James Brown

APRS messaging is honestly pretty flaky in general, you're not doing anything wrong necessarily. the way it works is the message has to get acked back to you and if any hop in that chain drops a packet the sender just keeps retrying until it times out. being parked next to each other is almost worse in some situations because you can end up hearing each other direct but the ack might not make it back through the path you're expecting.
one thing to check is whether the FT3D guy has his station set to respond to messages at all — some of those Yaesu portables have APRS messaging kind of buried in the menu and it might not be enabled or might be in a weird mode. also worth checking what path he's using, if hes running WIDE2-2 and you're close to a busy digi you might be getting a lot of collisions. aprsdroid through APRS-IS should honestly work better than RF in that case since its going internet to internet, so if thats also failing i'd look at whether his callsign-SSID is configured exactly right on both ends

So ive been trying to get a proper remote station going for about three months now and im at the point where im not sure if the problem is my setup or just the nature of doing this over the internet. Running RCForb client connecting to my home station, got a SDRplay RSP1A on the remote end feeding into the SDR side of things so i can monitor the band while operating, and the whole thing works... kind of.
The audio latency on the control side is somewhere around 400-500ms which makes SSB conversations feel really weird, like im always stepping on people or leaving dead air. I read somewhere that RemoteHams can get this down to like 150ms if you tweak the codec settings but i cant figure out where that actually is in the software. Anybody using this regularly for like actual rag chews or is everyone just doing CW and digital where latency doesnt matter as much
Also the SDR part -- is there a way to have the panadapter update faster? Right now it feels like its updating maybe once a second which isnt terrible but id like to see propagation changes a bit quicker. my upload at home is only about 15Mbps so maybe thats the bottleneck idk

the thing that always bites people is logging supplies and documentation — like actual paper logs, pencils (not pens, pens dry out or freeze), and printed copies of your local ARES frequencies and your ICS forms. I know everyone wants to go digital but when everything goes sideways you want paper backup. also a headlamp. sounds dumb but I showed up to a deployment once and was trying to set up in a parking garage at 2am with only my phone light because my headlamp was still sitting on my desk at home.
your power setup sounds pretty solid honestly. the one thing id add is a small power strip or a RigRunner type distribution panel, makes life so much easier when youre tired and stressed and dont want to think about which powerpole goes where. oh and a notebook with your passwords and frequencies written down because your brain stops working correctly after 20 hours of no sleep during an activation, trust me on that one.

im kind of in the same boat as you, just started putting mine together a few months ago. one thing someone told me at a club meeting that stuck with me is dont buy anything new just for the go-kit at first, just pull from what you already have and see if it actually works as a kit. figure out the gaps from there.
i ended up with my HT, a small antenna adapter so i can run it off a mag mount on the car, some spare AA batteries in a ziploc, and a charger that works off 12v. nothing fancy but i could actually set it up and check into the local net within like 5 minutes if i needed to. thats the bar i set for myself. also threw in a cheap headlamp and some snacks because someone joked about it at a meeting but honestly its not a bad idea

that ohio contact on 500mw is actually pretty solid, QRP can really surprise you especially on 40m when conditions are decent. the Pixie is a great little thing to learn on even if its not the most practical rig for actual operating.
for your next build i'd seriously look at the uBITX or if that's a bit much to take on, maybe look at the 4state QRP group kits, they're reasonably priced and the documentation is genuinely good. the SW-40+ used to be a classic recommendation but i think they stopped making those. another option is just hunting around for a used Elecraft KX1 or K1, sometimes they come up for $150-200 which is over your budget but they're worth saving for if you get the QRP bug bad enough. and trust me, you will.
also 559 at 200 miles on a pixie and a wire in a park is honestly a memory you'll tell people about for years. welcome to the dark side of this hobby

so i just passed my technician exam last week (finally) and now im trying to figure out what handheld to get. everyone keeps saying baofeng and everyone else keeps saying dont get a baofeng and i honestly cant tell who to listen to anymore. ive been lurking on here for like two months trying to figure this out.
my main thing is i want to hit the local repeater, maybe do some simplex with a buddy who lives about 4 miles away, and eventually get into APRS if thats not too complicated for a starter. budget is somewhere around $50-150 but i could stretch it a bit if theres a real reason to.
i looked at the yaesu ft-65 and the wouxun kg-uv9d and honestly both seem fine but i dont really know what im comparing. does the extra money matter that much at this stage or should i just grab something cheap and see if this hobby even sticks for me

honestly pskreporter is what i use when im not sure if a band is open. even if you're not on FT8 yourself you can see if anyone is getting through on that path and it gives you a pretty good idea. 10m has been teasing people for weeks it feels like, keeps almost doing something and then backing off. supposed to be heading toward solar max so hopefully we get some real openings soon but conditions have been a bit all over the place.

so i've been sitting on my little uBITX for about 6 months now, just using it at the home shack with a proper antenna and a decent power supply, never really pushing it hard. this weekend i finally threw it in a backpack with my end fed half wave and a little 3ah lipo and hiked out to the ridge near my house.
honestly wasnt expecting much. i've heard people say QRP is frustrating and you just sit there calling CQ into the void but that wasnt my experience at all. worked 4 contacts on 40m in about an hour and a half, including one guy in michigan (im in colorado) which felt pretty good for 5 watts. the band was decent, nothing crazy.
the one thing i was NOT prepared for was just how much the antenna placement matters when you dont have a big yard to spread things out. i had to kind of compromise on the feedpoint height and i think i lost some efficiency there. also the lipo ran down faster than i expected, might have been the cold. its been bugging me ever since whether i should switch to a different battery chemistry for cold weather ops.
anyway, just wanted to share. if anyone has experience with cold weather battery stuff or just QRP portable in general i'd love to hear what works for you.