Ashley Johnson

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and figured id just ask. my backyard situation is not great - i can get maybe 65 feet end to end if im lucky, which obviously isnt going to cut it for a full size 80m dipole. ive got a decent 40m dipole up right now, inverted-V off a 35 foot mast, works pretty well for what it is. the question is whether i add a second set of elements and make it a fan dipole for 80, or just go with loading coils mid-element to shorten the 80m legs. ive read a bunch of stuff saying the fan dipole is more efficient because youre not losig anything to a coil, but the coil option seems a lot simpler to actually build and get up in the air. my current feedline is already routed and i really dont want to re-do all that. anyone actually run both and have opinions? or is this one of those things where the difference is basically unnoticeable in practice and im overthinking it

one thing that tripped me up for a while was thinking I had to be in the Winlink RMS list to do anything. you dont. also double check your callsign is registered on the Winlink.org site before you do anything else, the system will just reject you if its not and the error messages are not helpful at all about telling you why.

So i finally worked up the nerve to check into a local 2m net last tuesday and honestly it went okay but i wasnt totally sure what to do when the net control station called on me. I just said my callsign and said i had no traffic and passed back to net control. Is that right? Nobody seemed annoyed so i think it was okay but i want to make sure im doing it properly before i become a regular. Also there was a moment where two people were talking at the same time and created this horrible squeal and net control had to sort it out. Is that just something that happens or did someone mess up? I didnt want to key up until i was sure nobody else was transmitting so i waited probably longer than i needed to. Felt awkward sitting there in silence counting in my head lol. Anyway just looking for some guidance on net etiquette. The guys on the net seemed friendly enough but i didnt want to bug them with dumb questions after the net closed.

yeah the spot expiring thing tripped me up my first few times too. i think i re-spot myself at least once mid activation now just out of habit, sometimes you get a second wave of hunters coming in after a re-spot which is nice when things get quiet. also 10 contacts in 35 minutes on your first time out with a KX2 and a wire is honestly really solid, some parks are way harder depending on location and noise. i did one activation at a park near some industrial area and barely scraped together my 10, the noise floor was brutal. you picked a good one to start with it sounds like

yeah same callsign different bands totally counts separately, learned that after my second activation when i was confused about my QSO count too. the website dashboard breaks it all down once the log processes which usually takes a day or so. also just wanna say K-4857 is on my list to hunt, never heard anyone from there. might try to catch you if you go back out there

i just took mine like two months ago so still pretty fresh in my memory. the exam wasnt as bad as i built it up to be in my head. i used the gordon west book plus hamstudy and that combo worked really well for me, the book explains the why behind things which i found helped stuff stick better than just flash cards alone the part that actually tripped me up was some of the band plan stuff and knowing which portions of each band techs vs generals vs extras can use, so maybe pay extra attention to that because there were more questions on it than i expected. good luck with it

so we have a countywide ARES exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and im trying to nail down the power setup before then. last year we ran a honda eu2200i and it was fine but we had it maybe 40 feet from the operating position which honestly was a pain for cable runs and a couple guys complained about the noise bleeding into audio. wasnt terrible but noticeable. this year im thinking about going hybrid — start with a 100ah lifepo4 battery for the first few hours and then run the generator to top it off as needed rather than running it continuously. we're planning to run two IC-7300s, a dstar node, and some packet stuff so the load is real, not just one HT. figured the inverter run time on the battery alone probably wont cut it for a 12 hour exercise but maybe if the generator cycles on for an hour or two here and there it works out okay. also doing a portable dipole situation on a 31 foot jackite pole and maybe a second antenna on a different mast for VHF/UHF work. the question is whether that pole is gonna hold up to anything more than about 10-15 mph wind gusts without guying it. anyone actually done this for extended ops? ive seen people skip the guy wires and just hope for the best and ive seen others rig up a full three point guy system even for short poles like that. any thoughts appreciated, especially if youve done similar load setups in the field

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, took me forever to actually get off my butt and do it after chasing summits for like 6 months. went up W4T/SU-001 which isnt the hardest hike in the world but still felt good to finally be on the other side of it. brought my KX2 and a 20m EFHW wire, just threw it up in a tree near the summit and started calling CQ SOTA on 14.285 and had a pile up within maybe 3 minutes which honestly caught me off guard the contacts were great and i hit the 4 QSO minimum easy, ended up with like 22 contacts including a couple S2S which were really cool. logged on paper and transferred to SOTAwatch later that night my questions are kind of dumb but here goes -- do i need to be exactly on the summit or just within the activation zone (i was definitely within 25m vertical but not right on the top)? and also i saw some activators post their spot before they even start, how do they do that if theres no cell service? is everyone just using satellite or something? and does 2m fm count the same as HF for points, i have a little handheld i brought just in case

yeah that sounds about right honestly. my first real activation was a wildfire thing maybe six years ago and i remember thinking i was going to be super useful and then spending four hours basically just monitoring a frequency and logging check-ins. which is actually exactly what they needed but it felt so anticlimactic compared to the exercises lol. the waiting is real, and then when traffic does pick up your brain kind of goes into overdrive trying to keep up. sounds like you did fine though, the fact that the EM was satisfied is genuinely the benchmark. a lot of new folks overthink the format stuff, consistency matters more than perfection in a real event.

