Log4OM stayed accurate when i was pulling in contest QSOs after the fact. some of the dupe checking gets weird depending on how you have things configured. but honestly for what you're describing it works fine, just commit to one as the master log and import into the other rather than trying to keep them both live at the same time.

the generator noise thing is real and it bit us too a couple years back. what finally worked for us was a good ferrite common mode choke right at the radio end of the coax and another one where the power lead enters the generator's little distribution box. also just physically getting the genny as far away as the extension cord allows, like 50-60 feet minimum, made a huge difference. the eu2200i is actually one of the quieter inverter types in terms of RF but you still gotta work at it. on the battery question — 100ah lifepo4 should theoretically get you through 12 hours if you're not transmitting constantly but digital modes like vara fm or js8call do cycle the PA pretty regularly. i'd probably bring both honestly, use the battery as primary and keep the honda on standby for when you need it. that way you can run fuel-efficient and only kick the generator on to top off the battery or if you're doing a heavy traffic period. a decent dc-dc charger between the genny's output and your battery bus cleans things up a lot too.

yeah the pot wobble is almost certainly the old pot being worn, those things get dirty and resistive in weird spots after decades of use. i replaced mine with a 10k 10-turn precision pot and the difference was night and day, way more stable readings. also worth throwing a small cap like 0.1uf across your analog input to ground, helps filter out noise pickup on those long leads going to the rotator. on the pi vs arduino question — i actually run both. arduino handles the low level stuff like reading position and driving the motor relay, and i have it talking to a pi zero w over serial. the pi runs hamlib and rotctld so any logging software or satellite tracker that supports hamlib just connects to it like a normal rotator. its a bit more wiring but honestly once its running you basically forget its there. been solid for about 8 months now tracking LEO birds.

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because a neighbor of mine has this huge antenna setup in his backyard and i got curious and he told me about it. anyway i looked it up and theres like three different license levels and study guides and practice tests and i honestly dont know where to begin. do i need to know morse code? someone told me you dont anymore but i wasnt sure. and how hard is the technician test actually, like is it the kind of thing where you can study for a week and pass or does it take months. i dont really have a math background so that part worries me a bit. any advice would be appreciated, just feeling a little lost on where to even start

yeah the digital modes basically changed everything for smaller stations, you're right about that. Q65 is probably what you want to look at first — it works better than JT65 for EME these days, better doppler tolerance. with a single yagi on 2m you're not going to be working the big gun stations easily but there are enough other small stations out there doing this that you can make contacts, especially if you watch the EME sked page and coordinate. the preamp thing is legitimately important though and honestly your feedline is a real problem. 40 feet of LMR400 on 2m isn't terrible for terrestrial stuff but for EME the path loss is already enormous and every tenth of a dB you add before the LNA matters. you really want the LNA at the feedpoint or as close as physically possible, like right at the antenna port. noise figure under 0.5 dB is what people are shooting for, the DB6NT stuff is popular and so are some of the W6PQL designs if you're into building. you'll also need a sequencer so you dont blow your preamp when you key up, that's a thing people learn the hard way sometimes start monitoring first honestly. get WSJT-X set up, aim at the moon, and see if you can decode anything. even hearing a big station is a good sign your system is in the ballpark.

yeah what he said about the dual reference thing, i did that by accident my second activation and had to figure out the upload process but its not bad once you do it once. also 23 contacts first time out is really good i only got 11 on mine and spent way too long trying to figure out why my antenna wasnt resonating (spoiler: i had set it up wrong). the KX2 is a great rig for this by the way, ive seen so many activators using them

W4T/SU-064 is a good one, glad you got it activated. Those chasers waiting on a specific summit reference always make me feel like the work was worth it -- I chase pretty regularly from home and there are certain summits I've had alerts set up for literally over a year waiting for someone to get up there. Don't stress too much about the contact count on your first one, getting the system figured out and coming back down safely is really what matters. The logistics get way smoother after a few trips.

