Michelle Brown

yeah the timing thing is huge and i think its underrated. ive watched guys with kilowatts just steamroll calls continuously and get nowhere while some 100w station comes in with one precise call right at the right moment and gets through clean. the DX op can actually hear the brief silence and pick you out. the partial call thing is interesting too — depends a lot on the operator running the DXpedition. some of those big expeditions have really experienced ops who are great at pulling partials and building the call, others not so much and they'll just move on if they dont get the full thing. if you can figure that out early it changes your strategy. one thing i'd add is band conditions matter more than almost anything with the really rare ones. ive worked stuff on 100w that guys with full legal limit couldn't crack because i happened to catch a short grey line opening where my signal was just better positioned. patience across multiple operating sessions is probably worth more than any technique tbh.

i went through this exact same thing a few months ago lol. ended up getting the uv-5r because i wasnt sure if i'd stick with it and now im kind of wishing i just got something better from the start because i definitely got hooked. the baofeng works but i find myself annoyed at it pretty regularly. the squelch tail is weird and once i was trying to listen to a weak signal on a distant repeater and it was just kind of marginal the whole time. might just be me though

ran almost exactly that scenario last fall during our SET. had a 100ah dakota lithium and a 160w renogy panel. got maybe 5 hours decent sun and it was actually fine, but we had a really good site with southern exposure and I was babysitting the charge controller readout the whole time. the moment you lose that solar input you're just eating the battery. if theres any doubt about the site i'd honestly just throw the eu2200i in the truck and only run it if you need it. you dont have to have it running the whole time, just have it as the backup. half hour of generator time at the end of the day beats explaining to net control why your gateway is down also on the antenna side, what are you running? we had issues with the buddipole taking forever to set up and tune in the field, switched to a trap vertical and its so much faster even if the performance isnt quite as good on every band

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the storms we had last month i finally got serious about it. got a decent Pelican case from a garage sale and started throwing stuff in but now im second guessing basically everything i put in there. right now i have my Yaesu FT-60 HT, a spare battery pack, some coax, a mag mount antenna, copy of my license, and i threw in a little notepad and pens. also have a small DC-DC converter thing in there. my main question is what do people actually USE when things go sideways, like what have you pulled out of your kit that saved the day vs what just takes up space and you never touch. also not sure if i should be including anything for HF capability or if thats overkill for a basic go-kit. i do have a KX2 but it feels like a lot to drag along. anyway curious what setups people are running.

so i finally got out to a local state park last weekend for my first ever solo activation, K-2987 if anyone knows it, and overall it went okay i guess but i had a real hard time getting spotted and getting hunters to find me. i was running about 25 watts into a end-fed halfwave from my truck and calling CQ POTA on 40m around 14.250 no wait that's 20m sorry, i mean i was on both bands at different times. anyway the problem is i only made like 8 QSOs in about 90 minutes which i know the minimum is 10 so i didnt even qualify the park. i posted myself on the POTA spots website but i dont think i was doing it right because i never really saw any traffic come back to me after spotting myself. a buddy told me i should just text someone to spot me but that feels weird idk. is there a better way to do this or am i just missing something obvious here

nice one. yeah the spotting network is kind of essential, i tried doing an activation without getting spotted first and just called CQ into the void for like 20 minutes before i gave up and self spotted. lesson learned. also what EFHW design were you running? im trying to figure out what to bring for a hike-in activation next month, space and weight are a concern and im torn between the EFHW and just doing a vertical

Finally bit the bullet and drilled for an NMO mount on my Tacoma roof after years of using mag mounts. The difference is night and day! Getting consistent 1.2:1 SWR across both 2m and 70cm with my Diamond SG7900A, compared to the 1.8-2.0 range I was seeing with the mag mount. For those on the fence about permanent installation - the improved ground plane connection really makes a difference in both transmit efficiency and receive performance. Used a step drill bit as recommended and took my time with the weatherproofing. Better SWR across the bandsNoticeably improved signal reportsNo more worrying about the antenna sliding around

i did this exact swap last spring. went from an inverted V at about 40 feet to a hamstick-style vertical with like 16 radials and honestly i regret it a little. worked a few new ones on 40 but the noise floor went up noticeably and im in a pretty quiet rural area so i cant imagine what it'd be like in a subdivision. the trap vertical i had before that was even worse, felt like i was running barefoot half the time even at 100w. if i were doing it over id probably just try to get the dipole higher before scrapping it entirely. even getting from 35 to 50 feet makes a real difference in the pattern

