Amanda Clark

ok so i've been licensed about 8 months now and i finally have a decent HF setup, got my general ticket back in the spring and ive been spending a lot of time on 20m just making contacts all over the place. someone in my club mentioned i should start logging seriously if i want to go for DXCC and i kind of nodded like i knew what they were talking about but honestly i went home and looked it up and now im more confused than before. so theres DXCC which is working 100 countries, WAS which is all 50 states, and WAZ which is like all the zones? i think? but the zones thing really throws me off because i didnt even know the world was divided up that way for ham radio purposes. and then people talk about mixed vs phone vs digital endorsements and confirmed vs worked and i just... yeah. also how does lotw work with this, do i have to upload every QSO or just the ones i want to count toward the award? i guess my real question is which one is a realistic goal for a newer guy with maybe 200 contacts logged so far, and do i need to start over with better logging or can i backfill my existing log into lotw and get credit for stuff i already worked?

so i finally did my first solo activation last weekend at a state park about 45 mins from my house. ive been hunting for about 6 months and figured it was time to stop being nervous and just do it. threw the 40m dipole up in a tree, ran 100w from the FT-891 off a 30ah lifepo4 and honestly the pile up on 40 was kind of wild for a Saturday afternoon. got my 10 contacts no problem, ended up with like 23 before i packed up. few things im not sure about though — when people were calling me and i couldnt quite catch the callsign, i kept asking for repeats and it felt like i was slowing everything down way too much. is there a better way to handle partial calls? i know some activators just work the partial and move on but that makes me nervous about logging it wrong. also my spotting situation was a mess, i had to self spot on the POTA app which is fine but my phone signal kept dropping in the park. is there some kind of backup spotting method people use when cell coverage is bad? overall though it was an absolute blast and i already have another park picked out for next month. US-3421 if anyone wants to hunt me.

so ive been at this for about 4 months now and im just not breaking through. i can copy at maybe 5wpm on a good day if the sending is clean and i know the word is coming but anything faster and my brain just locks up completely. i know people say dont count dits and dahs and learn the sounds but honestly i still catch myself doing it sometimes without even realizing it. ive been using the lcwo.net lessons and im on lesson like 22 or something, doing the koch method. i practice maybe 20-30 minutes a day which i read is supposed to be enough. but progress feels really slow. did anyone else hit this wall around here and what actually got you through it. im starting to wonder if some people just arent wired for it or something

went last year and honestly it was alright, not as crazy as it was maybe 10 years ago but still worth it if you're in driving distance. found a pretty clean HF rig for a good price, guy just wanted it gone. the flea market part opens early so get there before 7 if you can, best stuff goes fast

so ive been running an old TS-570D for probably 8 years now and it still works fine honestly but the waterfall display on the 7300 just kept calling to me every time i saw videos of it. finally bought one used off a guy at the last hamfest for a pretty decent price, came with the stock mic and power cable. first thing i noticed is how much easier it is to find activity now. like on the 570 i was just spinning the VFO blind basically, maybe checking the cluster, but seeing the whole band laid out in front of you changes how you operate. spent way too long just watching signals go up and down on 40m at night instead of actually working anyone lol. the receiver feels noticeably better to me on crowded bands, though i know thats a pretty subjective thing to say. 20m contest weekends used to be pretty rough on the 570 and the 7300 just seems to handle adjacent strong signals without as much garbage getting through. could be placebo who knows. one thing that caught me off guard is the touch screen is kinda not that responsive sometimes, like i have to press the filter buttons twice occasionally. maybe i need to recalibrate it or something. anyone else had that issue? otherwise really happy with it so far.

yeah the activity thing is real, JS8Call never really hit critical mass the way FT8 did. I think part of it is FT8 got embraced by the contest and DX crowd fast because the log fills up quick and everyone loves a new band country. JS8Call doesnt really scratch that itch so it attracts a different kind of operator. honestly for weak signal ragchewing its hard to beat though. i also messed around with PSK31 for years before switching and JS8Call kind of fills the same role but with way better sensitivity. PSK31 is nearly dead on most bands now which is kinda sad because it was such a clean mode and you could actually have a normal conversation. waterfall is pretty barren these days except around 14.070 occasionally.

