Carlos Gutierrez

yeah i ran into the exact same thing a while back. what i ended up doing was just accepting N1MM as my contest logger and Log4OM for everything else and writing a little import routine so after each contest i clean up the N1MM adif export and pull it into Log4OM manually. takes maybe 10 minutes after a big contest and honestly it's not that bad once you get the workflow down. the timestamps have never been a problem for me doing it that way. the WSJT-X thing is more annoying tbh. i have it set to auto-log to a dedicated adif file and i import that into Log4OM every few days. dupes show up but Log4OM flags them so i just skip and move on. not perfect but it works. i dont think theres really one program that does all three things well, N1MM is a contest machine but for casual logging it feels like driving a semi to the grocery store

dont overlook the band data from the CAT port if you havent already, way cleaner than trying to read analog voltages. i poll mine over serial every 500ms or so and just parse the frequency out of the FA; response, then my sketch maps frequency ranges to antenna positions. no analog noise to deal with at all took me an afternoon to get the serial parsing working right but once it did it was rock solid. only gotcha is you gotta make sure the baud rate matches what the radio is set to, i think the 991 defaults to 38400 but double check that

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly im starting to feel like i need a spreadsheet just to keep track of what any of it means. from what i can tell DXCC is about working 100 countries (entities i guess they call them), WAS is working all 50 states, and WAZ is zones? but like how many zones are there even and how do you know what zone youre in vs what zone youre working into. anyway my real question is just — for someone running about 100 watts into a dipole in a suburban backyard, is there a logical order to go after these? like should i even bother thinking about DXCC until i have WAS done or does it not matter. ive been logging with WSJT-X on FT8 mostly and i think im up to like 38 states and maybe 60-something entities but i have no idea if any of those actually count toward anything official until i go through the confirmation process which also confuses me a bit with LoTW vs paper QSL cards. sorry for the long post, just trying to figure out how this whole award chasing thing actually works before i start spending money on confirmations i might not need

CI-V on arduino is totally doable, i use a nano for my shack automation and have it talking to a kenwood but same general idea. one gotcha — make sure youre using SoftwareSerial for the CI-V side and keeping hardware serial free for debugging, otherwise you cant see whats happening and troubleshooting is a nightmare. just a tip that saved me a ton of time early on.

yeah the flux number alone will drive you crazy if thats all you watch. the K index is huge — anything above 3 or 4 and the higher bands basically fall apart even if flux looks great. geomagnetic storms mess with propagation way more than people realize when theyre first getting into DX chasing. what i actually use day to day is a combo of pskreporter to see whos hearing what in real time, and dxmaps for the cluster spots filtered by band. that tells me way more than any forecast. if im seeing spots from JA to the east coast on 15m i just get on. you can also check the solar terrestrial dispatch site for a more detailed breakdown but honestly after a few months of watching the patterns you start to get a feel for it. the late afternoon greyline is almost always worth sitting on 17m for even on mediocre days.

nice, im jealous. ive been meaning to do my first activation for months now but i keep talking myself out of it because i dont have a good portable antenna sorted yet. what kind of random wire length did you end up using? im trying to figure out if i should just build something or grab one of those end fed things everyone seems to use for POTA.

I went last year for the first time and honestly wasnt sure what to expect but it was pretty fun. didnt buy anything but just walking around talking to people was cool. there was a guy with a whole table of old Collins gear that i had no idea what to do with but it looked impressive. our club had a table there too so i ended up just hanging around that most of the morning

the ALC thing is probably real, not your imagination. when the radio is in the stock configuration icom limits more than just frequency in firmware — there are some drive and power curve adjustments that go along with the region settings. once you pull those diodes the radio is basically operating in a less constrained mode and the ALC attack/release timing can behave a little differently especially at the band edges. its not a defect its just that icom tuned things conservatively for the consumer market and the mod basically takes the training wheels off a little. if your linear is happy and youre not seeing weird power fluctuations id just leave it and not overthink it. and yeah the fan buzz thing is super common on the 7300, mine did the same thing. loose connector resonating with the chassis at certain TX frequencies. one of those annoying little things icom probably should have caught at QC but whatever, easy fix.

I've been modeling vertical antennas with 4NEC2 and came across some interesting findings regarding vertical dipoles versus quarter-wave verticals with radials. The simulations show that a half-wave vertical dipole consistently outperforms a quarter-wave ground plane, even with an extensive radial system. The key difference is that both elements of the dipole radiate, effectively doubling the signal aperture compared to a quarter-wave where the radials merely simulate the missing lower radiator. Has anyone done practical A/B comparisons between these configurations? I'm particularly interested in real-world performance on 20 meters. My modeling suggests the vertical dipole has roughly 3dB advantage over the best quarter-wave setup. The trade-off is mechanical complexity - center feeding at height versus base feeding with extensive radial system.