the direct sampling mode on the v3 dongles is honestly pretty impressive for what it costs but yeah once youve heard a proper HF receiver even a cheap one you cant go back. i went RSP1B route and dont regret it. SDR++ is the right call, SDRuno works but its heavier than it needs to be for just monitoring

yeah WWFF and SOTA are totally different beasts, i mixed them up at first too. WWFF you dont have to climb anything which my knees appreciate lol. i do mostly parks on the air but ive been doing more WWFF lately because theres a ton of references near me that have barely been activated, like single digits on the counter, so its kinda fun to be the one getting them on the map. one thing i'd suggest is next time post your activation to the WWFF spotting net ahead of time if you can, even just the day before. you'll get way more chasers tuning in when they know somebodys going to be there. i went from struggling to get 20 contacts to pulling 60+ just by doing that. also 40m was a solid choice, i find 20m gets me more dx chasers from europe which is fun but 40m fills the log faster domestically

dont stress too much about it honestly. i messed this up constantly my first year. one thing that helped me was just listening to how other people handled it before jumping in. and if someones copying your callsign for a log or something like in a net, always phonetic it, full stop. saves so much back and forth

went last year with a buddy from the club and honestly it was alright, not huge but there were a few good tables. somebody was selling a whole stack of old Ten-Tec stuff and i almost grabbed a Corsair II but my wife would have killed me lol. the club also does a VE session in the afternoon which is nice if you got people who need to test. parking was kind of a mess though so get there early

so ive been running SSB for a few years now mostly on 40m and 20m and i feel like my audio has always been kind of mediocre. people never complain exactly but i never get those unsolicited comments like 'great audio' that i hear some guys get. been using an IC-7300 with the stock mic and just now starting to wonder if thats the whole problem or if theres more to it. someone on the air last week told me to check my ALC and make sure its not pinning, which i honestly hadnt thought about much. i looked it up and yeah i think i was driving it too hard. but beyond that i dont really know what else to look at. compression settings? the mic itself? EQ? i have no idea where to start and theres so much conflicting advice out there about this stuff. what actually moves the needle for SSB audio in your experience, not just theoretically but stuff you actually tried and noticed a difference

im kind of in the same boat as you tbh, been working on it for a few weeks now. the thing that helped me click was just listening to actual on-air cw, like tune around 7.050 or so slow speed stuff and just try to catch a letter here and there. you wont understand anything at first but your ear starts getting used to the rhythm. also theres a thing called the CW Academy through the ARRL i think, havent done it myself but a guy at my club swears by it, says its structured and you practice with actual people which sounds way better than just staring at an app by yourself

yeah what he said about the ALC is spot on. i had the same issue when i first got my 7300 and spent like two weeks thinking it was a hardware problem before someone told me to just back off the mic gain. feels counterintuitive but the radio really doesnt need much input to drive it properly. one other thing worth trying if you havent already — get someone to give you an honest signal report while you monitor yourself on a second receiver or even a websdr. hearing yourself is kind of eye opening. i caught that i was way too close to the mic and also my room has a lot of bass resonance which was making everything worse. small stuff but it adds up on SSB.

so ive been noticing 10m and 12m doing some interesting things over the past few weeks and im not sure if im reading too much into it or if we're actually starting to see some real solar cycle 25 action. had a few contacts into europe on 10m last tuesday around midday and i wasnt even really trying, just had the radio on while i was doing other stuff and the DX cluster started lighting up. checked the solar flux and it was sitting around 170 which isnt crazy high but definitely not bad. thing is, the very next day conditions were garbage. like completely dead. same time of day, same antenna, nothing. i know propagation can be unpredictable but man the swings have been something else lately. anyone else seeing this or is it a regional thing? im in the midwest so my path to europe is probably different than you guys on the east coast. also been hearing some stuff about a geomagnetic disturbance messing things up around that time, maybe thats what killed it the second day. either way im cautiously optimistic about where we're headed with the solar cycle. my old elmers always talked about how crazy 10m gets at solar max and i feel like im finally starting to see what they meant. curious what others are experiencing on the higher HF bands right now.

