Michael Moore

I've used both extensively. The LiFePO₄ battery performance under load has been excellent running multiple radios, including high-powered HF rigs. The KX2's receiver is noticeably better in crowded band conditions, but the IC-705's VHF/UHF capability gives you more options on difficult summits.

so the PL tone (or CTCSS, same thing different names) listed in RepeaterBook is what you need to transmit to open up the repeater. the repeater itself may or may not send a tone back to you depending on how its set up, but that's separate. program that 100.0 as your transmit tone and you should be good. as for what to say — honestly just say your callsign and that youre monitoring, something like "[your call] listening" works fine. some repeaters have a courtesy tone that beeps after someone transmits, wait for that before you jump in or youll step on people. if the repeater has a timeout timer and you key up for too long it'll cut you off too, so keep transmissions reasonable. one thing worth double checking — make sure your offset is right. 2m repeaters usually want a -600 kHz offset. if you have the offset wrong you might hear the output but your radio isnt transmitting on the right input frequency. that trips up a lot of new folks

yeah the RMS gateway thing, setting one up locally is actually not that bad once you get past the initial Winlink sysop registration process which takes a few days for them to approve you. just heads up on that. the Winlink Express software has the RMS Relay mode built in basically so you dont need separate software for a basic setup. for your dropping sessions though, have you looked at the Winlink session log files? they're in the Winlink Express folder and sometimes they give you a better error than what shows on screen. also depending on what RMS youre hitting, some of them have known issues or just get busy and boot sessions. try connecting to a couple different gateways and see if the problem follows you or stays with that one node. if its gateway-specific theres not a ton you can do on your end honestly.

You don't need to hear your own echoes to complete EME contacts - it's about whether the other operator can hear you and if their station is powerful enough for you to copy them. Q65's signal averaging really helps - it pieces together information from multiple sequences to achieve decodes. Your 100W dual array setup should handle most EME QSOs fine.

okay so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech) and i finally got my baofeng programmed for the local 147.xxx repeater. i can hear other people on it just fine but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me or at least nobody responds. a guy at the club meeting mentioned something about a CTCSS tone but im honestly not totally sure what that means or how to check if mine is set right. i looked it up a little and it sounds like its like a subaudible tone you send along with your transmission so the repeater knows to open up? is that right? and if so how do i even know what tone to use — is it listed somewhere or do i have to ask someone. the repeater is listed on repeaterbook but i wasnt sure if the info there is always current. also is there such a thing as a repeater that doesnt need a tone at all because i thought i heard someone say that once sorry if this is a dumb question, still figuring all this out

yeah the 7300 menus are kind of a rabbit hole. i spent probably two weeks just messing with the twin PBT and notch filter settings before i felt like i had something i was happy with. honestly my suggestion is find one of the config guides that guys like W4EEY put together and use that as a starting point instead of going through every option cold. saves a lot of time. the scope thing you mentioned is exactly right though. once you use it during contest weekends it becomes almost hard to go back. i borrowed a friend's older rig for a field event last summer and kept reaching for a scope that wasnt there, felt weird. congrats on the upgrade, the 450D was a solid radio but the 7300 is just in a different tier for the money.

Special event stations are a bit different from regular nets — theres no formal check-in process usually, you just find them on the air and work them like any other contact. They'll announce their callsign and sometimes have a pile-up depending on how popular the event is. A lot of them will send you a QSL card or certificate afterward if you log the contact and send in a request, which is a nice little bonus. For finding them ahead of time the ARRL website keeps a calendar and QRZ also lists upcoming special events. I usually just bookmark a few that look interesting and then check the DX cluster the week of to see what frequency they're operating on. Some of them run multiple modes too so if you miss them on phone you might catch them on digital. As far as regular nets go if youre on the east coast the afternoon 80m traffic nets are worth checking out, good practice for handling formal message traffic which is a whole different skill from ragchewing.

so i finally finished building my first QRP rig, went with the Pennywhistle 40 kit and honestly the whole thing took me about two weekends to put together. solder joints arent perfect but i did the smoke test and nothing exploded so thats a win i guess. getting about 4 watts out on 40m which is close enough to what the kit specs say. took it out to the park yesterday with a random wire antenna and a 9:1 unun i had sitting around, made three contacts in about an hour which for 4 watts felt pretty amazing honestly. guy in Tennessee came back to me on the first call which i was not expecting at all. my question is about efficiency — im running off a 3ah lipo right now and im curious if there's a sweet spot for power output vs battery drain. like does dropping from 4w to 2w actually make a meaningful difference in how long the battery lasts or is the rx current draw the bigger factor when youre doing a lot of listening between calls. i feel like i read somewhere that receive current is actually the bigger drain but im not sure if that was for a specific rig or just general