so ive been on HF for about two years now, mostly 40m and 20m, and i keep getting reports that my audio is muddy or bassy and hard to copy. im running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 which i figured would be set me up pretty well but apparently not. i did set the mic gain and compression in the menu but honestly i just kind of eyeballed it because the manual is not super clear on where those should land. i did read somewhere that SSB has a fairly narrow passband and you kind of want your voice sitting in the 300hz to 2700hz range or something like that, and anything below that is just mud on the air. but i dont really know how to dial that in practically. the waterfall looks fine to me but obviously i cant hear what i sound like from the other side. anybody been through this and figured out a good workflow for getting decent audio? does it matter where the mic is positioned relative to your mouth, like distance and angle? i feel like im overlooking something obvious here.

dont stress too much about CQ WW, ive been doing it for years and i still occasionally blank on my zone number when im tired haha. zone 5 by the way if your ever in a qso with me and im being slow about it. one thing i wish someone had told me early on is just use N1MM or whatever logging software and let it handle the dupe checking, trying to do it manually during a busy contest is a nightmare. the software also helps with the exchange format so you dont have to keep the rules page open the whole time.

so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff with my handheld and a base station i built up. its fun but honestly i keep hearing people talk about HF and the whole idea of actually talking to people in other states or even other countries with like 100 watts just sounds really cool to me. my question is i guess, how different is the General exam from the Tech exam? i remember the Tech pool being kinda rough in some spots but i passed first try with maybe 2 weeks of studying. is General way harder or is it more of the same? i downloaded the question pool PDF and it looks like theres a lot of electrical stuff and propagation questions which i dont really understand yet. should i just use the HamStudy website again or is there something better for General specifically? also is there anything about the actual HF privileges that i should know before i even bother getting the license, like do i need totally different equipment or can some radios do both

so i finally got activated for a real deployment last weekend, not just a drill. county had some flooding and the EOC requested ARES support for about 14 hours. im still pretty new to the group, only been a member since spring and this was my first real thing beyond the monthly nets and that SET we did in october. overall it went fine i think, i was mostly doing message handling and logging at the EOC itself so i wasnt out in the field or anything. the EC kept things pretty organized. but a couple things came up that im not sure about and i wanted to ask here because i dont always want to bug my EC with every little question. first one is about ICS forms, specifically the ICS-213. we were using paper copies which is fine but another op brought a tablet with some software that autofilled some of the fields. is that pretty standard now or was that just his thing? i felt kind of behind the times with my paper forms but the EC didnt say anything either way. second thing is more about freqs. we were on a designated ARES simplex freq for most of it but at one point we switched to a linked repeater system i wasnt totally familiar with and i fumbled a bit with the offset. nothing bad happened but it made me realize i should probably have all the local stuff programmed way better than i do. anyone have a good system for organizing their radio programming for activations specifically?

the callsign thing — yes you do need to register on winlink.org first, its free and takes maybe 2 minutes, the system doesnt auto-pull from FCC. that was probably biting me too when i first started, nothing works until you have an account and a password set up on their end. as for the gateway software, most sysops running an RMS gateway are using the actual RMS software from winlink, not pat or express. pat is more for client side stuff. the gateway machine is basically running a service that bridges your RF connection to the winlink CMS servers over the internet. you as the client just need vara FM or packet AX.25 on your end and you connect to the gateway frequency, handshake happens, and your messages go through. if its timing out id check whether vara FM is actually keying up your radio — sometimes the PTT settings in signalink are off or the RTS/VOX thing isnt configured right for the 7300. theres a setting in vara FM for PTT method and you want to make sure its actually transmitting before blaming the gateway.

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im starting to look at handheld radios and honestly there are so many options i dont even know where to start. ive been reading reviews for like two hours and now im more confused than before i started i know baofeng comes up constantly and the price is obviously hard to argue with but ive also seen people say they're kind of junky or have spurious emissions issues or whatever that means. then theres yaesu and kenwood and icom and those are way more money but i dont know if the difference is worth it when im just starting out mostly id be using it for local repeaters, maybe some simplex with a friend down the street, nothing crazy. is there a sweet spot here that isnt the cheapest thing possible but also doesnt cost as much as my car payment

so ive been messing around with satellite work for a few months now, mostly just receiving APRS stuff off the ISS and doing some FM passes on SO-50 which went fine. figured it was time to try a linear transponder bird and picked AO-73 since it seems like the go-to suggestion for beginners on the linear stuff. problem is i cant seem to get my doppler correction right. im using gpredict to track and i have it linked to my ft-818 via hamlib but every time i think im on a signal i either lose it or i hear like a echo of myself drifting all over the place. i know you have to tune opposite directions on the uplink vs downlink but i feel like im chasing my own tail here. the pass was pretty decent elevation too, went up to like 52 degrees, so it wasnt a geometry issue i dont think. also not sure if my cross yagis are phased right. built them myself from a M2 design i found somewhere, 2m and 70cm, running them into an arrow style phasing harness i cobbled together. preamp on the 70cm side. anyone dealt with this kind of thing when starting out with linear birds, any tips on getting the doppler workflow sorted before the pass starts rather than scrambling during it

