Diana Foster

so i've been on the waitlist for the Icom IC-7760 since basically forever and my local dealer finally called me yesterday. havent picked it up yet, going thursday. i know theres been a lot of talk about the remote head design and whether it actually works as well as they showed at Hamvention but i guess ill find out soon enough. also totally unrelated but has anyone noticed 10 meters has been absolutely nuts this week? ive been hearing stations from all over south america and even some JA's coming in around 28.4 during the afternoons. solar flux has been up around 200+ which i havent seen in a while. feels like we're really cooking right now with the cycle. anyway if anyone has gotten their hands on the 7760 already id love to hear what you think before i drive 45 minutes to pick mine up. mainly curious about the DSP filtering compared to the 7610 which is what im coming from.

yeah the efhw is what i switched to after messing with a buddipole for way too long. i use a 49:1 unun not a 9:1, the 9:1 is more for random wire situations. with a 49:1 and a 67 foot wire you get resonance on 40 20 15 and 10 pretty much without a tuner, maybe a little touch on 40 depending on how you deploy it. i just throw it over whatever tree is available and run it at a slight angle, works well enough for emcomm purposes. not a contest antenna obviously but it gets you on the air in like 10 minutes which is the whole point

so ive been doing single op contests for a few years now and my rates are... fine i guess. decent multiplier hunting, i can usually hold a run frequency pretty well on 20m but i feel like im leaving a ton of points on the table when the band is slow and im just sitting there calling CQ into the void waiting for the next contact. been reading a lot about SO2R and i get the basic concept — radio 2 is for S&P or mult hunting while radio 1 holds the run — but in practice i genuinely dont know how people manage the cognitive load. like do you just get used to it after a few contests or is there a period where it actually tanks your score before it gets better? my buddy K8 something (cant remember his suffix) says it took him three or four major contests before it clicked and he stopped doubling on his own signal. also the filtering situation seems like it could get expensive fast. running two radios in the same shack without trashing each others front ends seems like it requires either a really solid bandpass filter setup or just accepting you cant transmit on both at the same time which kind of defeats the purpose on the same band i guess. anyone running a two radio setup on a budget that actually works? or is this one of those things where you really do need to spend the money to do it right

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly on 40m and 20m, mostly SSB with a few FT8 sessions thrown in. my elmer told me i need to start confirming my contacts but honestly the whole QSL thing has me more confused than my first attempt at building an end-fed antenna. like theres LoTW which is the ARRL thing, and then theres eQSL which seems to be a completely different system, and then people still send actual paper cards through the mail either directly or through the bureau? and some people want all three? i dont really understand why there are so many systems or which one i should bother setting up first. im logging everything in WSJT-X and also keeping a paper log just in case. also i saw someone mention a QSL manager for a DX station and i have no idea what that means either. do they handle all three types or just the paper ones? anyway just looking for some clarity here before i go down another rabbit hole

ok so i just upgraded to general and i've been trying to figure out 40 meters but honestly the band plan stuff is making my head spin. like i know there's a difference between what the FCC actually allocates and what the band plan says but i dont really understand which one i have to follow and which one is just kind of a suggestion? also someone at my club said something about staying away from band edges and i get why that makes intuitive sense but i dont know how close is too close. my radio shows the frequency im on but i wasnt sure if that's the carrier frequency or something else and whether that matters. im probably overthinking this but i dont want to cause interference or worse get in trouble before ive even really started operating

honestly for just HF monitoring the SpyVerter route with your existing dongle might get you 80% of the way there for way less money. i ran that combo for a while before eventually upgrading to a HackRF and the upconverter setup was pretty decent on the lower HF bands. above 15 MHz or so it started getting a bit rough but for 40 and 80 meter listening it was fine. that said if you're serious about it the SDRplay is just a cleaner solution, less cables, no image frequencies to deal with, and the IF gain stages actually give you something useful to work with when strong signals are nearby. i just wouldnt call it a dramatic night and day difference on a decent antenna, more like going from good enough to actually good.

