David Thomas

nice work man, i'm jealous actually. been wanting to build one of those for like a year but keep putting it off. whats your antenna setup like if you don't mind me asking, im trying to figure out what works for QRP portable and i feel like the antenna is way more important at low power than most people admit when they're just starting out

so we finally did a full county-wide simulated emergency exercise last saturday and honestly it was one of the most eye-opening things ive done in amateur radio in years. we had about 14 operators spread across the EOC, two shelter sites, and a couple mobile units trying to pass formal traffic and coordinate resource requests like a real activation would go. the good stuff first — our net control guy did a fantastic job staying calm and keeping things organized even when three stations tried to check in at the same time. and the ICS-213 message passing worked way smoother than our last drill from like two years ago, people actually remembered to include all the fields this time which was nice. but here's where it kind of fell apart. we had two operators who had never actually used Winlink before just kind of frozen at their laptops during the digital portion. they'd done it at home on a regular basis supposedly but something about the actual pressure of the exercise made everything go sideways. one guy couldnt remember his password, the other had an old version of Winlink Express that wouldnt connect properly. we lost probably 20 minutes just on that. also nobody had thought through the simplex fallback plan if the repeater went down. we tested it midway through by having the EC announce the repeater was 'down' and the group kind of just went quiet for an uncomfortable amount of time before someone suggested a simplex frequency. we had it written down somewhere but not everyone had that sheet with them. anyway just wanted to share since I know a lot of groups are doing fall exercises right now. would love to hear what other people have run into during drills, especially around digital modes and fallback planning.

so ive been messing with APRS for a few months now and overall its been pretty cool but theres something thats been bugging me. my position on aprs.fi shows up consistently about half a mile from where i actually am. im running a TM-D710G in the truck with the internal GPS and ive double checked that the GPS is locking fine — it shows like 6-8 satellites usually when i check the menu. at first i thought maybe it was just aprs.fi doing some kind of averaging or caching the last known position or something but even when i drive around and let it update a bunch of times its still consistently off in the same direction, kind of to the northeast of my actual spot. its not random jitter, its like a fixed offset which is weird to me. the digi i'm hitting is about 12 miles away if that matters. running 1200 baud standard AFSK. anybody seen this before or know what might cause a consistent offset like that?

so i finally did my first park activation last weekend at a state forest about 45 minutes from my house. been a licensed ham for about 3 years but just never got around to trying POTA until my buddy kept bugging me about it. set up my KX2 with a random wire thrown up in a tree, nothing fancy, and honestly it went way smoother than i expected once i figured out the spotting thing. managed 12 QSOs in about an hour and a half which i know isnt a lot but felt like a win for a first time. mostly 40m with a few on 20m when 40 got crowded. i did self-spot on the POTA website but it took me like 10 minutes to figure out the interface on my phone while trying to hold the radio and log at the same time, definitely need a better system for that. anyway my main question is about the 10 QSO minimum -- i saw somewhere that you need 10 to count as a valid activation but do contacts with other POTA activators count the same as hunters? and also does the park reference have to be a specific one from the list or can you just be in any state park? there are a couple smaller county parks near me that im not sure about

honestly with an IC-7300 and an FT-891 i wouldnt stress too much about the hardware side, people have done SO2R with way jankier combos. the software setup is probably more of a headache than the RF stuff if you ask me. getting the two logging instances to talk to each other and having a footswitch or a way to flip between radios without losing your mind, thats where i spent most of my setup time. N1MM handles it but there are a bunch of config gotchas that arent super obvious from the docs. one thing i will say is dont try to learn it during a major contest you actually care about the score on. find something like an ARRL 10m or a state QSO party where the stakes feel lower and just mess around with it. worst case you have a mediocre score but you figure out your workflow without the pressure

check if the igate is actually connecting to a tier 2 server. you can look at the igate stats on aprs.fi if it ever gated anything. had this exact problem last year, turned out the igate 6 miles from me was running some ancient version of UI-View and the guy running it had moved away, nobody maintaining it anymore. ended up just standing up my own igate with Dire Wolf since i was already running it anyway. took like an hour once i found the right aprx config docs.

so i passed my technician exam on the 14th and just got my callsign in the ULS a few days ago. spent most of the week just listening on the 2m repeater in my area trying to figure out how people actually talk on these things vs what the study materials say lol anyway today i just keyed up and said my callsign and that i was new and honestly wasnt sure anyone would respond but this older guy came back to me and we talked for like 20 minutes about antennas and he lives like 4 miles away. felt pretty surreal honestly. been studying for this for months and it was just like... oh that actually worked not really asking anything just wanted to share i guess, this hobby is weird in a good way

clublog has some nice tools too and i think it integrates with spots somehow, im not 100% sure on that. but the OQRS system on clublog is great for bureau cards if you havent used that yet, bit of a tangent sorry. for what youre asking though i just keep a browser tab open to dxsummit.fi which is another cluster aggregator, works fine on my tablet and updates pretty regularly. the key thing is filtering out the noise, if you just watch raw unfiltered spots its like drinking from a firehose especially on a busy day.