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF stuff, some VHF contesting, but EME has always been this kind of mythical thing i thought was way out of reach for a normal guy with a normal setup. lately ive been reading more about it and with JT65 and the digital modes it sounds like maybe its not completely insane to try even without a massive dish or a yagi farm. my current situation is i have a tribander up for HF and a single 9el yagi on 2m that i use for local weak signal stuff, running maybe 150w out of an IC-9700. i know thats not going to cut it for EME without some serious upgrades but im trying to figure out what the minimum viable setup actually looks like. ive seen people say you need at least 4 yagis stacked and a kilowatt, others say they've done it with less. whats actually realistic here and what should i be throwing money at first — more yagis, a power amp, a better preamp, all of the above? also completely lost on the operating side, like when do people actually get on and try this, is there a schedule or is it just whenever the moon is up and you hope someone else is listening

I think our club is setting up a table there this year, we do a little recruiting at these things. if you stop by look for the ARES banner, we usually have some handouts and a raffle going. its a good time, bring cash cause half the swap people dont do venmo or whatever

the 857 as a second radio is actually pretty decent for S&P work, i used one for a while in a similar setup. the main annoyance is that the IF DSP isnt as good as the 7300 so pulling weak ones out of the noise on the second radio takes more effort. but for grabbing mults and keeping an ear on a second band it does the job. one thing nobody really talks about enough is the SO2R workflow in the logging software. N1MM has SO2R support built in and once you get the radio focus switching set up correctly it saves a ton of fumbling. i spent more time messing with that config than i did on the RF filtering side honestly. the alt-tab workflow or using a footswitch to flip between radios becomes pretty muscle-memory after a while but the first contest you run it everything feels weird and slow

yeah hamstudy.org is honestly the move if you just want to pass and get on the air. the questions on the actual exam are word for word from the pool, they dont reword anything, so once you can consistently score 80+ percent on the practice tests you're probably ready. I studied maybe 2-3 weeks doing like 20 minutes a night and passed fine. the electrical theory stuff tripped me up at first but there's only so many of those questions and most of the test is rules and operating procedures which you kind of pick up just from reading. the ARRL tech book is good if you actually want to understand why things work the way they do but its not necessary just to pass. some people like having the book though, kind of depends on how your brain works.

yeah this is almost certainly a datum issue. the D710 defaults to Tokyo datum in some firmware versions and if you didnt change it to WGS84 your coords will be off by varying amounts depending where you are geographically. dig into the GPS setup menu, theres a datum selection buried in there. had the exact same thing happen to me when i first got mine, drove me nuts for weeks before someone at the club pointed it out. also worth checking if youre using compressed vs uncompressed position format. shouldnt affect accuracy but ive seen some weird edge cases. but honestly 99% chance its the datum thing.

i had the same frustration with FT8 tbh. felt like i was just clicking buttons and the radio was doing everything. switched to JS8Call maybe 6 months ago and while the bands feel less crowded in terms of activity, the contacts i do make feel like actual contacts. had a guy in scotland last week and we went back and forth for like 20 minutes which you literally cannot do on FT8. one thing i'll say is the weak signal performance is still pretty solid even if its not quite at -20dB territory. on a trapped vertical you might notice a slight difference from FT8 on marginal days but most of the time it holds up fine. the WSPR-style propagation awareness built in is also kinda neat for seeing whats open without committing to a full QSO. RTTY is another one that still has a following especially during contests if you ever want to try something different, the contest activity keeps it alive.

deviation is almost always the culprit when the radio keys up fine but nothing decodes on the other end. the FT-65 especially can be finicky with external TNCs because the audio level into the mic input varies a lot depending on how you're wired up. if you're using the speaker/mic jack combo on that radio you might be feeding too hot or too cold into the TNC. what does the Mobilinkd app show for the TX audio level? there should be a way to monitor it. you want the deviation around 3-3.5 kHz for APRS, too much and it splashes everywhere and nobody decodes it, too little and it just doesnt punch through. also double check that your SSID is actually set to something — i've seen people leave it blank and some igates/digis get weird about that. and make sure you're not sending from inside a building with the HT right next to a computer or anything generating noise, sometimes that causes weird packet corruption before it even gets transmitted. 8 miles to a digi on an HT in Kansas should be totally workable on flat terrain though so it's gotta be something in the signal chain.

had almost the exact same thing happen to a friends 746 a few years back. turned out to be the TX/RX relay — it was stuck in receive mode basically, switching transistor on the relay driver was cooked. radio received perfectly, keyed up fine, ALC was even moving a little on voice peaks but zero RF out. worth checking that relay first since its an easy thing for a nearby strike to mess with through the antenna connection without frying the finals entirely. on the 7300 i believe its relay K1 on the RF board but double check the service manual, icom has those available if you hunt around. you can usually hear the relay click when you go from RX to TX, if you dont hear it or it sounds weak that's probably your culprit. replacement relays are like a few bucks.

There is no magic method that will have you up and running in a matter of weeks or months. CW is a language so the more you expose yourself to the sounds the better. Keep at it - consistency beats intensity every time. 73!