so ive been chasing this one entity for probably four or five months now, popped up a few times on 17m and once on 12m and i just could not break through no matter what i did. running about 500w into a 3el yagi at 45ft which honestly shouldnt be the problem, i know guys with dipoles who get through pileups fine. what finally worked was listening way longer before transmitting. i know that sounds obvious but i mean really listening — like i sat there for almost 20 minutes watching the DX's pattern on the waterfall and figuring out exactly where he was pulling stations from in his split. he was working a pretty narrow range, maybe 3-4 khz wide, and was creeping up slowly. i just parked right at the top of where i thought he'd land next and waited. called once, got him first try. the other thing i changed was dropping my audio a bit. i always assumed more drive = better but i was probably just splattering and annoying everyone including the DX op. cleaned up the signal and i think that helped too. anyway just sharing in case anyone else has been banging their head against this stuff like i was

i tried SO2R once during field day and gave up after about 20 minutes lol. different situation i know since field day scoring isnt really rate-dependent the same way. but honestly reading your post makes me curious — do you find the antenna isolation issue ever fully goes away or is it just something you manage around. i've got two radios now and have thought about doing this but the RF management piece seems like it could get ugly depending on band combo. what bands were you running simultaneously during the QSO party

so ive been chasing 3Y0 type rare ones for a few years now and always felt like i was just screaming into the void during big pileups. last weekend there was a pretty decent activation on 17m and i actually broke through a couple times so figured id share what i changed up. first thing, i stopped calling on top of everyone else right when the DX finishes his transmission. everyone piles on in the first half second and you just get buried. i started waiting maybe 300-400ms, just a beat, and i was getting through way more consistently. not sure if its because the op is actually tuning around a little after the initial crush or what but it seemed to help. second thing is i finally started running split properly. i was always too lazy to dial in my transmit freq carefully but i spent some time watching where the DX was actually coming back to and trying to place myself maybe 1-2 up from where the crowd was sitting. again not a magic bullet but it made a difference. power wasnt really the factor i thought it was. im running about 400w into a 3 element yagi and bumping to my amp didnt seem to help as much as just timing and freq placement. curious if others have noticed this. anybody else have techniques that actually work or am i just getting lucky here

im pretty much in the same boat as you, started about 4 months ago. what i did was use the morse code ninja stuff on youtube, he has these videos where its just practice text at different speeds and honestly just having it on while im doing other stuff helped a lot more than i expected. like i wasnt actively studying i was just kind of half listening and letters started clicking eventually still cant do a full qso without panicking but i can pull calls out of a pileup sometimes which felt impossible a few months ago so theres that

so ive been using an RTL-SDR v3 for probably two years now, mostly for aircraft stuff and occasionally poking around on HF with the direct sampling mode. its fine, it does what it does, but the HF performance is honestly pretty rough and im wondering if the RSP1B is actually worth the jump or if im just going to be disappointed again main thing i want to do is wideband HF monitoring, like being able to watch a big chunk of 40m or 80m at once and just see whats happening. the panadapter use case basically. i run SDR++ which i really like, switched from SDRuno a while back and never looked back. the RSP1B is like 130 bucks right now which isnt terrible but also isnt nothing has anyone actually done a direct comparison of the two on HF? im not expecting miracles but the RTL on direct sampling mode feels like im listening through a wet sock sometimes. curious if the RSP1B has noticeably better dynamic range in practice or if the spec sheet difference doesnt really translate in a noisy suburban environment

mic technique matters way more than most people think, yeah. the 7300 is actually a pretty capable radio on TX audio but you have to put in the time to dial it in. first thing id do is get someone you know on the air and have them give you honest reports while you tweak in real time, the monitor function really doesnt cut it for this. on the actual settings — I run my TX bandwidth around 100hz to 2800hz for general SSB, keeps things punchy and readable without all that low end mud. the bass boost a lot of people have cranked up sounds good on the monitor but kills intelligibility on the other end, especially if theres any QRM. mic gain is the big one though. people run it way too hot and then you get that compressed distorted sound. set it so your ALC is just barely moving, like kissing the bottom of the ALC range on voice peaks, not slamming it. as for mic distance, stay about a fist away from the element and talk across it slightly rather than straight into it, reduces plosives a lot. the stock HM-207 mic on the 7300 isnt bad honestly but if you want to go down the audio rabbit hole an SM series desk mic or even a used Heil PR-781 makes a noticeable difference. but fix the settings first before spending money

