DX Hunter

so i finally passed my technician exam after studying for like 3 weeks and i was honestly terrified to key up for the first time. i have a baofeng uv-5r that my brother in law lent me and i'd been just listening for a couple days trying to figure out how everything worked. anyway there's a local repeater about 12 miles from my house and i heard someone having a qso and waited for a pause and just said my callsign and that i was new and looking for a contact.
the guy came back to me right away and we talked for maybe 10 minutes. turns out he was in wichita kansas which i thought was pretty cool even though i know thats not like dx or anything. he gave me a signal report and everything. im still kind of shaking lol. anyone else remember their first qso? does it get less nerve wracking

4 contacts still counts, you activated it. dont be too hard on yourself. i did my first POTA last spring and spent the first 20 minutes just trying to figure out why my audio sounded terrible on every contact and it turned out i had the mic gain cranked way too high from some testing i did at home. everyone was just being polite about it i think. the noon thing is real though, early morning or late afternoon is way better for 20m in my experience at least on the east coast

dont stress too much about mode A vs B at first, honestly just pick one and stick with it. most people end up on mode B but it really doesnt matter until your speed gets up there and you start doing tight squeeze keying. for now just leave it on whatever the default is.
the uneven sending is almost certainly hand position and tension, super common when you're starting out. your paddle gap is probably too wide too — try tightening it up so theres just barely a whisker of space between the contacts. makes a huge difference. as for copy speed, the old rule is practice at the speed you want to operate, not below it. sounds counterintuitive but copying at 10 wpm when you want to do 15 just builds slow habits. look up the Koch method if you havent already, thats how i finally broke through after years of going nowhere with it

had both at different points and honestly for pure receive-only HF work the RSPdx isnt even close, the HackRF is a great do-everything tool but its noise figure on HF is pretty rough and you really feel it when youre trying to dig out weak signals. the RSPdx has actual preselectors and the dynamic range is night and day difference especially with strong broadcasters nearby
i run mine with SDR++ now instead of SDRuno, nothing against SDRuno but SDR++ just feels snappier and the interface clicks better for me personally. the RSPdx does handle strong stations reasonably well but if you have a really powerful MW broadcaster close by you might still want an attenuator or a bandpass filter in line, i had a 50kw station about 30 miles out that was causing some IMD issues until i threw a simple high pass filter on it
for what you're describing, 40m 80m general listening and shortwave, the RSPdx is the right tool. save the HackRF purchase for when you actually need wideband TX or want to do something like replay attacks or spectrum painting or whatever

I've done exactly this comparison with the same antenna! Roof mount gave me noticeably better performance, especially for simplex work and fringe repeaters. The roof is probably the easiest location to place VHF/UHF antennas, but make sure seam mountings and clip mountings are well grounded (bonded) to the frame.

i just upgraded like 6 weeks ago so pretty fresh on this. the exam felt maybe a little harder than Tech but not dramatically, the stuff that tripped me up was more the operating rules and band plans than the actual theory. like knowing which portions of the bands Generals can use vs Extra, that kind of thing. make sure you know that cold because theres definitely questions about it
as for HF on a budget, look into end fed half wave antennas, you can build one pretty cheap and they work surprisingly well. thats what im using rn

Congrats on getting your ticket! Most people need about 20-30 hours for Technician but 30-40 hours for General. The General exam digs deeper into RF theory, propagation, and circuit analysis. I'd recommend starting with HamStudy.org for free practice tests and the ARRL General manual.

congrats and welcome. that feeling when your callsign shows up on QRZ for the first time is something else right. dont sweat fumbling it on the first few nets, honestly everyone does it. once you say it a couple hundred times on air it just comes out automatically. if you havent already look into getting on HF once you upgrade, thats where things really open up. whats your local repeater if you dont mind me asking?

Set the microphone gain to 70 and with the stock bandwidth of 2.4 kHz your SSB signal will be terrific. Compression: Adjust for ALC mid-scale on voice peaks. Start there and work from that baseline. Less is more with the 7300's processing.

Set the microphone gain to 70 and with the stock bandwidth of 2.4 kHz your SSB signal will be terrific. Compression: Adjust for ALC mid-scale on voice peaks. Start there and work from that baseline. Less is more with the 7300's processing.

i was in the exact same spot maybe two years ago and what finally made it click for me was downloading the LoTW ADIF and running it through an award tracker. there are a few free ones online. seeing a visual map of which states and entities youve already confirmed is weirdly motivating, way better than just staring at a spreadsheet
also dont stress too much about mixed vs phone vs digital — if you're mainly doing SSB just track that for now and worry about the others later if you get the bug for it. some guys go deep on getting all the mode endorsements but thats kind of a rabbit hole. WAS on SSB alone is a solid goal and honestly pretty achievable in your first year if propagation cooperates