so ive been messing with Winlink Express for about two weeks now and i cant figure out if im actually hitting a gateway or just spinning my wheels. im running a IC-7300 into a SignaLink USB, mostly on HF, trying to get VARA HF working but also have Packet set up as a fallback. the waterfall looks like something is happening when i initiate a session but then it just times out after maybe 30-40 seconds with no connection established. i checked the RMS list and theres a few gateways within what should be workable range, like 500-800 miles, and ive been trying on 40m mostly around the winmor/vara frequencies. tuner is working, SWR looks fine. i did get one successful connection like three days ago, sent a test message to myself and it went through, then the next day nothing would connect again. not sure if this is an antenna thing, propagation, the gateway itself being down, or something wrong with my audio levels. the VARA waterfall shows a carrier but the handshake never completes. anyone dealt with this kind of intermittent thing before?

yeah that sounds about right honestly. my first activation was for a winter storm back in maybe 2019 and i had the exact same feeling about the waiting. people kind of romanticize emergency comms but a huge chunk of it is just sitting there with your ears on making sure you dont miss anything. which sounds easy until you've been doing it for 4 hours straight and you start to zone out a little the battery thing is a really common lesson learned the hard way. i swapped over to a bigger LiFePO4 setup after my second activation for exactly that reason. most of the emcomm guys i know have gone through at least one power failure during a real event before they finally got their portable power sorted out. dont beat yourself up about it, just fix it before the next one the ICS stuff clicking into place after a couple hours sounds pretty normal too. a lot of the served agencies dont really have a great feel for how to use us until the situation gets serious enough that they actually need us, then suddenly they figure out the structure real fast. good on you for sticking with it through the rough patch at the start

yeah the doppler thing trips everybody up the first few times, dont feel bad. for linear transponders the way i think about it is — keep your downlink VFO tuned so you can hear yourself (or find the passband), and let your uplink drift or correct that manually. the reason is you want to hear what you sound like on the satellite so you can tell if youre even in the passband. once you hear yourself then you compensate. if you fix your uplink and just chase with the downlink you might never even know if your signal is getting through. the signal inversion thing on AO-73 means if you tune up on the uplink your signal goes down on the downlink, so yeah that definitely bites people. just burns into your brain after a few passes. for rigctl and the 817 i honestly just gave up and do it by hand. the cat control on the 817 is kind of flaky and i found the latency made gpredict corrections feel weird anyway. some people swear by it but for a 10 minute pass i'd rather just tune.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and figured id just ask here since i cant seem to find a straight answer anywhere. i have a 40m dipole up at about 35 feet, fed with coax, center at the peak of my garage roof. works okay but i feel like i'm missing a lot of local and regional contacts, like anything under maybe 300 miles just doesnt seem to come in that well compared to guys i talk to who are running verticals. i know the dipole at that height is going to be kind of high-angle radiation which is better for DX and not great for the closer in stuff, and a vertical with a decent radial system should theoretically do better for that lower angle stuff but also the closer in ground wave type contacts. my problem is i dont really have space for a full radial field, maybe 8 or 10 radials is the most i could do realistically. is that even worth it or would i just be building something that performs worse than what i have now. also someone mentioned a sloper might be a good middle ground but i honestly dont know enough about those to know if thats worth pursuing. anyone run both and have actual on-air comparisons?

