Dave Patterson

yeah gpredict can absolutely do rig control, thats actually one of the main reasons people use it for sat work. you go into the settings and configure the radio interface, it uses hamlib under the hood so as long as your 991a is in the hamlib list (it is) you should be fine. once you get doppler correction automated it changes everything, you can actually focus on operating instead of constantly retuning. one thing to watch with linear transponders though — remember the transponder is inverting so if you tune up on the uplink your downlink moves down. gpredict handles that but just make sure you have the transponder passband entered correctly or your corrections will be fighting you instead of helping. took me an embarrassingly long time to figure that out when i started. the arrow is honestly fine for most LEOs especially if the pass goes above like 30 degrees. low passes are rough by hand but a good overhead pass with the arrow works. lots of people work satellites their whole ham career with just an arrow and no rotator.

I did my first real ARES activation last spring during the flooding we had, and let me tell you nothing quite prepares you like the real thing even with all the training. we were running a net for about 14 hours straight passing health and welfare traffic between two shelters and the EOC and by hour 6 my logging was getting sloppy and i had to really slow myself down. the ICS forms thing is real, NTS message format and ICS-213 kept coming up constantly. but yeah start with the FEMA courses, they're genuinely useful and not as dry as you'd think once you see how it all connects to what you actually do on the air. your EC can probably point you to any local specific requirements too since some counties have their own supplemental training they want before an activation. welcome to the rabbit hole i guess.

yeah 80m is just rough in general for noise, i dont think ive ever had a totally quiet 80m setup at any qth ive lived at. the waterfall will actually help you track down noise sources too once you get used to reading it — you can usually see interference as a pattern rather than just hearing it and wondering where its coming from. my neighbor had one of those cheap LED grow lights and i found it in like 10 minutes just by watching the waterfall while he turned stuff on and off in his garage.

so ive been messing with APRS for about 3 months now and i think i finally have a decent setup but something is off with the igate side of things. running a TM-D710G with the built in TNC, path set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 and i can see my own packets on the waterfall coming back from the local digi about 2 miles away. aprs.fi shows me sometimes but its really inconsistent — like ill pop up for a few minutes then disappear for 20-30 mins even when im stationary at home. the digi is definitely hitting my packets, i can see it in the raw data on aprs.fi when it does work, it shows the digi callsign in the path. but then it just stops. talked to the guy who runs the digi and he said its fine on his end but im not sure he actually checked. the igate is supposedly connected to APRS-IS but i have no way to verify that from my end. is there some way to tell if the igate is actually passing packets upstream or is it dropping them? or is this maybe a path issue on my end. i feel like WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 should be fine for suburban area but maybe im stomping on something.

yeah what he said. bring water and snacks too honestly, nobody tells you that and then you end up stuck at a shelter position for four hours wondering why youre cranky. also a fully charged battery pack for the HT, learned that the hard way at a flood response drill we did two years ago, had to borrow a charger from the red cross table which was embarassing

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for like 6 weeks now. the LCWO thing the other guy mentioned is what im using and its pretty good but i'll be honest some days i sit down to practice and my brain just refuses to cooperate, like i'll know a letter fine one session and then the next day its completely gone. i think thats just how it works though. one thing i read somewhere is that you should practice copying by writing or typing it out rather than just listening passively, something about how the motor memory helps it stick. havent gotten on the air yet myself but thats the goal

so i finally got around to building a proper dipole instead of just buying one. been putting this off forever honestly. used 14 gauge stranded copper wire i had leftover from some electrical work, cut it to length for 40m using the 468/f formula which gave me something like 66.5 feet total. the balun is just a choke i wound myself, 8 turns of RG-8X through a FT240-43 toroid i had in the junk box. anyway my question is about the center insulator. right now i just drilled two holes in a piece of PVC pipe cap and ran the wire through with some silicone around it. it works but it feels kinda janky and im worried about water intrusion over time especially since this thing is going up and staying up. does anyone make their own or do most people just buy the plastic egg insulators or whatever. also wondering if the PVC is gonna get brittle in UV after a while. SWR is coming in around 1.4:1 at the low end of 40 which im pretty happy with for a first attempt. gonna try to get it up higher than the current 25 feet if i can talk my neighbor into letting me use his tree.

