Michael Miller90

I've tested both configurations extensively. Elevated systems show reduced noise floor in many cases, especially in urban environments with poor soil conductivity. The trade-off is mechanical complexity and wind loading. Your buried system is probably performing better than you think - try some on-air comparisons before changing.

this is really encouraging to read actually, ive been putting off signing up for ARES because i kept thinking i needed to know more before i'd be useful. maybe i'll just go ahead and contact the EC for my county. do they usually let newer hams just observe before getting fully activated or is it kind of dive right in?

yeah the window system trips a lot of people up at first. basically when you submit a vanity application there's a 30 day window and if only you applied for that callsign you get it after the window closes. but if multiple people apply for the same call during that window it goes to whoever has the highest license class first, and then if thats still a tie i believe it goes to the longest licensed ham. so its not exactly a lottery and its not exactly first come first served either. as for the region thing — no you dont have to match your district. you can apply for any available call anywhere in the country as long as the license class matches up. a general cant get a 1x2 or 2x1 format call, those are reserved for extras. but you can grab a W1 or K9 or whatever if its open and fits your class. i'd check ae7q.com, it has a really good callsign lookup tool that shows availability and what format corresponds to what class. made the whole thing way less confusing for me when i was going through it a few years back.

No hard rule that I know of, it's more situational. On a clear local repeater with strong signals there's not much point spelling everything out phonetically because everyone can hear you fine. On HF though, especially DX or when conditions are rough, phonetics actually earn their keep — a plain B and a plain D can sound identical under noise and QSB, but Bravo and Delta are never gonna get confused. Same with S and F, or M and N. Mixing is totally fine and people do it all the time. Some guys will say their call and just rattle off the suffix letters without phonetics because they know their call is distinct enough. Others go full NATO every time out of habit. There's no bad form as long as you're getting your call across clearly. The whole point is just intelligibility, so use whatever gets the job done. If someone asks you to say it again just switch to full phonetics, pretty simple.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for like 6 weeks using that LCWO site the guy above mentioned and im on like letter 12 or 13 now i think. honestly some days it clicks and some days i feel like ive forgotten everything. what helped me was also just listening to actual cw on the air even when i cant copy hardly any of it, like tuning around 40 meters in the evenings and just hearing the rhythm of it. theres also this thing called the word of the day podcast for cw learners but i havent actually tried that one yet someone just told me about it

Good question and honestly this confuses a lot of newer hams. So the short version is they all kind of serve different purposes and a lot of active operators use more than one. LoTW is what you want for DXCC credit and most of the serious award chasing — the ARRL only accepts LoTW or physical cards for DXCC confirmation so if thats something you care about down the road, keeping up with LoTW uploads is worth it. The reason you're not getting many confirmations back yet is probably just that not everyone uploads regularly, some people do it in big batches every few months. Give it time and your confirmed count will creep up. eQSL is a totally separate thing and yeah it is kind of redundant in some ways but a lot of operators especially in Europe and Asia use it pretty actively and some awards accept it. Its easier to set up and has that whole digital card artwork thing which some people enjoy. I run both, takes maybe 5 extra minutes to upload to eQSL after i do LoTW so why not. Physical cards — honestly this is where it gets personal. Some guys love them and have whole binders full of cards going back decades. For DXpeditions especially you almost always want to send or request a physical card because a lot of rare entities still confirm that way and some DXers wont count it without a card in hand. I still send cards for any really memorable contact or first contact with a new entity. There's something kind of nice about getting an envelope in the mail with a card from some island in the Pacific.

yeah that sounds like it could be an ALC issue biting you. the handshake tones in VARA are pretty forgiving but once it starts pushing actual data the duty cycle goes way up and if your ALC is kicking in mid-transmission you'll get corrupted packets and the gateway drops you. check if your ALC meter is moving at all during the send — it should basically be sitting still. if it's bouncing around your power is way too high for that setup. also worth checking is whether your rig's built-in voice processor or any compression is enabled. that stuff will murder a data signal. on the 590 make sure the speech processor is off and also check the DATA mode settings in the menu — there's a separate audio input level for the ACC2 jack versus the front mic input and sometimes people have those mixed up. the SignaLink should be going into the rear data port not the mic jack if you want the cleanest path. one more thing — what baud rate are you running VARA at? if you're on a noisy band and trying to push 2750 or whatever the high setting is, try dropping it down and see if your sessions complete. sometimes a slower more reliable connection is better than a fast one that keeps falling over.

Band plans ensure orderly and efficient use of radio spectrum and prevent interference between different modes. CW needs narrow bandwidth and precise frequencies, while phone needs wider segments. Digital modes like FT8 have specific calling frequencies - use 14.074 MHz on 20m, for example.