so ive been grinding through morse code practice for about 3 months now and im stuck somewhere around 10-12wpm and it feels like a wall. started with the Koch method back in january using the G4FON trainer and got through all the characters pretty quick but now the speed just wont budge. i practice maybe 20-30 minutes a day which i know some people say isnt enough but thats honestly all i can squeeze in with work and everything. my biggest problem is i still catch myself trying to count dits and dahs sometimes, especially under pressure or when im tired, and i know thats the wrong approach but breaking that habit is harder than i expected. someone at my club told me i just need to listen to faster code even if i cant copy it yet and that would help my brain adapt. has anyone actually done that and did it work or is that just something people say curious how long it realistically took other people to get to 20wpm and what actually helped. im not in a huge rush, just want to actually use cw on the air eventually

yeah the pileup thing catches everyone off guard the first time someone spots you on the logger. i basically froze for like 30 seconds the first time it happened to me lol. just keep your exchanges short and youll get through it, people chasing WWFF are usually pretty patient compared to some contest crowds ive dealt with i dont know much about the dual reference stuff but wanted to say the random wire in a tree setup is underrated for these activations, ive had great luck with that same kind of thing. what band were you mostly on?

So I finally got activated for a real event last weekend, not just a drill. There was a pretty bad storm system that knocked out power across a few counties and our EC called everyone in to help staff the Red Cross shelter and provide comms backup for the EOC since their main repeater was having issues with the backup generator or something, I wasnt totally clear on the details. Anyway I've been a member of our local ARES group for about 8 months now and done maybe 3 or 4 training nets plus the ARRL SET last fall, but this was completely different. Like even just showing up and not knowing exactly where to stand or who to report to was kind of awkward. My EC was great but he was obviously pulling in a lot of directions at once. I ended up on HF doing some traffic to a neighboring county group which was actually cool because I dont do much HF normally, mostly just 2m/70cm stuff. But I felt pretty useless for the first hour or so just kind of sitting there waiting to be told what to do. Is that normal for a first activation? I kept second guessing whether I should jump in or just wait. Would love to hear how other people handled their first real deployment, whether it was a shelter gig or something else. Also wondering if there's stuff I could be doing now to feel more prepared for next time.

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for the past few weeks trying to get it to control my 6-position antenna switch automatically based on what band the radio is on. the radio is an IC-7300 so it puts out band data on the ACC port which is great, at least in theory. i got the band voltage decode working mostly fine, like i can read the voltages and map them to bands no problem, but where im running into trouble is the relay switching. im using a 12v relay board i grabbed off amazon and the thing is introducing all kinds of noise on receive. like S2-S3 worth of noise on 40m especially. i tried adding some bypass caps on the relay coil but didnt really help much. im wondering if maybe the relay board itself is just garbage or if theres something else going on. also thinking about adding a raspberry pi in there somewhere to log which antenna was active at what time for the contest logs but that feels like overengineering it at this point. anyone else gone down this rabbit hole

so i've been wanting to build something from scratch for a while now and i finally sat down over the last couple weekends and put together a direct conversion receiver for 40m. followed the basic NE602 plus LM386 audio amp design, nothing fancy, got the parts from mouser and a couple caps and resistors from my junk box. it actually works which honestly surprised me a little. im hearing SSB stations and CW and the audio is decent through a pair of headphones. BUT theres this really annoying hum, not sure if its 60hz or a harmonic of it, and it seems worse when i touch the coax or get close to the board. i built it on manhattan style pads on a piece of copper clad and the layout is kind of a mess if im honest. also the LO is leaking into the antenna port i think because i can hear myself on another radio nearby when i tune around. before i start adding a second stage or anything i want to sort out these basics. is the hum most likely a grounding issue or should i just box it up and see if that helps. and is LO leakage just something you live with on a simple design like this or is there a buffer stage i should add between the oscillator and the mixer.

so its one of those nights where i dont really feel like transmitting, just got the radio on in the background while im doing stuff around the house. 40m has been pretty decent lately, hearing some DX i normally wouldnt catch this time of year. caught a station out of eastern europe earlier that was coming in really clean around 7.150 or so. anyway just figured id post something, the bands been interesting this week with the solar flux doing whatever its doing. anyone else just kind of passively monitoring tonight or am i the only one who does this

40m can be tricky during the day depending on where the gateways are relative to you, skip zone and all that. i had similar problems and ended up switching to 80m in the afternoons when nothing on 40 would connect. once i actually got a complete session i could see what a good connection looked like and work backwards from there to troubleshoot the bad ones. one other thing - are you running any other software that might be grabbing the audio device at the same time? had a guy in our club spend three days on this exact issue and it turned out fldigi was still holding the soundcard even though it wasnt open. just something to check.

im in almost the exact same situation, built a 602 based direct conversion for 20m a couple months ago. the hiss drove me crazy too. what helped me was keeping the gain jumper off pins 1 and 8 entirely and just using the 386 in its default low gain config, then adding a separate preamp before it. sounds counterintuitive but the hiss dropped a lot. also make sure you have that 0.047uf cap on the output to ground right at the chip, mine was oscillating at like 400khz and i couldnt figure out why things sounded weird until i put a scope on it