so i finally sat down and actually participated in CQ WW SSB last weekend instead of just listening around and thinking 'maybe next time.' ive been licensed about 14 months and had been putting it off because honestly the contest environment seemed kind of intimidating - everyone moving so fast, the pile-ups, not knowing the exchange format properly. ended up making like 87 contacts which i know isnt much compared to serious contesters but for me it felt like a huge deal. worked a few new countries too which was unexpected. japan came back to me on 15m and i literally just sat there for a second before responding because i wasnt ready lol. also got my first south american contacts which has been on my list for a while. anyway the reason im posting is i want to do more of these and i'm looking at what's coming up. ARRL Sweepstakes is next right? and then i know CQ WW CW which i cant do yet but maybe next year. has anyone done both the SSB and CW weekends back to back - is that just exhausting or worth it? also been looking at Field Day rules again trying to understand how the scoring works for the class categories, it seems like operating from home is kind of disadvantaged compared to club setups which makes sense i guess. also totally separate question but has anyone mixed SOTA activations into their contest planning? i was reading about some people doing SOTA during Field Day and apparently it counts for both logs if you do it right but im not 100% sure how that works

honest answer? with 2x 2M5WL and 400w you can probably hear echoes of the bigger stations and maybe squeak out some QSOs with the really big gun stations on the other end if conditions line up and the moon is high. JT65A changed everything for EME, guys who would have been completely invisible in the CW era can now make contacts. but you're going to be frustrated a lot at first. the minimum most people talk about for a realistic 2m EME station is 4 yagis, and even that is marginal unless your noise floor is genuinely low. like system noise temp matters enormously here, a good LNA right at the feedpoint makes a bigger difference than people expect. if you can get your noise figure down to 0.5 dB or below with a good preamp like a SSB Electronics or a home built unit with a quality PHEMT device you'll be in better shape. the moon noise test is how you know youre actually pointing at the right thing and your system is sensitive enough to matter. with your current setup i'd say go ahead and get on and listen, you can definitely hear the big guys and you might be surprised. just dont expect a huge pile of initials right away. its addictive though once you get a contact, i'll tell you that much.

so i finally got around to building a dipole instead of buying one, figured how hard can it be right. cut it for 40m using the 468/f formula, ended up with each leg around 33.3 feet, fed it with some RG-8X i had laying around and a center insulator i made from a piece of cutting board i cut up (yeah i know). hoisted it up in an inverted V config with the apex at maybe 30 feet, legs angled down to about 8 feet at the ends. heres the weird part — swr is like 1.4:1 right at the resonant point which is sitting around 7.150 but then on the low end of the band around 7.020 it climbs to almost 2.8:1. i kind of expected some rise but not that much. on the high end around 7.250 its maybe 2.1:1 which seems more normal to me. is this asymmetry typical for inverted V or did i screw something up with the feedpoint? the legs arent exactly the same angle because of how my trees are positioned, one side drops steeper than the other. using an SDR to check the swr curve, not a fancy antenna analyzer, so theres some margin for error i guess but it seems pretty consistent.

the other thing worth knowing is 40m at night turns into a whole different animal especially in the phone portion because of skywave. youll hear stations from europe and south america just walking all over each other and the domestic stations. i gave up trying to ragchew on 40m after about 9pm local time, its just chaos. the cw end stays a bit more usable just because the signals are narrower i guess. anyway dont stress too much about the band plan as long as youre staying inside your license priveleges and keeping a few khz off the edges youre fine. the arrl website has a decent pdf of the band plan, i print mine out and keep it near the radio

LoTW is definitely the fastest way to confirm QSOs and apply for DXCC. I submitted my first DXCC application entirely through LoTW last year - no paper cards needed. Just make sure to get your LoTW certificate set up properly first. The ARRL has good tutorials on their website.

so ive been going to this one for like 4 years running and last year it was honestly kind of a letdown, vendor tables were half empty and the flea market side was pretty sparse. heard they moved it to a bigger venue this time though so maybe itll be worth the drive. anybody else planning on heading out? i usually get there early to pick through the swap meet stuff before the good gear disappears

i had almost the exact same frustration with AO-73 a while back. what finally clicked for me was just accepting that the first minute of a decent pass is basically practice and the middle 3-4 minutes is where you actually try to work someone. dont stress about the low elevation stuff, everybody struggles there. one thing i dont see mentioned much is that on the linear transponders the inverting passband means your doppler correction is kinda counterintuitive at first. USB on downlink, LSB on uplink for most of these birds, and when the sat is coming toward you the downlink actually goes up in freq while your uplink needs to go down. took me way too long to internalize that and i kept correcting the wrong direction for like two weeks straight.