Yeah the RMS gateway is basically exactly what you described — it's the node you hit over RF and it bridges to the Winlink CMS servers on the internet side. You don't need your own internet connection, that's kind of the whole point for emergency use. The gateway operator has the internet connection and your message hops through them to the central message store. The sent folder thing is a little confusing in Winlink Express because messages dont move to sent until the transfer actually completes cleanly. If the session drops partway through or something goes wrong during the posting phase it can just kind of sit there. Open the session log after you try — there should be a log window or check the logs folder in the Winlink Express directory — and look for any error codes. Common one i see is when the gateway is connecting fine on the RF side but the CMS post is timing out, which usually means the gateway itself has an internet issue at that moment. Also double check your callsign is entered correctly in Winlink Express settings, including if you have a SSID suffix. That trips people up more than you'd think.

so ive been a tech for about two years and just upgraded to general last month, and i always told myself id learn morse even though its not required anymore. been using the G4FON trainer for a few weeks now and my copying is getting ok i guess, maybe 8-10wpm on a good day. but when i actually try to send with my paddle its a mess. i borrowed an old straight key from a guy in my club to start but someone told me i should just go straight to a paddle which i did, got a cheap MFJ paddle off ebay. the problem is my dits and dahs come out all uneven and sometimes i get these weird extra dits squeezed in when im not trying to. my keyer is the built in one on my ic-7300. is this a timing thing i need to adjust or is my paddle just bad or am i holding it wrong or what. honestly a bit frustrated because it sounds nothing like the CW i hear on the air

did this on mine about a year ago and yeah the calibration thing tripped me up too lol. worth noting the drift improvement is really noticeable if you do any digital modes that care about sub-hz accuracy. for SSB voice work you probably wouldnt care at all but for WSPR especially it makes a real difference. which Hy-Time part number did you use, the standard 0.5ppm one or the tighter spec version? i went with the 0.1ppm and it was like 20 bucks more but figured why not while i had the thing apart.

Do a proper install, power off the battery directly. Do NOT tap into existing vehicle wiring, and for the love of God and all things holy, do NOT use cigarette lighter sockets. For the control head, I've seen good installs using the sunglasses compartment area or custom dash mounts. I went with a BuiltRight dash mount, allowing me to put the remote head and a remote speaker up there. The remote speaker was really helpful, as the radio body (and speaker) are under the passenger seat. Yes, it is visible from outside, but it's not as obvious as having the whole radio there.

I went through basically the same thing about two years ago. What finally made it click for me was just accepting that SO2R is a skill that takes time to build, not a hardware upgrade that magically improves your score. The first few contests you run it you will probably do worse than single radio, that's just kind of the deal. One thing that helped me a lot was using the second radio strictly for search and pounce mults for a whole contest season before I tried to do anything more complicated with it. Like radio 1 is running, radio 2 is ONLY for grabbing a new country or a needed zone when one shows up. No trying to start a second run frequency, no trying to do fancy band changes. Just that one simple job. Once that felt natural I started doing more with it. also the 590SG is actually a pretty decent SO2R radio if you get the IF-filter settings dialed in, the roofing filter on that thing handles adjacent interference better than the 7300 does in my experience so maybe run the 590 as your primary on the noisier band.

okay so I passed my general last month and I've been trying to figure out the 40 meter band but honestly the more I read the more confused I get. like I know there's a difference between what the FCC says I can do and what the band plan says but I dont really understand which one I actually have to follow and which one is more like a suggestion also I keep hearing people say dont operate too close to the band edge but nobody really explains why or what too close even means. is 7.125 too close? what about 7.298 or whatever the top end is for phone. I just dont want to accidentally be somewhere I shouldnt be or step on anyone doing something I didnt know was there