yeah the waterfall freeze thing is a known annoyance with the RemoteHams SDR mode, at least in my experience. i ended up putting a dedicated SDRplay RSP1A on the remote end feeding a separate SDR-Console session and that helped a lot actually. the transceiver IF tap was always a bit of a compromise anyway depending on what rig you're using. latency on the audio side is still gonna be whatever your internet connection decides to do that day though, not much you can do about physics i tried the full DIY route with RigCtld and a VPN for a while and it works but you're basically your own IT department forever. every time my ISP at the remote site does something weird i'm troubleshooting at 11pm. RemoteHams at least has some infrastructure behind it even if its not perfect. for casual remote ops i just keep using it and accept the occasional freeze

yeah the timing thing is real, spots can be anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes old by the time you see them and react. what helps me is having the radio already close to the band the DX is supposed to be on before i even start looking. like if i know a rare one is active this week on 17m, i just park myself near that band and watch the cluster rather than starting cold. QRZ does have a logbook and some tools but i dont think they do real-time cluster spotting the way DXwatch or DX Summit does. you might be thinking of their lookup page which is great but different. for android i really like the DX Toolkit app, its pretty clean and lets you set alerts for specific callsigns or prefixes which is handy if youre chasing a specific entity. give it a shot.

yeah Dayton is worth the trip if you havent been before, though its been a few years since i went myself. the tailgate is definitely where its at, showed up early one year and grabbed a barely used IC-7300 for way less than i expected, guy just wanted it gone. just bring cash and get there before the doors open if you can as for local stuff, check if your regional club has a mailing list or a nets on 2m, thats usually where they announce swaps and field day planning and all that, the websites are almost never current

Ok so i just got my ticket a few months ago and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly on 40m and some 2m local stuff. Someone in my radio club mentioned I should be uploading to LoTW and also eQSL but honestly im kind of lost on how all this works together. Like do people actually still send paper cards through the bureau or is that mostly an old timer thing now? I set up a LoTW account but the whole certificate process was kind of confusing and I'm not 100% sure my logs are actually uploading correctly. I use WSJT-X for FT8 and I think it logs to ADIF automatically but then what, I just drag that file into the TQSL thing? Also someone told me eQSL is kind of looked down on by some people which seems weird to me. Just trying to figure out what the actual workflow is that most people use these days.

yeah the repeat callers are just part of it, some of them are hunting multiple programs at once and get confused or whatever. anyway congrats on getting out there, SOTA is even more of a workout if you ever want to try that lol, literally hauling everything up a mountain

so i finally got my callsign after studying for like 3 weeks and i was so pumped to get on the air. got my baofeng all programmed up with the local repeater and keyed up and just completely blanked on what to say. said my callsign wrong twice, forgot to say over, the whole thing. the guy on the other end was super patient though and we had a decent little chat once i stopped being a nervous wreck. anyway just wanted to introduce myself here, im KD9 something something, based in ohio, and apparently this hobby is going to take over my life based on how much ive been reading since yesterday

could also be the power connection honestly. i know it sounds unrelated but my FT-7900 was doing something similar a while back and it turned out one of the ring terminals on my battery leads hadnt crimped all the way. under load on transmit it would just dip enough to cause weirdness. the highway thing makes sense too because vibration can make a marginal connection go from annoying to actually dropping. not saying its not the antenna but worth checking the whole chain before you pull the NMO apart. those Diamond mounts are usually pretty solid in my experience.

Congrats on the first activation, that feeling of getting your 10 never really goes away honestly. To answer your questions — yeah paper log is totally fine, most people transcribe into something like HAMRS or just build a spreadsheet that exports ADIF. The POTA website only cares about the ADIF file at the end so however you get there is up to you. Some people use logging apps in the field on their phone which makes it easier but theres no requirement. On the CQ thing, calling CQ POTA is pretty standard and it helps hunters scanning the bands know youre an activator. Some people do CQ POTA CQ POTA then their callsign. Either works but the explicit POTA call definitely gets you more hunters faster especially on a busy weekend when theres a lot of activity on like 40 or 20m. For the hunter credit question — hunters log the contact on their end independently. They dont need to wait for you to upload. When you do upload your log it just confirms the contact but hunters can self-log immediately after the QSO. The system reconciles everything and marks it confirmed once both sides are in there. So your hunters were already getting credit before you even got home, which is pretty cool actually.