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend, been wanting to try it for months and kept putting it off. ended up going to a state forest about 45 minutes from me, KFF reference, got the coords off the database and it looked like a decent spot. brought my KX2 and a 40m/20m linked dipole, threw it up in a tree maybe 25 feet or so and just started calling CQ WWFF. honestly i wasnt expecting much but i got 44 contacts in about 2 hours which i guess is more than enough for a valid activation. bunch of hunters calling in which was cool, a few DX stations too which surprised me on 40m at that time of day. logged everything in HAMRS on my phone and uploaded to the WWFF logbook when i got home, seemed to go through fine. my question is about the reference itself though — the forest i went to has like 3 or 4 different KFF references that seem to overlap or are right next to each other. do i need to pick one and stick to it or can i log contacts under multiple refs if im technically in both areas? i couldnt find a clear answer on the WWFF website and the maps are kind of hard to read. also is there any etiquette around spotting yourself, i used the POTA app to spot myself but wasnt sure if thats standard for WWFF or if there's a separate spotter thing people use

JS8Call is definitely a different animal and yeah there's still activity on it, maybe not FT8 levels obviously but there's a core group that uses it regularly especially on 40m. i use it mostly for the relay/store-forward stuff which is actually pretty clever for emcomm type scenarios but thats a whole other topic. on the sensitivity question — JS8Call normal mode runs at about -24dB SNR threshold which isnt far off from FT8's -21 or whatever it is, so you're not giving up as much as you'd think. there's also a slow mode that does better than that if conditions are really rough. with your setup honestly youll probably be fine for regional stuff, the random wire with a 9:1 works well enough on 40m in my experience. the bigger issue is that JS8Call QSOs take time, like even a short exchange is several minutes and if the band shifts or fades you lose the thread of the conversation. FT8 gets in and out so fast that a fade just means you retry, with JS8 youre waiting and waiting and then sometimes nothing. the social side is real though. had a 20 minute back and forth with a guy in Wyoming last winter about antenna theory and it was genuinely fun in a way no FT8 contact has ever been. so yeah i think they fill different niches, its not redundant at all.

40m is fine here lol. maybe your preamp is acting up or something. i was on last night for like an hour and a half

we had almost the exact same debate before our last activation. ended up going with two 50ah lithium batteries in parallel instead of the generator and honestly it was the right call for the noise situation. ran about 9 hours on hf at mixed power levels without any issues and didnt have to deal with fuel or the noise complaints from the other group. only downside is recharging overnight if the drill extends but we had a 200w panel as backup which helped. the vertical vs dipole thing really depends on your propagation goals tbh. verticals are great if you need dx or dont have the real estate but if your traffic is regional a dipole up even 20 feet will outperform it on 40m for most paths. linked dipoles are kind of annoying to adjust when you're busy but the performance is hard to argue with.

also worth mentioning that even domestically the control operator is still responsible for everything that comes out of that station. so even if your friend is just saying hi, if they said something that violated the rules you're the one holding the bag. i dont say that to scare you off letting people talk, just something to keep in mind. i usually just stay right there and kind of monitor the whole thing if i let someone else use the mic.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at this for about 6 months now. one thing that helped me was recording myself sending and then listening back, which is painful but you really hear where youre rushing or mangling letters. also someone told me to practice individual letters that give me trouble way more than just sending random text, like i had a really hard time with C and Y for a long time and just drilling those helped a lot. good luck, its a slow process but its really satisfying when it starts clicking

yeah what he said about the preamp location is critical, i learned that the hard way. i had my first setup with the LNA in the shack and i was totally confused why my receive was so bad compared to what the math said it should be. moved it to the mast and it was like a completely different radio. one thing i'd add is dont underestimate how much the software side matters for first contacts. get WSJT-X configured properly, make sure your clock sync is solid like GPS disciplined or at least chrony against a good NTP source, and spend some time just listening before you transmit. there are nights where the moon is in a decent window and you can hear EU stations pretty easily even on a modest setup, that'll tell you a lot about whether your receive chain is working before you start calling CQ. i remember the first time i copied a W6 on EME and i just sat there staring at the screen for a second, still a cool feeling.

yeah the WSJT-X logging situation is annoying, what i do is set WSJT-X to log to UDP and have it send to both N1MM and Log4OM simultaneously. both programs can accept UDP log packets so you dont have to do the export/import dance at all. takes a bit of fiddling with the ports in WSJT-X settings but once its dialed in it just works. N1MM gets port 2237 by default and Log4OM has its own listener, you just point WSJT-X at both IPs if theyre on different machines or use a UDP splitter if its all one box. as for running both longterm, i personally keep N1MM strictly for contests and Log4OM as my master log. after a contest i export the N1MM log to ADIF and import it into Log4OM, check for dupes, done. its an extra step but it means my award tracking in Log4OM stays accurate and i'm not trying to get N1MM to do things it wasnt designed for.