so this has been driving me nuts for about two weeks now. picked up an 817 off a guy at the club swap, worked fine at his place on the dummy load but when i got home and actually put it on a real antenna something felt off. checked it with my Bird and yeah, 40m is giving me maybe 0.8 to 1.2 watts depending on the frequency, everything else seems close to the rated 5w. 20m is fine, 80m is fine, even 2m and 70cm check out. the previous owner says he never noticed but honestly i dont think he used 40 much. the ALC looks a little weird on 40 too, kind of sits higher than i'd expect before i even key up. not sure if thats related. i did the usual stuff, reseated the finals area, checked the band pass filter area visually and nothing looks obviously burned or damaged. voltage is good coming in. anyone had something similar? wondering if its a PA transistor issue just on that band or maybe one of the LPF relays is flaky. i dont have a spectrum analyzer but i have a decent scope if thats useful here.

so ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing digital but lately ive been getting into SSB more and im kind of obsessed with trying to get my audio sounding decent. right now running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 through the stock mic input and honestly people tell me im readable but a few guys have said my audio sounds a little thin or tinny. im not sure if thats the mic placement, the mic gain setting, the compression, or just the radio itself doing something weird. ive been messing with the TX bandwidth settings and the bass boost on the 7300 but i feel like im just turning knobs without really knowing what im doing. does anyone have a sort of baseline starting point for SSB audio on the 7300 specifically or just general tips for getting a fuller sound without over-driving the mic gain and splattering all over the place. i know ALC is supposed to stay in a certain range but ive gotten conflicting info on exactly where. also what do people think about adding an external processor like a DBX or something similar, worth it or overkill for casual ragchewing

the net thing caught me off guard too when i first got on HF. there's nets that have been running on the same frequency same time every week for like 30 years and they kind of consider it theirs even though technically no one owns a frequency. just one of those things you learn over time i guess. I keep a shortwave schedule app on my phone now and cross-reference it when i'm looking for a spot to operate

yeah QRZ trips people up because it sounds like it should mean something else lol. when someone says QRZ? they're asking who's calling them, but i've seen new folks think it means the website which i mean fair enough since that's where most people look up callsigns now anyway. also dont forget 88 which means love and kisses, you'll hear that sometimes especially if someone's talking to their spouse on the repeater, its a whole thing. 73 and 88 show up at the end of contacts all the time once you know what to listen for

dude same situation here, got my ticket in march and my first repeater contact was a mess too. the baofeng is fine to start but yeah HF is a whole other world, i picked up an old ic-718 off qrz classifieds and its been great for just getting on 40m and seeing whats out there. good luck

yeah what he said about Field Day is true, its very beginner friendly. i did my first one two years ago and didnt really know what i was doing but people at the club just kind of walked me through it. made like 40 contacts over the whole weekend which doesnt sound like much but i was pretty proud of it lol one thing i'll add — look up the Sweepstakes too, the ARRL one. its a US/Canada only contest so the exchanges are a bit more involved but you dont have to worry about like chasing DX stations in weird timezones if thats not your thing yet. some people find it more manageable than CQ WW for that reason.

so i've been licensed about 4 months and i notice some guys on my local repeater just say their callsign normally and some spell it out with phonetics every single time. like one guy always goes "whiskey five tango romeo" or whatever and another just rattles it off like a regular word. is there a rule about this or is it just preference? i feel kinda dumb asking but i dont want to be doing it wrong when i finally get on HF. also does it matter if you use the nato ones vs just making up your own like saying apple instead of alpha or whatever

honestly i think thats half the hobby for me still being fairly new to all this. sometimes i just listen to see if i can figure out whats going on, like who's working who and what theyre running. havent gotten brave enough to call CQ on my own yet so this is kind of my version of participating i guess

what JFET are you using? i built something similar a while back with a 2N3819 and had all kinds of grief until i biased it properly, the drain current makes a huge difference in how the thing handles strong signals. also depending on how your audio amp is configured you might just be running too much gain at the end of the chain which makes any distortion way more obvious. what are you using for the audio stage?