im kind of in the same boat learning this stuff, but one thing that helped me was just watching the DX cluster for like a week without even transmitting. you start to notice patterns of when certain paths light up. also the K index spiking even to a 3 or 4 can really mess with higher bands even if the flux looks fine, so i always check both now. still confusing a lot of the time tho ngl

yeah the menu depth on that thing is real. i think icom assumes you'll just download the CS-7300 software and do all your config from a laptop, which honestly once i started doing that it made a lot more sense. trying to navigate everything from the front panel is kind of a pain for the deeper settings. the ALC thing you mentioned is super common, i see it come up constantly. the mic gain default is set pretty aggressively from the factory i think, or at least it interacts badly with certain mics. i run mine with an SM-30 desk mic and had to pull the input gain way back from where it shipped. worth spending an hour just transmitting into a dummy load and watching the ALC meter while you adjust things. on the ATU — totally agree. its fine for trimming up something that's already reasonably close, but if youre more than like 3:1 out it starts getting unhappy. for the attic dipole situation have you considered just cutting it to resonance for 40 and forgetting the tuner on that band entirely? sometimes simpler is better.

the ARRL net directory is definitely hit or miss, you're right about that. what i usually do is just lurk on a frequency for a bit before the listed net time and see if anything actually comes up. sometimes they moved the day or frequency and never updated the listing. for 40 meters there's a ton of traffic nets that run pretty much every evening — the NTS stuff especially. and if you're into slower paced ragchew type nets, the slower net on 7.251 or so runs a few nights a week i think, good folks on there. 80 meters opens up a lot of options too once the sun goes down depending on where you are. as for special event stations — yeah it's basically just a normal QSO but usually pretty quick. they'll give you their special callsign and sometimes there's a specific piece of info they exchange like a reference number for the lighthouse or whatever event it is. some of them have QSL cards or even certificates you can get afterward which is kind of fun. just listen for a bit first and you'll get the hang of what they're exchanging before you call in.

so ive been licensed for about 8 years and done a decent amount of HF DX but EME has always been this kind of mythical thing in the back of my head that i figured was only for guys with huge arrays and a dedicated building for equipment. recently talked to a guy at a hamfest who said he worked a handful of stations on 2m EME with a single yagi and 200 watts which kind of blew my mind a little. now im actually trying to figure out what a realistic entry point looks like. i have a IC-9700 already so the radio side is mostly handled i think, and i could put up maybe a 9 or 11 element yagi on a decent az/el mount without the neighbors losing their minds. is that even enough to work anyone or am i just going to be listening to noise for months. also the low noise preamp situation confuses me — everyone says its critical but i dont know if we're talking like 0.3dB NF or if anything under 1dB is fine. and do i need a sequencer for a modest setup like this or is that more important when you're running higher power. mostly want to do digital, JT65 i assume, not expecting to ragchew on moonbounce obviously but even making a handful of contacts would be incredible to me. any pointers appreciated, even if the answer is 'you need more antenna than that'

congrats on passing general. so the vanity process — its actually not too complicated once you understand the basics. there is no waiting period after you get your initial callsign, you can apply for a vanity call basically right away through the FCC ULS. the old window system where different license classes had different application windows was eliminated a while back, so its genuinely first come first served now for the most part. you just submit and if the call is available and you're eligible, you should get it. as for the 1x3 format — general class is absolutely eligible for those, you dont need extra for a 1x3. extra class opens up 1x2 and 2x1 calls which are shorter and more coveted, but a 1x3 is fine on general. one thing to be aware of with SK calls is there can be a holding period before they become available in the vanity pool, I believe it's around 2 years after the license expires or the person is removed from the database, but you can check the call availability directly in ULS and it'll tell you if its assignable or still in a holding status. the actual application is pretty straightforward, just fill out the form 605 on the ULS site and list the call you want. fingers crossed you get it, SK memorial calls are always meaningful.

thats pretty much every night for me lol. i usually just end up on 2m talking to the guys in the local club instead. 40 feels like a gamble

yeah i ran something similar for about a year before i upgraded the shack end internet. had an RTL-SDR V3 tapped into the 7300 IF out and was trying to stream that back using SDR-Console's network server mode alongside the RemoteHams audio. honestly it was a mess at 10up. the SDR stream alone was eating like 2-3mbps even with compression cranked down and then you add the audio and control channel and it just got choppy what actually worked better for me was dropping the SDR sample rate way down and using a narrower chunk around whatever band i was on rather than trying to stream the whole HF range. if you just want a panadapter centered on 40m for example you can get away with a much lower rate. still not perfect but usable. Airspy HF+ would probably behave better than RTL for this since the dynamic range is way better and you need less of it to see whats going on the IF tap on the 7300 is pretty straightforward btw, theres a thread on eham somewhere about the exact connector location

went last year for the first time and honestly didnt really know what to expect. ended up just walking around for like an hour not sure what half the stuff even was lol. but the guys at the club table were pretty helpful and i ended up signing up for the local club so thats something i guess

yeah what he said about the notepad, seriously. i showed up to a simulated emergency exercise last spring thinking i was totally ready and spent the first 20 minutes trying to find a pen. felt like an idiot. one thing i'd add — test your whole kit as a unit before you actually need it. like set it all up in your backyard or garage and run it for a few hours and see what breaks or what you wish you had. i did that and discovered my coax connector on the J-pole was loose and also my laptop charger was missing from the bag somehow. better to find that on a Tuesday afternoon than when there's an actual activation happening.