i went vertical on 40 specifically because i had the same space problem and yeah it works but the noise is real. my s-meter sits about 2 s-units higher on the vertical vs my 80m dipole on a shared part of the band where i can compare them. for dx late at night when things quiet down it's fine but during the day forget it half the time. one thing nobody mentioned to me when i built mine — the radial count matters way more than length up to a point, i went from 4 radials to 16 and noticed an improvement, more than going from 16 to 32 later. if you do go vertical dont cheap out on the ground system

so i picked up a used FT-7900R a couple weeks ago and spent most of saturday getting it mounted in my F-150. ran the power leads straight to the battery with an inline fuse like everyone says to do, and i think i did that part right. the radio seems to work fine but im getting a weird buzz in the audio that kind of changes with engine RPM. like when i rev up the engine the pitch of the buzz goes up with it. its not terrible but its annoying enough that i notice it on every QSO. also the antenna situation is a bit of a mess right now. i just have a mag mount NMO stuck on the roof which is fine for now but i keep reading about doing a proper lip mount or drilling through the roof and honestly im not sure which way to go. the truck is still pretty new so i dont really want to drill if i can avoid it. anyone done a clean install without permanent holes? the mag mount works but i feel like im leaving performance on the table. oh and one more thing — is there a repeater directory somewhere that works well for road trips? im heading up through the midwest in about three weeks and want to have something useful loaded into the radio before i go.

Remember that legal doesn't always mean considerate - mode segments exist because different signals occupy the band differently, with narrow modes like CW needing less bandwidth than phone or image work. Always check your actual transmitted bandwidth, not just your carrier frequency.

If you're interested in emergency communications, having access to most HF bands is almost a necessity so you can pass or receive traffic depending on propagation at various times on each band. Getting General class is a must for emergency communications, and allows participation in global HF-based email systems like Winlink.

pretty much comes down to conditions and context. on a quiet 2m repeater where everyones coming in 5x5 you can just say your call normally and people will hear it fine. but if theres any noise, interference, weak signal, whatever, you drop into phonetics so theres no confusion between say M and N or B and D. those sound almost identical in a QSB fade. the non-standard phonetics thing is just old habit from some guys who learned before NATO got standardized or picked up regional variations. it works fine domestically but if youre ever doing any DX or working someone whos not a native English speaker the NATO set is way better because its designed so the key sounds survive bad audio. America vs Alpha isnt a huge deal on a local repeater but try it with a JA station on 20m and you might cause confusion. stick with standard and youll be fine, nobody thinks its weird, its actually more professional sounding tbh

Ham Alert is the one everyone at my club swears by for push notifications, its free and you can set it up to ping your phone when something you actually care about gets spotted. i only started using it a few weeks ago but already worked a couple new ones because of it also dont sleep on just having the DXwatch page open, its pretty lightweight and refreshes on its own. not glamorous but it works fine if youre just casually watching

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra exam. i dont really feel like i NEED it since i have most of the hf bands covered already, but the 20m and 40m extra portions are kind of tempting especially during contests when things get crowded. my main worry is the theory questions. i remember the general exam had some stuff about formulas and i kind of just memorized my way through it without really understanding what i was doing. from what i hear the extra has like... actual rf theory, filter design, transmission line stuff, antenna math. is it as rough as people make it sound or is it one of those things that looks worse from the outside? i took electronics in high school like 15 years ago so im not starting from zero but im definitely rusty. also does having the full privileges actually change how you operate day to day or is it more of a vanity thing at that point

I went through this exact same thing last year. ended up building a fan dipole with legs cut for both 40 and 80, hung it up as an inverted V and honestly it works better than i expected even at the low height. not a solution to your question really but if youre already committed to a dipole design the inverted V gets the center up higher and the ends drop down which changes the pattern a bit. might squeeze some more performance out of what you have before spending money on a vertical. just a thought

yeah same boat as you not long ago. what helped me was recording myself sending on the keyer and then playing it back. you hear all kinds of weird timing issues you dont notice in the moment. kind of brutal honestly but it works. also i read somewhere that 10-15 minutes a day is better than an hour once in a while, consistent short sessions really do add up faster than you'd think.

dont stress too much about it, the technician exam really isnt that bad once you actually sit down with the material. i used HamStudy.org and just did like 20-30 minutes a day for maybe 3 weeks and passed with a pretty comfortable margin. the thing about it is the actual question pool is public — you can literally study the exact questions that will be on the test, so theres no real surprises if you put the time in. the electrical theory stuff looks scarier than it is. theres really only a handful of ohms law type questions and if you can remember E=IR and maybe practice a couple examples you should be fine. i honestly skipped trying to deeply understand all of it and just learned enough to recognize the right answer and it worked out. some people will tell you thats the wrong approach and maybe they have a point but for just getting that first ticket it gets the job done. find a local club too if you can, a lot of them offer free test sessions and some even do free study sessions with an elmer walking you through stuff. ARRL website has a club finder. good luck, youll do fine

i had almost this exact same situation last year, ended up just keeping the dipole and raising it another 8 feet with a push-up mast from the hardware store. made a bigger difference than i expected honestly. the vertical idea kept nagging at me but the radial thing felt like too much work for maybe marginal improvement on a small lot that said i did work JA a couple times off the dipole so its not like its useless for DX, just takes patience and good conditions. also way quieter than my neighbors vertical which picks up every switching power supply on the block