antenna is the thing I always forget to think through ahead of time. like you have the radio and the power but then you get somewhere and realize all you have is a mag mount that doesn't stick to anything useful or your portable dipole is missing a wing nut. i keep a small ziplock with spare hardware for exactly that reason now. also — and this might be overkill for some people — i laminated a quick reference card with the local ARES net frequencies, ICS basics, and my call sign info and just taped it inside the lid. saves time fumbling around when someone's asking you a question and you're already stressed out. the notebook idea your buddy mentioned is good too, i use a rite in the rain pad so it doesnt get ruined if its wet outside

87 contacts for your first CQ WW is genuinely solid, dont sell yourself short. a lot of people freeze up or just give up after an hour when the rate slows down. the fact that you stuck with it and worked JA on 15 - that band was really cooking that weekend, good timing on your part. Sweepstakes is yes the next big one, SS SSB is usually first then CW a couple weeks later. the exchange is different from CQ WW, you have to send a serial number, your precedence, callsign, check and section - it trips people up at first but once you do it a few times it clicks. i actually find SS more fun in some ways because its all north america so the contacts come faster if youre in a decent location. doing both CW weekends is a personal thing. i did SS SSB and then SS CW back to back one year and by sunday afternoon of the CW weekend i was pretty fried. but some guys eat that stuff up. depends how into it you get. the SOTA and Field Day overlap is real - some activators do log it for both but you need to make sure your Field Day contact exchange is right AND youre logging it as a SOTA summit contact separately. theyre two different logs. worth reading the ARRL FD rules on that specific scenario because there are some nuances with the bonus points

oh man welcome to the addiction haha. seriously once you go QRP its hard to go back to high power, theres something about making a contact at 5 watts that just feels different. i started with an old Elecraft K1 i built probably 12 years ago now and still take it out on hikes. on your question about 5 vs 10 watts — honestly in my experience the difference is real but its not dramatic. youre talking maybe one S-unit on the other end which might matter when conditions are marginal but on a good day 5w is plenty. the bigger variable is always the antenna. i've had way better luck with a well placed wire than i ever did adding more power. if youre stringing up in trees already youre doing the right thing. keep experimenting with different antenna lengths and heights and youll be surprised what 5w can do

honestly CQ WW as a first contest isnt a bad idea at all, especially if you operate search and pound instead of running. just tune around, find a station youcan work, give your call, log it and move on. you dont have to sit on a frequency and call CQ for hours. with a dipole at 25 feet youll still make contacts, maybe not thousands but youll get a feel for how it all works and that's really the point the first time through. the SOTA crossover thing you mentioned is more of a portable/activation angle, like people will go up a summit during a contest and both activate the summit for SOTA points AND try to make contest QSOs at the same time. its a bit more to juggle but some guys love it. id probably separate those two things until youre comfortable with each one on its own first. state QSO parties are actually a really nice starting point if you want something a little lower pressure than CQ WW. smaller pool of stations, usually single band or shorter operating windows, easier to follow whats going on. check if your state has one coming up, most states do theirs in the fall.

honestly the General exam isnt that bad. the math looks scary when you first see it but like 90% of what actually shows up is stuff you can just memorize the answer to without really understanding the formula. i studied for maybe 3 weeks using just HamStudy and passed no problem. the electrical theory section tripped me up a little at first, ohms law and impedance stuff, but if you run through the question pool enough times it starts to click even if you dont fully get the theory behind it. the HF band plan questions are probably the most useful ones to actually learn vs just memorize because when you get on the air it helps to know why you can only operate certain modes in certain parts of the band as a General vs Extra. saved me from accidentally transmitting somewhere i wasnt supposed to be a few times early on. get the ARRL General book if you want something to read, i used it more like a reference when HamStudy flagged something i kept getting wrong. you dont need to read it cover to cover or anything

nice work man, 12 contacts on your first activation is solid. i remember my first one i was so worried about the antenna that i barely paid attention to where i was walking and nearly ate it on some loose rocks. the 817 is a great choice for SOTA, heavy-ish compared to some options but it just works. you'll get the pack weight down fast once you figure out whats actually essential vs what you think you need. i run about 18 lbs now including food and water and it took me probably 4 or 5 activations to get there