For PTT you can use VOX where the radio engages PTT when WSJT-X sends audio, or CAT where WSJT-X sends software commands through the HRD connection. I prefer CAT control as it's more reliable than VOX triggering.

so i finally passed my general last month and ive been using my sequential call ever since but honestly the call they gave me is kind of a mouthful and i keep having to repeat it like 3 times on every QSO. started looking into the vanity call process on the FCC ULS site and wow that is a lot more complicated than i thought it would be. from what i understand you basically submit an application through the FCC and then theres like a filing window where they batch process everything and the calls get assigned kind of randomly among whoever applied during that window? or maybe its not random, im not totally sure. i also read something about certain call districts and 1x2 vs 2x1 formats and whether you qualify for them based on your license class and i got pretty lost pretty fast. can anyone walk me through how this actually works in practice? like do i just pick a callsign i want and apply for it, or do i need to list multiple choices? and how long does it typically take. i dont want to lose my current call in the process either, does that happen

The use of SO2R enables the proficient operator to listen to the second radio in at least 3 out of the 4 moments of a QSO, and thus maximize multipliers. SO2R is an infinite series of 3 seconds, where your brain toggles back and forward between two radios. The key is learning to use those micro-moments efficiently rather than trying to force 2BSIQ when conditions don't support it.

yeah what he said. i'll add that QRZ logbook is a separate thing again — you can sync it with LoTW in some logging programs but its confirmations dont count for ARRL awards either. i use all three honestly just because why not, more chances someone confirms the contact. the DX stations you're chasing, a lot of the big ones upload to LoTW eventually but sometimes it takes months after a dxpedition for them to get everything processed so don't panic if you dont see a confirmation right away. just keep uploading your own logs consistently and it'll sort itself out

Don't forget to bring your license and maybe a business card with your call. Great for networking! Look for used handhelds - you can get some real deals on older Kenwood and Yaesu rigs.

so ive been messing around with Winlink for the past couple weeks and i finally got a message to go through last night which was exciting but i still feel like im doing half of this wrong and just getting lucky my setup right now is a Kenwood TS-590SG into a SignaLink USB, running Winlink Express on a pretty old laptop. im using VARA HF as the modem because everyone said to just use VARA. my antenna situation is a dipole up about 35 feet, nothing fancy. the part that confuses me is the gateway selection. like when i open up the RMS list it shows me a hundred gateways and i have no idea how to pick a good one vs a bad one. i know you're supposed to look at distance and frequency but beyond that i kind of just pick whatever looks active and hope for the best. sometimes i connect, sometimes i sit there watching the VARA waterfall do nothing for five minutes. also i set up a Winlink account and i guess i have an address now ([email protected]) but what's the actual workflow for like, sending a message to someone who doesn't have Winlink? do they just get a regular email? and if they reply does it come back to me over RF or does it just sit there waiting for me to connect again? i know this is like four questions in one post but any help appreciated, been reading the docs and they're kind of dense

dont forget the informal abbreviations that arent technically Q codes but get used just as much, stuff like 73 (best regards, basically goodbye), 88 (kisses, usually between close friends on air), OM for old man which just means any male ham, YL for young lady which is any female ham regardless of age lol. and on CW you see things like ES for 'and', DE meaning 'from', UR meaning 'your'. its almost like a second language. took me a while to realize 73 wasnt some kind of frequency reference when i first started

the two chart thing got me too when i was starting out lol. i just kind of bookmarked the ARRL frequency chart online and ignored my printed ones because they were outdated anyway. honestly just listen around before you transmit anywhere and youll get a feel for where the phone guys hang out vs the digital stuff pretty quick