oh man i had no idea about half this stuff when i was 8 months in. the nets thing really does make a difference for actually using the radio instead of just having it sit there. i got into the 10-10 International Net on 28.380 a while back and that was a fun one, you can get a membership number and everything which sounds kind of nerdy but its actually a nice little community. also not exactly a net but the 13 Colonies special event in July is something i look forward to every year now, its where all these stations in the original 13 colonies activate and you try to work all of them. lots of fun and theres even a bonus station in the UK and one in France i think. just throwing that out there since you mentioned special events, keep an eye out for it next summer if you havent heard of it

so ive been sitting on this idea for a while now and finally starting to poke at it. i have a 4-port coax switch out in the shack and honestly im just tired of walking over to flip it manually every time i change bands. figured an arduino nano with a relay board would do the trick but im not sure if i should just go that route or use a pi zero for the whole thing. the main thing i want is for the radio to send some kind of signal when it changes bands and have the switch follow it automatically. my ic-7300 has the acc port and i know it spits out band data but i havent really dug into the ci-v stuff yet. anyone tied ci-v reads to gpio pins on an arduino before? feels like this should be a solved problem but i cant find a clean writeup anywhere that isnt for a completely different radio. also not sure if a nano has enough horsepower for this or if i should just use a pi from the start. dont really need a screen or anything fancy, just reliable switching. open to suggestions

so ive been running a remote station for about 8 months now, got the whole thing set up at my brother in laws place about 60 miles away since he has a decent lot and i can run a 40m dipole and a vertical out there without the HOA nonsense i deal with at home. been using RemoteHams for the client side and it's been mostly fine but lately i keep getting these dropouts that last anywhere from 2 to maybe 10 seconds and then it reconnects. not a total disconnect, more like the audio just freezes and then comes back. PTT sometimes stays keyed during the freeze which is embarrassing when youre in the middle of a pileup. the internet at the remote end is a cable connection, like 150 down and about 20 up, should be more than enough. i ran a ping test during one of the dropouts and the latency spiked to like 800ms for a few seconds then came back to normal 15ms. so something is happening upstream of me. local ISP maybe. ive tried the SDR side of things too, been messing with the SDR-Console remote access stuff as a backup and that seems a bit more resilient but i lose some of the rig control features i actually need. anyone running a stable long term remote setup that's had this kind of intermittent issue? wondering if a VPN tunnel would help smooth things out or if thats just adding more potential failure points

This is tricky territory. Generally, you operate under the license of the country where the transmitter is physically located, but the control operator's license privileges also apply. From my understanding, you'd need to follow the more restrictive of the two countries' rules. I'd suggest contacting ARRL's regulatory department for a definitive answer.

the 300hz cut advice you got is solid, thats pretty standard stuff. SSB passband on most rigs is roughly 300 to 2700hz or so, sometimes a bit wider, and the low end frequencies below that dont really carry intelligibility anyway — they just eat up power and can cause splatter if youre not careful. cutting the mud down low and bringing up that 2-2.5k presence range is basically what the old broadcast engineers figured out decades ago for voice intelligibility over narrow bandwidth. on the ALC thing — you want to see it moving but not pinned. if your ALC is sitting at max the whole time youre talking, your mic gain is too hot and youre probably compressing or clipping somewhere in the chain. on the 7300 specifically i run mic gain around 50-55% and let the ALC bounce around in the lower portion of its range on peaks. some guys swear by the built in speech processor too but i find it makes things sound harsh if you push it too far, subtle is better. the PR-40 is a large diaphragm dynamic and its kind of voiced for broadcast so it does lean bassy by nature, which probably explains your reports. icom's menu EQ can fix a lot of it but you might want to experiment with mic placement too, getting further off axis can reduce that proximity effect buildup on the low end.

honestly i moved over to 80m for ragchewing and havent looked back lol, 40 just feels hit or miss anymore. though 80 has its own problems with the noise at my QTH so take that for what its worth

honestly i was in the same boat when i first started and the thing that helped me most was just doing it wrong a couple times lol. like i jumped in at the wrong moment once and the net control just gently redirected me and that was it. no drama. most net controls are pretty patient especially with newer folks. one thing i'll add is if you're ever unsure just listen to a few nets on something like a websdr before you check in, sometimes hearing other people mess up the timing and seeing how it gets handled is more useful than any explanation. also some nets have their procedures posted online if its an affiliated club net, worth looking up.