22 feet for 40m inverted V is definitely on the low side but its not useless by any means. the inverted V compresses the radiation angle a bit compared to a flat top, which some people say hurts DX but honestly at that height neither configuration is doing great for low angle radiation anyway, you're mostly doing NVIS and regional stuff whether you like it or not. i ran an inverted V at similar height for probably three years before i got the apex up to 35 feet and the difference was noticeable but not dramatic. the bigger thing i noticed was the feedpoint impedance drops quite a bit on the inverted V compared to 50 ohm flat top, so your 1.4 SWR actually sounds like your balun and wire length are doing something right. the 120 degree angle is pretty good, some guys go way more droopy than that and then wonder why their SWR is all over the place. if you can get even 5 more feet on the apex itll help, but dont tear down what works just to chase another half dB.

our club is actually doing a carpool if you're not too far, we have a few seats. also i think there's a license exam session happening the same weekend at the venue which is kinda cool for newer folks. shoot me a message if the ride thing interests you

so ive been doing POTA for about a year and a half now and i keep seeing people mention WWFF in the same breath, sometimes people are logging for both at the same time which i didnt even know you could do. finally looked it up properly last week and found out theres a whole separate reference system for nature areas, national forests, wildlife refuges, that kind of thing. anyway i live pretty close to a national wildlife refuge that apparently has a WWFF reference assigned to it already, and im thinking about doing an activation there sometime this month. my question is mostly about the logging side of things - do i need to use a specific logger or can i just use whatever i normally use for POTA and upload separately? and is there a minimum contact count same as POTA or different? i know i should probably just read the rules on the website but the documentation is a little scattered and id rather hear from someone whos actually done it also curious if the pileups are similar or if WWFF spotting is a lot quieter. feels like every time i get spotted on pota the frequency turns into chaos for a few minutes which is fun but exhausting

so ive been putting off this install for like two months now and finally pulled the trigger on mounting my 2m/70cm dual band in the truck. got a yaesu ftm-400 and a diamond nmo mount on the roof, but im kinda stuck on the best way to get the coax inside without making a mess or letting water in. i found what looks like a factory rubber grommet near the firewall on the passenger side but its already pretty packed with factory wiring. didnt want to just shove the coax through and call it a day without asking around first. some guys at the club said to drill a new hole and use a pass-through grommet, others said just find an existing one and carefully work it through. truck is a 2019 f150 if that matters. also curious how people are handling the coax run inside the cab — under the carpet, along the door sill, or just zip tied under the dash somewhere? i want it to look somewhat clean but im not a professional installer by any means.

yeah those SRD relays are not really rated for RF switching at power, the contacts arent designed for it and youll get arcing especially if you ever switch under load which you absolutely should not do anyway but still. i fried a couple of those experimenting with a similar setup and at 500w on a linear im not even sure they'd survive a few switching cycles before the contacts get pitted. for HF antenna switching the usual go-to is vacuum relays or at least the hamfest special coax relays that are meant for it. that said for 100w casual use some people do get away with it for a while. just dont switch hot. ever. the arduino part sounds solid though, i did basically the same thing with a mega and a 8 channel relay board to sequence my amps and accessories and it works great for that kind of low voltage logic stuff. just be careful where you route the signal lines near the RF path or youll pick up noise in weird places.

After years of using trap yagis, I'm considering upgrading to either an interlaced design or going with separate monobands. Monoband Yagis are superior to all forms of trap, linear loaded or log-periodic antennas. My current setup is a 20/15/10m trap yagi on a 40-foot tower and while it works, I'm seeing some of the typical trap antenna issues. Hy-gain TH7dxx - 20/15/10 7ele trap Yagi - nearly useless - old-fashioned design - unreliable because of too many joints - inside the traps, steel set-screws are used with aluminium wire (and copper wire in the driven element traps), hence dis-similar metal corrosion. Poor front/back ratio. What's the consensus on Force 12 C3 vs separate monobands? Space allows for either approach but I need to justify the cost and complexity difference. Current performance issues: front/back ratio around 15dB (should be 20+ dB), narrow bandwidth requiring retuning between phone/CW, and trap heating at higher power levels.