Carlos Gutierrez

yeah the doppler thing gets everyone the first few times. what most people do manually is just pick a spot in the passband and retune the downlink to keep your own signal centered, then only touch the uplink occasionally. it kind of becomes second nature after a dozen passes or so. the 817 actually works reasonably well for sats, i ran one for a couple years before upgrading, but you're right that you basically have to work it manually unless you rig up something with rigctl or similar. the power thing is a real gotcha on linear birds. AO-73 especially -- the transponder is inverting so USB up means LSB down, and it runs on a budget power budget from the solar panels. everyone hammering it at 5 watts just compresses the whole thing and nobody can work anyone. 1 watt is usually plenty if your antenna is halfway decent and the pass is above like 20 degrees. once i started running 500mw i actually got cleaner reports than when i was running more power, which felt counterintuitive but makes sense when you understand how the AGC on those transponders behaves.

congrats man. i remember my first contact, i was shaking a little honestly. the general test isnt too bad if you already did tech, a lot of it overlaps. HF is a whole different world though, first time i heard a station in europe come back to me i just kind of sat there for a second before i remembered i had to actually respond

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about confirming contacts and i honestly dont fully understand the whole system. like i get that QSL cards are physical cards you send through the mail or through a bureau, and ive seen people post pictures of really cool ones online. but then theres LoTW which i think is run by the ARRL and eQSL which is a different thing? and they dont really talk to each other from what i can tell my elmer told me to just sign up for LoTW and not worry about the cards but then someone at the club meeting last week was saying eQSL is better for awards and someone else said the opposite. i tried logging into LoTW and the certificate setup process nearly broke my brain honestly do most people do all three or just pick one? is there a reason to bother with physical cards anymore or is that just an old tradition that people keep going because its nostalgic. i dont want to be rude to anyone who sends me a card but i also dont really know what to do with them or how to send my own

yeah 10 has been really good lately, flux in the upper 170s to low 180s is prime territory for that kind of thing. the general rule of thumb i use is once you're consistently above 150 or so you start seeing reliable F2 propagation on 10, and above 170 it can really open up worldwide. below 120 and 10 is usually pretty dead except for sporadic-E which is a whole different animal. the K index is more about geomagnetic stability — you want it low, ideally 2 or below. a high K index basically means the ionosphere is getting disturbed from solar wind activity and that messes with the higher bands especially. so you can have great flux but if K is sitting at 4 or 5 after a CME hit the earth things can still go sideways fast. the two numbers together tell you a lot more than either one alone. there are some good propagation prediction sites out there, DXmaps and the VE3SUN solar data page are ones i check pretty regularly.

yeah that's a pretty common situation actually — lots of areas have digipeaters that are just RF only with no igate function at all. the easiest way to check is go to aprs.fi and search for stations near you, then click on any digi you see and look at the station info. if it shows packets being gated to APRS-IS it'll usually have that in the comment field or you can look at its heard list. another thing i do is check findu.com, bit old school but you can search by callsign and see what stations have heard you and whether any of them are igates. also worth joining the local ham club mailing list or checking with whoever maintains the infrastructure in your area, sometimes the igate is there but running on a slightly different frequency or the person who runs it just hasnt updated the config in years and its basically dead. your path looks fine by the way, WIDE1-1 WIDE2-1 is the standard recommendation for most areas.

im kind of in the same boat as you, been FM sat for maybe a year and just started poking at linear transponders. the inverting transponder thing the previous guy mentioned took me forever to wrap my head around. i drew a little diagram to remind myself which way to turn the knob lol. also what antenna setup are you running? im using a pair of arrow yagis and hand tracking and i feel like im losing a ton of signal just from not being perfectly pointed during a low elevation pass

i just run N1MM for contests and keep my everyday logging in WSJT-X's own log then import to ADIF later, its not elegant but it works and i stopped stressing about integration. the UDP stuff between logging programs and WSJT-X can be finicky depending on firewall settings too, worth checking that if you havent already

