Ashley Johnson

so ive been running APRS for a few months now, mostly just vehicle tracking with a Mobilinkd TNC hooked to my FT-65 and an old android phone running APRSdroid. works okay but i keep reading about path settings and honestly im more confused now than before i started reading about it. right now im just running WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which is what someone at the club told me to set and it seems to get me into the network but i see some guys running just WIDE2-1 and others running WIDE1-1 only and i dont really understand when you'd use one vs the other. is WIDE1-1 just for hitting fill-in digis or what? and does it actually matter that much if youre in a decent coverage area? also side question -- is there a good way to see if your packets are actually getting digipeated correctly or am i just supposed to trust aprs.fi and hope for the best

congrats on passing! so the sequential thing basically means the FCC just assigns you the next available callsign in your call district based on your mailing address. you dont get to pick it, it just comes out of whatever pool they have left. for tech class in most districts youre looking at a 2x3 format, meaning two letters, a number, three letters like KD9XYZ or whatever. the timing varies but these days its usually showing up within a week, sometimes faster. just keep checking the ULS license search, it'll pop up. as for vanity calls, yeah thats totally separate. once you have your initial callsign and its in the system you can apply for a vanity call through the FCC. theres a 30 day window process where you put in your preferred call and if nobody with higher priority applies for the same one you get it. higher priority just means like, if youre applying for a call that belonged to a deceased ham, their family gets first shot at it for a while. its not something you have to rush into, take your time and figure out what call you actually want before applying.

yeah that gap between training and actual deployment is real. i've been doing ARES stuff for about 12 years and i still notice it every time, there's just something about real stakes even low stakes like a festival that changes how your brain works. the good news is it gets more comfortable after a few activations and eventually the procedural stuff becomes kind of automatic so you have more mental bandwidth for the actual situational stuff. the dead spot issue near high RF environments like a stage with a bunch of lighting rigs and sound equipment is pretty common, sometimes a quick change to a different simplex frequency helps if you're getting intermod, other times you just have to physically move. glad your net control was solid, that makes a huge difference especially for newer folks.

yeah 10m has been doing things I havent seen since the last solar max, honestly. worked Japan twice last week on just 100 watts and a dipole up maybe 25 feet. my wife thinks ive lost my mind because i keep running to the shack every time the cluster starts pinging. re: the Icom thing, i think youre talking about the IC-705 successor rumors? or maybe something different, theres been a lot of speculation floating around. I wouldnt put too much stock in Facebook group stuff until theres an official press release or someone actually handles one at a show. Hamvention is coming up and thats usually where stuff gets announced properly. that said if they do a smaller HF rig with built-in tuner at a decent price point ill be first in line probably.

yeah doppler on a linear transponder confused the heck out of me too when i first started. the way i do it now — i lock my uplink frequency and only chase on the downlink. the idea is you pick a spot in the passband and stay there, so other stations can find you. if you're moving both vfos you're kind of all over the place and it gets messy. gpredict is great but real time doppler correction is the way to go if your radio supports CAT control, i run mine through a laptop and it makes a huge difference, basically hands free tuning. 2 to 2.5 watts should honestly be fine for a decent elevation pass, people work these birds with less. if you're not hearing yourself in the passband thats the first thing to sort out before you call anyone — you gotta hear your own downlink echo before you can really operate effectively. the delay is tiny but its there and it tells you your signal is actually getting in.

the phone logging thing bugs me too but i've been using hamlog on my iPhone for POTA stuff and its actually not terrible once you get used to it. still prefer paper on a summit though, less stuff to go wrong. congrats on the activation, 4 contacts on a kinked wire is pretty solid honestly

yeah what he said about just jumping in. i remember being in the same spot a couple years ago and honestly field day was what got me hooked even though our club setup was also kind of a disaster lol. the thing about field day is its really more of a club operating event than a pure contest anyway, its designed to practice emergency communication setups so the chaos is kind of the point. for upcoming stuff i'd also keep an eye on the ARRL Sweepstakes, thats a really fun one for working all the different sections across north america. different vibe from CQ WW which is very DX focused. and if you get into SOTA at some point, even just chasing from home counts and you can pick up a lot of quick contacts that way, the activators are always happy to get in the log

congrats on passing general. so the vanity system is actually not too bad once you understand the basics. the 2 year thing you heard — thats for the callsign to be released after a silent key, yeah, though there are some nuances with whether the family has requested it be held or whatever. AE7Q is just a really useful third party site that tracks callsign availability and lets you see when a call is expected to become available, its not an official FCC thing but practically everyone uses it. as for license class, yes it absolutely matters. 1x2 callsigns (like W1AB format) are only available to Extra class licensees in most cases. as a General you'd typically be looking at 1x3 formats or 2x3. there are some exceptions depending on your call district and whats available but generally speaking you wont be able to snag a 1x2 until you upgrade. the application itself goes through the FCC ULS directly, you fill out a 605 form and submit it, and you can list multiple preferred callsigns in order of preference. some people use a service like W5YI or similar to help submit but its honestly not that complicated to do yourself once you know what youre doing.