APRS faces challenges with outdated infrastructure and congestion on 144.390 MHz, especially in urban areas. While WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is the recommended path, mobile stations in populated areas should consider using only WIDE1-1 since there are usually enough IGates nearby. Integration with mesh networks like AREDN could improve resilience and expand APRS applications beyond traditional tracking. What path strategies are others using to minimize network congestion while maintaining coverage?

man this is great to hear, i've been eyeing those kits for a while. did you do anything special with the antenna or just a basic end fed wire? i'm always a little sketchy about whether a 9:1 unun actually does much at those power levels or if it's just adding loss but i honestly dont know enough to say one way or the other.
also curious what the lipo situation looks like — do you have to mess with a voltage regulator or does the rig just take it directly? my background is more on the digital modes side so i'm learning a lot about the analog/battery side of things still.

haha yeah my first one i forgot the counterpoise entirely and spent like 20 minutes wondering why everything sounded terrible. ended up clipping a random wire to a tree root and it sorta helped. you learn fast when youre out there with no bench to work on
congrats on the activation though, 10 contacts is solid especially if conditions werent great. 40m is usually pretty reliable for that kind of thing

yeah the debouncing is almost definitely your problem. BCD outputs from radios can bounce around for a few milliseconds during a band change — the arduino is reading garbage in that window. what i did on a similar project was just add a small delay after detecting a change, like 50-100ms, and only act on it if the value is stable across multiple reads. not the most elegant solution but it works reliably.
also worth double-checking your grounds. if the arduino ground isnt tied to the radio ground youll get all kinds of weird behavior, especially if you have other stuff in the shack running off different outlets. i chased that one for two weekends before figuring it out. the relay board itself can also inject noise back into the arduino if you havent got the coil supply isolated — those cheap amazon boards usually dont have optical isolation even if they say they do.

welcome to the rabbit hole haha. seriously once CQ WW gets you it doesnt let go. i remember my first one years ago and working japan felt like i had done something impossible. its not impossible obviously but in the moment it really does feel that way.
i cant speak much to the SOTA during field day question because ive never done a summit activation, thats a whole other world i keep meaning to get into but life keeps getting in the way. maybe someday. but i do know people who truck up to a summit for field day specifically and get a pile of points from it so it must be worth it if youre already into the outdoor operating thing.

yeah the debouncing is almost definitely your problem. BCD outputs from radios can bounce around for a few milliseconds during a band change — the arduino is reading garbage in that window. what i did on a similar project was just add a small delay after detecting a change, like 50-100ms, and only act on it if the value is stable across multiple reads. not the most elegant solution but it works reliably.
also worth double-checking your grounds. if the arduino ground isnt tied to the radio ground youll get all kinds of weird behavior, especially if you have other stuff in the shack running off different outlets. i chased that one for two weekends before figuring it out. the relay board itself can also inject noise back into the arduino if you havent got the coil supply isolated — those cheap amazon boards usually dont have optical isolation even if they say they do.

so ive been wanting to do this for probably two years now and last weekend i finally just did it. built a little pixie kit i got off ebay for like eight bucks, yeah i know its not the most impressive thing but i had to start somewhere right. spent maybe three evenings getting it together, had to reflow a couple solder joints because i was being sloppy but eventually got it running.
took it out to the county park saturday morning with a 9v battery and a wire i threw up in a tree — probably 20 feet of random wire honestly, nothing fancy. was putting out maybe 500mw if that. figured id hear nothing and come home disappointed.
ended up making contact with a guy in ohio, im in western pennsylvania so its not like a huge distance but i was genuinely shocked it worked at all. we had a short exchange, signal reports were honestly not great on either end but the qso happened and i logged it and sat there kind of grinning like an idiot for a few minutes.
anyway the whole thing made me want to build something better. has anyone here gone from a pixie type kit to something more like an mw0yks or an elecraft type setup and was the jump worth it, like in terms of what you can actually do with it on the air. im trying to figure out if i should keep building kits or just save up for something like a kx2.

honest answer is you kinda need LoTW if DXCC is your goal, thats just the reality. ARRL only accepts LoTW or physical cards sent through the bureau for DXCC credit, so eQSL on its own wont get you there. that said i still upload to eQSL too because some folks only check there and its nice to see the confirmations roll in regardless.
paper cards i still send for anything rare or a contact that meant something to me. worked a guy in 3Y0 a few years back and we actually exchanged cards through the bureau, took like 8 months but it was worth it just to have it in hand. for everyday contacts though i just let WSJT-X auto upload to LoTW and call it done. set it up once and it basically runs itself after that.
get your LoTW certificate sorted first, that takes a little while to arrive anyway, and then worry about the rest later.

APRS faces challenges with outdated infrastructure and congestion on 144.390 MHz, especially in urban areas. While WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is the recommended path, mobile stations in populated areas should consider using only WIDE1-1 since there are usually enough IGates nearby. Integration with mesh networks like AREDN could improve resilience and expand APRS applications beyond traditional tracking. What path strategies are others using to minimize network congestion while maintaining coverage?