yeah we ran basically this same kind of thing for a RACES drill last spring. ended up using an EFHW and it was honestly fine once we got it high enough — had a tree at maybe 25 feet at the far end and just did a sloper from the mast. 40m worked great, 80m was ehh but we made contacts. the genny thing is always the debate. we brought a Honda EU2200 mostly because the IC-7300 also had to share power with a laptop running Winlink and a small LED work light and it just made sense to not worry about it. if its only the radio you might be fine on battery alone like the other guy said. one thing i'd add is bring way more coax then you think you need lol. every single exercise ive done someone ends up needing to reroute something or the feedpoint ends up in a weird spot and you wish you had another 20 feet of RG-8X sitting in the bag

this is really inspiring actually, im pretty new (got my tech last year, general a few months ago) and ive been looking at the KX3 but the price is kind of a lot right now. didnt really know you could just... build one from scratch like that. is the Sudden design something that has instructions online or do you need to buy a book or something? also does 5 watts actually get you contacts reliably or is it kind of hit or miss

the repeat caller thing drives me nuts as a hunter too honestly, like we've all seen it. you just kind of learn which calls to recognize and skip lol. good job getting it done though, i've been putting off my first activation for like three months because i keep convincing myself my setup isn't ready enough which is dumb i know.

the band edge thing burned me when i first got my general too. i was so excited to finally get on phone that i just found a clear frequency around 7.298 and started calling CQ and someone came back to me and very politely said my audio was splattering past 7.300. never thought about it before but SSB takes up bandwidth, its not just one point on the dial i use the ARRL band plan PDF now and just keep it open on my phone when im not sure. its not perfect but at least it gives you a starting point for where people actually expect to find different modes and activities

okay so first off — Japan definitely counts, that's JA land and it's an entity for DXCC purposes, so nice work getting that in the log. you're already on your way without even knowing it haha. the short version is DXCC is about working 100 or more DXCC entities (most people just say countries even though technically thats not exactly right), WAS is working all 50 US states, and WAZ is working all 40 CQ zones around the world. WAZ is honestly the trickiest one because some zones are really hard to find active stations in — zone 2 for example will drive you crazy. for confirmation you really do need LoTW. i know it looks like a lot to set up but once you get your certificate from the ARRL and get it loaded into your logging software it's pretty much automatic. most of your FT8 contacts through WSJT-X will confirm there because a ton of the digital operators use it. paper QSL cards still work too but LoTW is just way easier for award tracking. just set aside an afternoon and get it done, seriously worth it. and yes you basically just keep logging and at some point when you hit the thresholds you apply through the ARRL. they have an online system now that checks your LoTW confirmations. it's actually not too bad once you understand whats happening under the hood.

so i've been putting off building a QRP rig for probably two years now, kept telling myself i'd do it when i had more time, more bench space, whatever excuse i could come up with. finally just sat down last weekend with a QCX Mini kit i'd had sitting in a box since like early last year and just... did it. took me most of saturday and a chunk of sunday morning to finish it up. first contact was a guy in ohio, im in vermont, and i was running maybe 4 or 5 watts into a random wire out my window. i just sat there for a second after the exchange because i could not believe that actually worked. like intellectually i knew QRP was a thing and people do it all the time but there's something different about actually doing it yourself on a rig you built from scratch. anyway i guess the point of this post is partly just to share that because it felt like a big deal to me, but also im curious what people are running for antennas when they go portable with QRP stuff. i want to take this thing out hiking this summer. i've seen people talk about EFHW setups and also just basic wire dipoles and i can't quite figure out which makes more sense when you're trying to keep weight down.

so ive been wanting to get my technician license for like a year now and i keep putting it off because every time i look at the question pool it just feels like a massive wall of information. theres stuff about electrical theory and regulations and operating procedures and propagation and i dont even know where to begin. someone at my local club told me to just memorize the answers and dont worry about understanding it but that feels wrong? like i want to actually know what im doing when i get on the air. does anyone have a method that actually worked for them, not just passing but like actually retaining stuff

I run a 9el DK7ZB on a rotator at my hilltop site and the difference compared to the omni I had before was pretty dramatic honestly. First time I actually worked a station in France on 2m SSB during a tropo opening — before that I was getting nothing beyond about 180km. The rotator question really is the key one though, you don't want a fixed yagi unless you've got a very specific path in mind. What coax are you running up there by the way? I ask because I spent months chasing antenna gain and it turned out my feedline loss was eating most of it. Had like 15m of RG58 and switching to Ecoflex 10 made more difference than changing antennas did.