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. ok so the FCC part 97 allocations are the actual legal limits — for general on 40m phone that's 7.175 to 7.300 MHz. that 7.125 number you might be seeing is the technician/novice CW limit from way back, dont worry about that for phone. the band plan stuff the ARRL publishes is basically a gentlemens agreement yeah, nobody enforces it but its good practice and people will definitely say something on the air if they think youre operating somewhere weird. like the lower part of 40m tends to be CW territory even though technically a general can run phone above 7.175. as for band edges — the issue is your signal isnt a single point on the dial. if youre running SSB and you set your VFO to 7.300 your actual transmitted signal is spreading a few kHz depending on your audio, so you could easily be going out of band without realizing it. most people stay at least 3-5 kHz inside the edge to be safe. your radio wont stop you or anything, you'd just be violating part 97 which is obviously not great.

dont overlook the lpf relays either. i had a radio doing something similar and one of the low pass filter switching relays had corroded contacts and wasnt fully switching. it was passing signal but with enough loss to tank the output. kind of an annoying one to find because everything looks okay at a glance. you can sometimes hear a weak or slow click on that relay if you listen close while switching bands — or just probe across the contacts with a meter in resistance mode while the relay is energized. anyway just throwing that out there because the finals get blamed for everything and sometimes its something dumb upstream

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some 20m when the band cooperates. people keep mentioning LoTW and eQSL and i see QSL cards mentioned constantly in the groups im in but honestly i still dont fully understand what the difference is or if i need to be using all of them. from what i can tell LoTW is the ARRL thing and its more official and eQSL is a separate website and then paper cards are just... mailed? through the bureau or directly? i tried signing up for LoTW a while back and got confused by the certificate process and kind of gave up on it. is it actually worth the hassle or do most people just use eQSL now since its easier to sign up for also do i need to send a QSL card every time someone sends me one or is that just a courtesy thing, i dont want to be rude about it but i also wasnt sure if there was like an unwritten rule

oh man this is exactly what it felt like for me starting out, you are absolutely not wired wrong. the sending/receiving disconnect is super common and it took me probably 3 or 4 months before my hands started cooperating reliably. one thing that really helped me was to slow the keyer way down, like embarrassingly slow, and just send random text while watching TV or something so your brain isnt overthinking every dit and dah. you want it to get into muscle memory territory. also dont underestimate the iambic vs single lever thing. i started on iambic mode A and honestly found it more confusing than it needed to be. some people swear by mode B, some go back to a straight key first just to internalize the rhythm before going to paddles. might be worth a week on a straight key if you havent tried that. as for whether the paddle matters — yes and no, a nicer paddle with better feel and adjustable tension can help but not until you've got the basics down. the MFJ setup is fine to learn on, get comfortable first then worry about gear.

i just passed mine last month so this is pretty fresh for me. the oscillator and filter Q factors stuff was weird at first but once it clicked it was fine. what actually surprised me was how much of the exam is still regulatory stuff and operating procedures, like i expected it to be all deep electronics theory but theres a fair chunk thats not that different from the General in terms of rules and band plans. the extra spectrum access on 80m was immediately useful for me personally, i was always getting crowded out on 75m phone and now i have more room. your mileage may vary obviously depending on where you operate and what modes you prefer.

i always find AO-91 to be a bit drifty compared to the older birds like FO-29. the linear transponders on the Phase 3 sats were much more stable but those cubesats are what we got now i guess. try adjusting your doppler settings manually and see if that helps

so i've been on almost every evening this week and honestly the bands have been kinda rough. lots of static crashes, got some QSB on what should've been a decent path to the midwest, and i dunno it just feels like the ionosphere is having a bad week or something. did manage to work a guy in Minnesota running what sounded like a tube rig, which was kind of cool to hear. that old audio just sounds different you know. anyway not really going anywhere with this just curious if others are noticing the same or if its just my location (pacific northwest)

dude same thing happened to me last week, i was just tuning around on 10 kind of expecting nothing and suddenly there was this pile up for some DX station i couldnt even identify at first. turned out to be a 5-watter from Argentina working guys all up and down the east coast. i run about 100 watts into a dipole and i actually made it into the log which was pretty cool for me i use the DX maps site and just leave a tab open, it shows spots in real time and you can filter by band. once you see a cluster of 10m spots start showing up you know somethings happening

Weight matters more than specs when you're hiking to a summit. The FT-891 paired with an LDG Z-11 Pro 2 tuner makes an unbeatable portable combo. You'll appreciate the removable head for mobile work too - I run mine from the passenger seat with the body in the back.