This is super helpful - I was about to sort mine alphabetically by country! So any order is fine as long as the record sheet matches the physical card order? What about grouping multiple QSOs from the same entity together?

the ALC jumping is almost certainly your problem. that is the number one killer for VARA sessions and most people dont realize it because the radio sounds fine for voice. for digital modes especially VARA HF you really want that ALC meter barely moving if at all. what you need to do is go into IC-7300 menu and find the data mod level settings, then back off your audio drive until the ALC is basically flatlined. you might end up running way less power than you think — sometimes 20-30 watts is plenty and youre actually getting cleaner signal than at 80 watts with ALC pumping. also check your USB audio sample rate, the 7300 can be finicky about that. make sure its set to 48000hz on both ends. and yeah PTT timing — i had mine at default too and it was clipping the start of my transmissions. bumped the lead-in to 500ms and it helped a lot. the gateway has to hear your preamble cleanly or it just bails on the session.

welcome to the hobby. the baofeng thing is fine for getting started on repeaters but if you get the itch for HF its a whole different world. whats your setup looking like going forward, you thinking about upgrading the license

yeah the inverted-V thing is real, the closer those legs get to horizontal the more it shifts. at 30 degrees from horizontal you're going to see a noticeable drop, some people use a correction factor around 0.95 or so instead of the standard 468 constant when theyre doing an inverted-V, so maybe try 444/f and see where that lands you. trees being close will also load it and pull the resonance down a bit, electrically they kinda look like a lossy ground plane hovering near your wire which isn't ideal but its not a disaster either. as for the tuner question — honestly if you got a decent choke balun on there and the swr isnt like 5:1 or something wild, the built-in tuner is fine for casual use. but if you want to really understand what the antenna is doing, trimming it to resonance first teaches you a lot more and you'll have a better sense of its actual bandwidth. i'd trim it. takes like 20 minutes and you'll feel better about it.

so we have a county ARES drill coming up saturday and im trying to figure out the best way to power everything without dragging a huge generator out there. the EOC wants us to set up a portable station that can run for at least 6 hours, maybe more if things go long, and we need to cover 2m, 70cm, and some HF capability probably on 40m for the regional net. right now i have a 100ah lithium battery (the bioenno 100ah one) and a 30amp powerwerx supply if we do end up using generator power. my main concern is that if someone brings a cheap generator the rf noise is going to trash everything. had that happen at a field day a couple years back where some guy showed up with a harbor freight special and we couldnt hear anything on 40 below like S7 noise. on the antenna side i was thinking a buddipole for HF and maybe a jpole up on a painter pole for the vhf/uhf side. anyone run that combo for emcomm stuff? the buddipole feels a little fiddly to me but its what i have. also wondering if a linked dipole might be easier to deploy fast since theres usually not a lot of time to tune things in a real activation. any thoughts on the generator noise thing especially, thats the part im most worried about

The IC-7300 has a great feature set and very good performance. A zillion have been sold so there's a broad user base who can help you if you have problems. Right now there's an Icom factory coupon bringing it down to $1100, plus a $100 rebate, so great timing! For 100W rigs you'll be fine with 120V - only need 240V for legal limit amplifiers.

the hurry up and wait thing is SO real and I don't think anyone warns you about it enough. I've been with our ARES group for going on 11 years now and activations are honestly 80% sitting around staying ready and 20% actual comms work. the mental part of staying alert when nothing is happening is kind of its own skill. on the go-bag stuff - after my second or third activation I basically made a laminated checklist that I go through the night before any deployment, even drills. batteries topped off, spare batteries in the bag, paper log sheets (plural, learned that one the hard way), pens that actually work, snacks, the whole deal. sounds overkill but you do it enough times it becomes second nature. your EC sounds like a good one if they were patient with you on the prowords, some of the older guys can be a bit sharp about that stuff.

congrats on the first one, 4 contacts counts and you're in the log. honestly my first few activations were pretty rough too so dont be discouraged. for wind, the thing that helped me most was guying the pole. i use three pieces of paracord about 15 feet each, tie them to the pole maybe 3/4 of the way up and stake them out with tent stakes. takes maybe 5 extra minutes but the difference is huge, pole stays rock solid even in pretty serious gusts. i also carry a small sandbag thing i made that i can hang from the base of the pole to add weight at the bottom. as for spotting, i use SOTLAS on my phone mostly, its got a really clean interface and the map view is nice for seeing whos on what summit. SOTA Goat works great too, a lot of the chasers use it to see incoming spots. the key is you gotta spot yourself before you start calling CQ otherwise nobody knows youre up there and you're just yelling into the void basically. i usually spot, wait about 90 seconds, then start calling. and yeah most serious activators run QRP, the 818 at 5 watts is super common. some people do bring a bigger rig for harder summits where they need more points or want to make sure they get the 4 contacts in bad conditions, but honestly QRP works fine if the antenna is decent and you're spotted properly.

