Diana Foster

im in the same boat, i keep watching the videos people are posting from the event and it looks cool but like... does it do anything my current setup doesnt already do. maybe im just not the target market. also didnt 20m open up really nicely last weekend? was working some EU stations saturday morning with barely any effort which was a nice surprise, we're definitely getting somewhere near the solar cycle peak i think

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house, K-4577 if anyone knows it. been hunting for about 6 months and always wanted to try the other side of it. threw my end fed halfwave up in a tree using a throw line, took maybe 20 minutes longer than it should have because i kept missing the branch i was aiming for lol ended up getting 23 QSOs on 40m SSB in about an hour and a half which i know is enough to count but i wanted more. signals seemed decent, got a few 59s from guys in the midwest which surprised me since im running a KX2 at 10 watts. tried moving to 20m after a while but the band felt pretty dead to me or maybe i just didnt know how to spot myself properly the spotting thing is honestly what confused me most. i spotted on POTA.app but then wasnt sure if i should re-spot every time i changed frequency or what. also a couple hunters called me while i was already in a QSO and i didnt know the etiquette there — do you just let them wait or say QRZ after each contact or what exactly. any tips from folks who do this regularly would be great

so ive been licensed for a few months now and i get on the air occasionally but honestly half the time i dont know what people are saying. like someone will say QSY or QRM and i sort of nod along but i dont actually know what it means. and its not just Q codes either, people say things like 73 or 88 or FB and i have to just guess from context. is there like a good reference for all this or do people just kind of pick it up over time? i feel like im missing half the conversation every time i key up. also someone told me to QRX and i just sat there not knowing if i should respond or not which was kind of embarrassing

hey everyone, been using qrz dx watch for a couple months now but lately its been really slow to update or sometimes doesnt show new spots at all. anyone else having issues with it? my internet is fine, other websites load normal. wondering if theres some setting im missing or if the service is just having problems also while im asking, what other dx spotting apps do you guys use? heard about some cluster networks but not sure which ones are worth trying

so ive been chasing DX seriously for maybe 3 years now and for the longest time i just could not crack big pileups. like the ones where theres wall to wall stations calling and the DXpedition is working split and you just hear your callsign get buried every single time. it was maddening honestly. what finally changed things for me was a combination of stuff i picked up from watching how the better operators on the cluster approached it. first thing was i stopped tail-ending randomly and started actually listening to where the DX was coming back. like really paying attention to whether they were moving up or down in the split window, if they kept going back to the same part of the spread, stuff like that. sounds obvious but i wasnt doing it systematically before. second thing was timing. i used to just key up the second the DX stopped transmitting like everyone else. now i wait just a beat, let the initial wave of callers go, and then transmit. sometimes that half second gap is enough for your call to pop through when the chaos settles a bit. doesnt always work but its better than being part of the wall of noise. also started running a bit more power into a better antenna. went from my old G5RV to a 2 element yagi on 20 and the difference is just not comparable. but honestly the operating technique stuff helped as much as the hardware. anyone else have stuff that actually worked for them in big pileups? curious if the timing thing is something other people do or if i just got lucky a few times.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into the local tuesday night net, been licensed for about 4 months and mostly just listen. the net control asked if anyone had any topics or questions and i just kind of blurted out something about what the difference was between a directed net and an open net because i genuinely didnt know. there was this pause and then net control explained it but i could swear i heard someone key up and unkey real quick like they were going to say something and then didnt. now im overthinking it. was that a dumb thing to ask on a net? should questions like that be saved for after the net or on a different frequency? i dont want to be that guy who slows everything down. i looked it up after and i get the basic idea now but i still feel like i committed some kind of faux pas and i dont know the unwritten rules here.