okay so i've been doing EME on 2m for about 4 years now and the minimum viable thing really has changed a lot since the JT65 days, and then again with Q65 coming along. realistically the weakest stations i regularly work are running something like 4x9el yagis with maybe 500-600w at the feed and a decent preamp, probably 0.5dB NF or better. you can do it with less antenna if you make up for it with power and a really clean feedline situation, or vice versa. the noise figure thing is important but people obsess over the last tenth of a dB when their coax run is killing them. preamp at the feedpoint is non negotiable yeah, and getting something in the 0.3 to 0.5dB range is good enough, the difference between 0.3 and 0.5 is pretty marginal in the real world. what kills people is a mediocre preamp sitting 20 feet of RG-213 away from the antenna, that wipes out any gain advantage you had. 100w with a really good antenna array can work, ive seen it, but you'll be limiting yourself to the big guns mostly and your window for contacts will be narrow. honestly if you can swing 4x17el and 500w or more you'll be in much better shape and able to work a wider range of stations. its doable without taking over your whole yard depending on your mounting situation, 4 yagis in a square isnt as massive as it sounds if you're already doing vhf contesting stuff

so ive been a tech for about two years now and mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff, some APRS, talked on a few nets. honestly been putting off upgrading forever because the general exam always seemed intimidating but my buddy at the club keeps bugging me to just do it so here i am. started going through the question pool and some of it makes sense but a lot of the electrical theory stuff is really tripping me up. like the reactance questions and the stuff about impedance matching, i kind of get it conceptually but when they ask me to actually calculate something im lost. is that stuff heavily tested or can i more or less just memorize the answers without really understanding it also i guess my bigger question is once i actually pass, what does HF actually feel like compared to VHF. like is it just immediately different or does it take a while to figure out. i dont even have an HF rig yet so i guess im getting ahead of myself but curious what people think

so ive been going back and forth on this for probably two months now and i cant make up my mind. i have a decent backyard, maybe 80 feet end to end, and im trying to decide whether to put up a half wave dipole for 40 or just go with a vertical. the dipole would fit but barely, i'd have to angle one end down a bit which i know affects the pattern but honestly how much does it really matter at that scale. the vertical option would be a homebrew ground mounted thing with radials, ive read everything from 16 radials to 120 radials and like... i'm not burying 120 radials. i was thinking 32 or so. the lot is pretty flat which is supposedly good for a vertical but i'm also surrounded by houses on three sides so i'm wondering if all that metal and concrete is going to mess with the ground system anyway. mostly want to work stateside and some DX when the bands cooperate, not a contester just casual ragchewing and some pileups when something interesting comes up. anyone been in a similar situation and just picked one and been happy with it

yeah JS8Call is fun but you kinda have to be patient with it. i tried it for a few weeks and the activity on 15m was pretty sparse, had better luck on 40 like you said. one thing i noticed is a lot of the JS8Call guys leave their stations in auto-respond mode so sometimes youre not even sure if theres a human on the other end or just a bot replying lol RTTY is another one worth trying if you havent, especially around contest weekends. RTTY roundups get a ton of activity and the mode is ancient but it works. plus working some dx on RTTY feels different than FT8, more like you actually did something

so ive been trying to get into DX chasing more seriously lately and a buddy told me to start using the cluster spots to find activity. i set up an account on QRZ and i can see the logbook stuff and the callsign lookups obviously but im a little confused about how the spotting side of it all fits together with like DXwatch and the other cluster tools out there. right now what i do is i have DXwatch open in one tab and im filtering by band since im mostly operating 20m and 17m these days, and then i have QRZ open in another tab to look up whoever gets spotted. is that basically how most people do it or is there a smarter workflow. feels like im missing something because sometimes i see a spot on DXwatch and by the time i tune there the pileup is already huge or the station is completely gone. also someone mentioned there are apps that do this on your phone, i downloaded one called Ham Radio Deluxe but i think thats more for rig control? not totally sure what im looking at there. anyway any tips would be appreciated, been licensed about 8 months and still figuring out the DX side of things.

i literally just passed my tech exam two weeks ago so this is fresh for me. hamstudy.org was basically all i used, did like 20-30 minutes a day for maybe three weeks and felt pretty ready. the electrical stuff like ohms law is actually way simpler on the actual exam than it sounds, most of it is just plug and chug with a calculator and they give you the formula anyway i think. the RF safety questions tripped me up more than anything, theres kind of a lot of them and they all sound similar. one thing i wish i knew beforehand — bring two forms of ID to the in-person session, i almost got turned away because i only had my drivers license and they wanted something else too. might be different for online sessions not sure.

yeah the compressor at 8 on the 7300 is probably your main culprit honestly. i run mine at 3-4 max and even that adds a noticeable edge when you push it. the thing with SSB compression is a little goes a long way and past a certain point youre just adding distortion products that splatter into adjacent frequencies and sound terrible on the receiving end even if your ALC looks fine on your own display. for the TX eq i found a decent baseline is cutting around 100hz by a couple db to clean up the low end rumble and then maybe a slight boost around 2.5-3khz for presence but nothing dramatic. the PR-40 already has a pretty good midrange response so you dont need to push it that hard. honestly the best thing to do if you can swing it is get on echolink or something and record yourself, or ask a friend on a nearby repeater to give you an honest listen while you talk. club members are usually willing to help with that kind of thing if you explain what youre trying to do.