field day next year, mark it on your calendar now and dont miss it. its not technically a contest in the traditional sense but it feels like one and its just a great way to get thrown into the deep end with a bunch of people around to help. most clubs are super welcoming for new operators during field day and you can literally just sit down next to someone and learn the whole log-hand-off rhythm before you ever have to call on your own. also 100 watts and a dipole is totally fine, i worked europe on CQ WW with less than that a few years ago. conditions matter way more than gear most of the time, especially on 15 and 10 when theyre open.

i had the exact same problem when i started. honestly what helped me was doing a few passes where i didnt even try to work anyone, just tuned around the passband and listened to figure out how the doppler felt in real time. the math makes sense on paper but your hands dont know what to do until youve done it a bunch of times. also make sure gpredict has a fresh keplerian data set — if your TLEs are more than a few days old the pass timing and peak elevation can be off enough to mess with your doppler prediction timing too

honestly for ragchewing 40m in the evenings the dipole is probably fine even at 30 feet. yeah its not ideal height, quarter wave would want you up around 33 feet anyway so youre close enough. the radiation angle will be higher than youd want for serious DX but for domestic and nearby stuff it works great. ive had a 40m dipole at 25 feet for years and work plenty of stuff, the feedline losses on a vertical with a marginal radial field can eat up whatever theoretical gain advantage it has pretty quick. that said if you can do the radials right — and i mean at least 30+ of them cut to quarter wave — the vertical will do better on the low angle DX stuff. just depends what matters more to you. sounds like the dipole fits your use case and its simpler to build and tune. just do it and get on the air, youll tweak later anyway

For QRP POTA work, wire is perfectly adequate and much lighter in the pack. I've used a wire vertical doublet on a 12m fiberglass mast with excellent DX results even on QRP. The bandwidth difference is negligible for single-band operation. Save the money and weight - go with wire.

FO-29 has been kind of hit or miss lately in terms of when its actually in linear mode vs FM beacon only, worth checking the AMSAT status pages before a pass or you'll sit there confused why you cant hear anything. AO-73 is more reliable for scheduled linear operation windows i think, its in amateur mode during eclipse periods which you can figure out from the keplerian data roughly. anyway yeah what the other guy said about the inverting transponder, once it clicks it clicks. i remember my first few passes i was basically fighting myself the whole time and never made a contact. then one evening something just made sense and it got way easier. dont get discouraged if the first few passes feel chaotic

oh man i totally missed it, i was stuck at work. my luck is terrible with this stuff. i keep meaning to set up some kind of alert on my phone when the bands open up but i never actually do it. does anyone use a specific app for that or just check pskreporter and hope for the best? also re: the ic-905 update i saw someone mention it on reddit but couldnt find the actual changelog anywhere

just going to throw this out there -- have you tried just jumping on the air at speeds that scare you a little? i know that sounds backwards but i was in the same boat and what actually pushed me through was tuning into the CWT sprints on Wednesday evenings and just trying to copy whatever i could even if i missed half of it. you dont have to transmit, just listen. your brain starts adapting to real signals way faster than computer-generated tones and honestly the contest exchanges are short enough that even a beginner can grab callsigns and signal reports if you stick at it. took me maybe three or four sessions before i noticed i was keeping up with stuff i would have totally lost before

yeah what the other guy said, also just worth knowing that 40m can get pretty crowded especially in the evenings and a lot of the lower end gets taken over by dx and some of the higher frequencies get busy with stateside ragchewing so just spin the dial and listen for a bit before you transmit, youll get a feel for it pretty quick. i remember being totally lost on this stuff when i upgraded too

yeah what he said. honestly on FM repeaters most people dont bother with phonetics unless theyre having trouble being understood or copying someone. HF is totally different though, especially on like 20 or 40 meters when theres a pileup happening. ive heard operators use really weird phonetics that arent NATO at all — like "papa" gets swapped for "Portugal" sometimes because it punches through static better or something idk. theres kind of a loose culture around it the one situation where i'd say you definitely should use phonetics is when youre giving your callsign to someone who needs to write it down and copy is rough. other than that its just... whatever works

nah you're not weird at all, i do the same thing on 75m sometimes late at night. theres this one net that runs around 3.890 or so and half the time its just old timers talking about their gardens and what they had for dinner and i just leave it on in the background while im doing other stuff around the shack. its good company honestly especially in the winter when its dark by like 5pm and you dont want to go outside