Jessica Miller

yeah the timing thing is huge and most people completely ignore it. ive worked some pretty exotic stuff over the years and the single biggest mistake i see is guys transmitting while the DX is still finishing up with the previous contact. you cant break through if youre not even synchronized with whats happening on the other end. one thing id add is if the pileup is really bad and youre not getting through after a reasonable amount of time, try moving slightly off from where everyone else is clustered. the DX op gets ear fatigue picking the same freqs over and over, and a slightly unexpected position in the spread can actually stand out. not talking about going way out, just maybe 200-300 hz different from the main clump. works on cw especially since the op is literally tuning through looking for readable signals. also dont underestimate propagation timing. ive had way better luck in the first 15-20 minutes a band opens than trying to slug it out when the pileup has been going for an hour and everyones frustrated and just keying up randomly. the DX op is usually fresher too and more likely to work through things methodically rather than just grabbing whatever pops out.

Recommend: installing RMS Relay + either Packet or Trimode at minimum - that's the minimum viable setup. I waited until I had everything working locally with P2P before requesting authorization, made the process much smoother when Steve K4CJX responded.

yeah they're not the same network, that's probably what's confusing you. DXwatch aggregates from the traditional packet cluster network — so you've got nodes like WW1X and others feeding into it — whereas QRZ's cluster is more of its own thing pulling from web-based spot submissions and some cluster feeds but it's a bit more curated or filtered depending on how you look at it. so you will absolutely see differences in what shows up and when. the delay thing is real too, not just you. web-based cluster displays usually have at least a 30 second to couple minute lag depending on how the page refreshes. if you want realtime you're better off with actual telnet into a cluster node directly, something like dxc.ve7cc.net or similar, feed that into your logging software and you'll see spots way faster. i run N1MM for contests and having a live telnet feed versus refreshing a webpage is night and day honestly. for casual dx chasing though the web tools are totally fine, i wouldnt stress too much about it. cross referencing two of them isnt a bad habit if you're hunting something specific, takes like 5 seconds to flip between tabs.

so ive been chasing LEO sats for about 3 months now and i finally made a couple contacts through AO-73 last week which was pretty exciting. been using a Arrow antenna and an FT-818 for uplink, FT-736R for downlink. the problem is my doppler correction is all over the place. im doing it manually which i know is the wrong way to go about it but gpredict keeps crashing on me before i can get the rig control stuff sorted out. the linear transponder on AO-73 is inverting which i understood beforehand, so i know when i tune up on the uplink the signal goes down on the downlink, but theres this like 3-4 second window around TCA where everything just goes sideways and i lose my own signal completely. is that normal or am i doing something wrong with the antenna transition? im using a single crossed yagi at the moment and flipping polarization manually which is probably contributing to the chaos. also do people actually track by hand that successfully or does everyone just use SDR and let software handle it, because the guys at my club act like its super easy to do it manually but i dont know man it feels pretty hectic on a 10 minute pass