unfortunately yeah, this happens more than people like to admit. some nets are run really tightly and the NCS will gently remind someone to wait their turn, but a lot of local club nets are pretty relaxed and the net control doesnt always want to call someone out publicly, especially if its a long-time member. its not ideal but thats just the reality of it. the proper procedure is to wait until NCS acknowledges you before transmitting, thats pretty standard across almost any net format. what you witnessed was technically incorrect operating but its one of those things where people let it slide. if it really bugs you and you get to know the net manager you could always mention it privately, that usually goes over better than saying something on air. welcome to nets by the way, glad you finally checked in

drilled NMO on the roof is the right answer if you plan to keep the truck a while and actually use the radio seriously. i fought with a lip mount on my old Tacoma for two years and it was always a headache -- the ground connection would get flaky especially after rain got in there and oxidized things, and i was constantly chasing SWR issues that turned out to be the mount. once i finally drilled the cab and put in a Larsen NMO mount with a proper grommet and sealant it was night and day. SWR dropped, receive improved noticeably, and i havent touched it since. for a 2019 F-150 the roof is a big flat panel so you've got a great ground plane. just make sure you seal it properly when you drill, use a step bit to get a clean hole, and get some self-amalgamating tape over the cable entry inside. the coax routing can be a bit annoying on newer trucks but you can usually get it behind the headliner and down the A pillar without too much grief. as for antennas, im running a Comet SB7 on UHF and a separate antenna for 2m but thats maybe overkill for most people. the Diamond NR770H you have is genuinely a solid antenna, probably not worth changing that part.

the 7300 vs 7610 debate comes up constantly and i think people overcomplicate it. unless youre doing SO2R or serious contesting the second receiver on the 7610 is kind of wasted. the 7300 does everything most people actually need and the price difference is real money that could go toward a better antenna or an amp. glad its working out for you

same thing happened to me when i started out lol. also worth checking if the repeater is linked to anything because some of them are on echolink or IRLP and you might hear people from totally different areas which threw me off at first. i thought i was going crazy hearing someone say theyre in florida when the repeater is like 10 miles away from me.

same boat as you were not too long ago lol. what finally clicked for me was realizing LoTW is basically the "official" one for awards and eQSL is more casual. i do both now just takes like 2 extra minutes after a session. paper cards i only do when someone specifically requests one via QRZ or if i work somewhere really rare and i want a physical thing to put on the wall. dont stress too much about having the perfect system, just get LoTW sorted first since thats where the award confirmations come from

so ive been at this for about 8 months now. started with the basics, got up to around 13wpm which felt great at the time but now i feel like im just spinning my wheels. i can copy most letters fine but when i get into actual QSOs or even just running the G4FON trainer at higher speeds i start falling behind and then i panic and lose my place entirely i think part of the problem is im still kind of spelling out the letters in my head instead of just hearing whole words. like i know thats the thing everyone talks about but knowing it and actually doing it are very different things lol. started with 5wpm back in january doing the Koch method and honestly that first stretch from 5 to maybe 10 felt pretty natural but somewhere after that it just got harder is there a trick to getting past this plateau or is it really just more hours? i do about 20-25 minutes a day most days. wondering if i should bump up to like 17 or 18wpm in the trainer even if my copy is terrible, or if thats just going to reinforce bad habits. also been thinking about trying LCWO but havent set it up yet

so ive been seeing the flyers for the Tri-County hamfest posted around and was wondering if anyone from this club is planning to go. its been a couple years since i made it out to one and im kinda itching to dig through the swap tables again, last time i found a barely used IC-735 for like 80 bucks which still blows my mind. anyway if a few of us are going maybe we could carpool or at least meet up at the tailgate area, parking situation there is always kind of a mess

so i finally pulled the trigger on one of those QMX kits after reading about it here and other places for like six months. took me two evenings to put together which honestly wasnt as bad as i thought, my soldering is pretty mediocre but i took my time and it fired up first try which felt like some kind of miracle. been running it at 5 watts into a wire antenna in the backyard and made a few contacts on 40m, nothing crazy but a guy in Ohio heard me which felt amazing considering what im used to running. my question is kind of dumb but is there a point where you start chasing efficiency more seriously with QRP, like do people obsess over antenna feedline losses more when they're only putting out 5w? feels like every db matters way more than when i was running 100w on the old rig. also wondering if anyone runs these portable, like actual parks on the air stuff, and whether the battery situation is annoying or if thats kind of part of the fun

same thing happend to me last spring, people in my house thought i was being weird about it too. what HT did you borrow? im still trying to figure out which one to buy myself

yeah what he said. also a lot of nets have their format posted on a website if you can find it, like the ARRL net directory has a bunch listed with contact info and sometimes the net manager will email you the format if you ask. i did that before my first HF net and it helped a lot knowing what to expect.