PSK31 still does it for me when i want an actual qso, the waterfall on a good evening is just full of signals and you can have a real conversation at something approaching normal typing speed. i know its not quite the weak signal monster that FT8 is but honestly for stateside contacts its plenty sensitive and way more interactive. just throwing that out there since nobody talks about PSK31 anymore and it kind of makes me sad lol

yeah i was confused about the same thing when i upgraded. the band edge thing bit me once, i was running 7.298 USB and got a note from someone saying my signal was splashing above 7.300. wasnt intentional at all, just didnt think about the sideband extending past where the dial says. lesson learned i guess

so i've been keeping an eye on 10 meters for a few weeks now and honestly the last couple days have been something else. worked Japan twice this morning just sitting at my desk with a 100 watt radio and a wire dipole thats barely 20 feet up. like i know we're near solar max or whatever but it really hit different today seeing JA and VK stations coming through so strong. also heard someone mention on 75m roundtable last night that there might be a new Yaesu HF radio announcement coming soon? something mid-range priced, not the FTDX10 tier but above the FT-891 maybe. nobody seemed to know much, could be total rumor. has anyone seen anything legit about that? trying to decide if i should wait or just pull the trigger on a used radio i found locally. anyway if you havent been on 10m recently, seriously get on there. even my crummy little setup is making contacts i wouldnt believe six months ago.

Consider trying APRS TNC Web - it's a lightweight, Docker-powered web application that gives you a clean, modern interface to interact with APRS traffic using any KISS-compatible TNC. It might help you troubleshoot whether the issue is with Direwolf or the TNC configuration itself.

this is making me want to actually join my local ARES group, i keep meaning to but havent gotten around to it. the power inverter thing is exactly the kind of stuff i would not have thought to test beforehand. do most groups do these SET exercises once a year or more often than that? i feel like once a year wouldn't really be enough to build muscle memory for this stuff.

the WA7BNM calendar is what everyone uses yeah. also the ARRL website has a decent list though it doesnt cover everything especially the smaller regional stuff i did my first SOTA activation last spring and its a completely diffrent vibe from contesting, much more relaxed, you hike up a hill and set up a portable station and people are genuinely happy just to make contact with you. if you do it during a contest like CQ WW or even just a slow Sunday you can sometimes rack up contacts pretty quick. the SOTA chasers are dedicated and theyll be watching the spots for you one thing nobody told me when i started was that ARRL Sweepstakes is really good for learning contesting too, its all domestic which means youre dealing with less of the crazy pile up situation and the exchange is a bit more involved so you actually have to think a little, builds good habits

New General class ham setting up my first HF station in a spare bedroom. New ham here. Trying to get my HF station set up and have a grounding question. I have tried to research things as much as I can but am stuck on the shack/RF grounding. My coax comes in through the wall about 50 feet from where my equipment sits. I understand I need both safety grounding and RF grounding but I'm confused about implementation. Do I need a separate ground rod outside the shack, or can I run heavy copper wire back to my antenna entrance point? All station equipment needs to be RF grounded to an external ground rod, bonded to each other, and bonded to the house ground. Without good RF grounding, you're going to get hum, noise, hash and other unwanted problems in your equipment and in your radio signals. My rig is an IC-7300 with an LDG tuner and Astron 30A supply.

yeah the EchoLink question is a different thing entirely really. i mean you could run both but theyre kind of solving different problems. EchoLink and IRLP are for voice linking into the repeater network, whereas what youre doing with RemoteHams is controlling your actual HF station. i use AllStarLink on a separate node at the same QTH as my remote rig and they dont really interfere with each other, just runs on a little raspberry pi. handy for checking into the local 2m net when im traveling without hauling a radio.

the mic gain vs compression thing is one of those debates that never really settles but here's what i've found after running a lot of different rigs — you want the mic gain set so your ALC is just barely moving on voice peaks, like not pegged, not dead still, just kind of tapping the top. then if you want more punch you add compression carefully. on the 7300 i run the compressor around 5-6, any more than that and it starts sounding processed and weird. TX bandwidth is actually a bigger deal than most people think. running 2.4 kHz vs 2.8 kHz might not seem like much but narrower cuts some of that low rumble that can make you sound muddy and actually improves readability in noise even if it sounds worse on a wideband monitor. for pileup work i usually drop down a bit, for rag chewing i open it back up. as for the mic, yeah a different mic can genuinely help but its not magic. a Heil PR-781 or even just a cheap headset with a decent element will be more consistent than a stock desk mic just because of how you hold your head relative to it. but honestly fix the settings first before spending money.