yeah the charging thing is real, i learned that the hard way too. one thing i'd add — and this might sound dumb — is make sure everything actually fits in whatever bag or case you're using before something happens. i spent like four months thinking my kit was ready and then tried to actually pack it up fast one night for a drill and half the stuff didnt fit or i couldnt find the right cable. now i do a full pack-up and power-on test every few months just to stay honest with myself about what's actually in there. also an SWR meter or at minimum an antenna analyzer is worth having. you'll be putting up antennas in weird spots at weird angles and you really want to know if something's wrong before you start wondering why nobody can hear you.

so ive been building this direct conversion receiver for 40m from scratch, nothing fancy just an NE602 mixer feeding an LM386 audio stage with a simple LC bandpass filter up front. got it receiving signals last night which was exciting but the audio sounds like everything is coming through a wet blanket. LSB stations sound kinda intelligible but there's this low frequency rumble underneath everything and the audio just doesn't have any crispness to it. the LM386 circuit is basically straight out of the datasheet, 250uf cap from pin 7 to ground, gain set to 200 with the 10uf cap between pins 1 and 8. i'm wondering if that's actually too much gain and it's just amplifying everything including noise. or maybe my audio filter is wrong. i did slap a 0.047uf cap from the output to ground which i thought would kill the RF but maybe it's also cutting too much of the audio band. anyone built one of these and can tell me where the muddy audio usually comes from? power supply is a 9v wall wart, i haven't checked how clean it is yet

yeah 44 contacts is the number, i remember being surprised by that too when i first looked into it. i did my first KFF activation last spring at a local national forest and it took me maybe an hour to get there on 40m with a simple end fed. wasnt bad at all once the spots went out. one thing i'd add is just double check that the specific area you're going to is actually within the boundary of the reference, sometimes WMAs have weird shapes and if you're parked at a trailhead near the edge you want to make sure you're actually inside the designated area. learned that the slightly awkward way when a hunter drove by and told me i was technically outside the WMA line by like 50 feet haha. moved my chair and all was fine but still.

Great choice on the QCX+! I've built several of them...they are amazing! For batteries, I'd suggest LiFePO4 - they maintain voltage well under load. The QCX+ draws very little on receive so battery life is excellent.

oh man i remember feeling exactly like this before my first one, it was a bike race and i was convinced i was gonna say my callsign wrong in front of everyone on the net lol. honestly once you get on the air and do the first couple transmissions it just clicks and you stop overthinking it. the nice thing about these community events is the pace is pretty slow and net control is usually super patient with everyone. yeah shadow shift in ARES basically means what you think, you tag along with someone who has done it before and mostly just observe, maybe key up once or twice. some groups do it differently though so just ask your EC directly what they expect from you. the main thing is just show up on time with a charged radio and a spare battery if you have one, write down the frequencies and any tactical call signs on a little card you can tape to the back of your HT, that helps a lot when you go blank under pressure. you'll do fine, these events are genuinely low stakes and good practice

the paper QSLs are absolutely worth sending in, dont let them sit there. you mail them to the ARRL with a check or credit card info and they go through an outgoing QSL bureau process for checking — wait actually no, for DXCC specifically you send them directly to ARRL HQ or bring them to an accredited DXCC card checker at a hamfest which is way faster and cheaper honestly. i got like 30 extra credits that way from old paper cards that werent in LoTW as for tracking multiple awards at once, just make sure your logging software is set up right and most of it handles WAS, WAZ, and DXCC simultaneously in the background. log4om should do that fine. i run DXKeeper personally but same idea. you'll figure out pretty quick which states or zones you're still missing just by pulling the reports

No hard rule in part 97 that says you must use phonetics every time, its more of a best practice thing especially when conditions are rough or theres QRM. On a clear local repeater most people just say their call straight because everyone can hear fine. Where it really matters is on HF when youre working someone whos struggling to copy you or during a net check-in where the net control is writing down a lot of calls fast. honestly just use your judgement, if somone asks you to say it again go ahead and spell it out phonetically. most elmers will tell you to use phonetics more rather than less when youre starting out just so you get comfortable with them

just chiming in cause i went through this like a year ago — the Morse Toad app is what finally got it to stick for me personally. its kind of gamey which helps if youre the type who needs that. also there are some youtube channels that do like 5 minute daily practice sessions at slow speed which are good for building up. the main thing people told me that turned out to be true is dont try to learn it too slow, you end up counting the dits and dahs and then you have to basically unlearn that later which is a whole thing