I plan on mounting mine at the center of the front engine hood right at the base of the front windscreen. The ground plane provided by the front hood should be significant. Have you considered a hood-edge mount? It's a good compromise between roof performance and clearance issues.

the honest answer is it depends on what you value more. 23 miles on 2m with flat terrain you really shouldnt be struggling that much with an x50a at 25 feet unless something else is going on. have you checked the coax? i cant tell you how many times ive chased an antenna problem that turned out to be water in the pl-259 or a connector thats just oxidized enough to cause issues under certain conditions. the x50a is a solid antenna and should have enough gain to work that path pretty comfortably. that said if you do want to try a yagi, a 6 element m2 or even a homebrew tape measure yagi isnt gonna break the bank. you could always put it on a cheap TV rotator if you want to keep some flexibility in direction. not perfect but workable for a fixed home station. i ran a 5 element cushcraft on a channel master rotator for years before i finally went back to a collinear when i moved and the compromise was acceptable.

so ive been doing more hilltop portable work lately, mostly 2m and 70cm, and im trying to decide whether to build or buy a small yagi or just stick with a collinear for these activations. right now im running a diamond X50 on a mast and its fine but i feel like im leaving gain on the table especially when im trying to hit a specific repeater 80+ miles out or work some weak signal ssb stuff on 2m. the thing is a collinear is way more convenient to set up and i dont have to worry about pointing it, but a 5 or 6 element yagi would obviously smoke it for gain in one direction. my typical activation is maybe 2-3 hours on a summit, usually working local repeaters and sometimes trying simplex contacts. not doing any serious EME or anything, just casual portable vhf. anyone done a comparison between the two in a real-world portable scenario? wondering if the directional nature of the yagi becomes annoying when youre just casually ragchewing vs trying to work a specific distant station

oh man yeah all the time. i call it "radio fishing" — you cast a line out and if something bites great, if not whatever. 40 and 80 are both good for that kind of thing on a rainy afternoon. i actually made most of my best contacts that way, just being on without really trying the Uruguay thing is nice btw, LU stations are pretty common but still satisfying when the band cooperates

the QCX mini is really solid for what it is. i built the 40m version last winter and the receiver genuinely surprised me. it's a single band CW only rig obviously so if you're doing phone that's a non starter, but for CW portable ops it punches way above its price point. the DSP filtering is nice and tight, helps a lot when there's QRM. battery life is excellent too since it sips current on rx. the ubitx is a different animal — more capable, more modes, but also more things that can go wrong and the stock firmware has had some quirks over the years depending on which version you get. lots of people run the improved community firmwares now which help. if you want to just get on the air with something reliable and you're good with CW i'd honestly say do the QCX first and then maybe tackle the ubitx later when you have more bench time under your belt. that ohio contact on 2 watts is the real deal by the way, dont let anyone tell you QRP isnt worth it.

For contesting or DXing, I'll steer you to a basic paddle and keyer combination because you can go much faster—much sooner. Used Vibroplex paddles are great value on the used market. Most modern transceivers only require an external paddle so you're already set up equipment-wise.

so ive been running FT8 for a while now and i get it, its great for contacts and the weak signal performance is genuinely impressive, ive worked some stuff on 20m with maybe 5 watts that i never would have gotten on SSB. but theres always been this nagging thing where you make the contact and then... thats it. its like shaking hands through a fence. you confirmed each other exist, great, moving on. anyway a buddy at the club kept going on about JS8Call and i finally installed it last weekend. took me a good hour to figure out the flow because its not as polished as WSJT-X obviously but once i got it i actually had a real back and forth with a guy in Finland for like 20 minutes. slow as hell compared to SSB but the signal was buried in the noise and we were both running QRP. i dont know, something about it felt more like actual ham radio to me. my question i guess is whether anyone has found a good balance between running FT8 for the raw contact numbers and using JS8Call when you actually want to talk to someone. feels like they serve completely different purposes even though the underlying tech is similar. also does anyone still run PSK31 or is that basically dead now outside of contests

so we have this county-level ARES exercise coming up next saturday and ive been going back and forth on whether to bring the honda eu2200i or just run off the 100ah lifepo4 and a couple panels. the exercise is supposed to run about 8 hours and were going to have at minimum a ft-991a running plus a laptop for winlink and maybe a second rig if we get the traffic volume we're expecting. my math says the 991a at moderate duty cycle maybe 20-25% transmit is probably pulling average 8-10 amps at 13.8v so call it like 110-140 watts average. laptop another 45w or so. that's roughly 155-185 watts continuous-ish over 8 hours which is pushing what i want to pull from a single 100ah battery even with the lifepo4 being more usable than AGM. i have a 200w panel but its a field exercise and i cant guarantee i get a good solar angle all day depending on where they set up our position. the generator just feels like overkill and its noisy and i hate dealing with fuel at a community center parking lot type of environment. but i also dont want to be the guy whose station goes dark at hour six because he was too proud to bring the genny. anyone run similar setups in the field, curious what your actual experience is with runtime on battery-only for a full day exercise like this

ok so i passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and got my callsign and ive been reading through part 97 trying to figure out what im actually allowed to do. some of it makes sense but some of it is really confusing especially the frequency privileges part. like i know i get HF on 10 meters but is that the whole band or just certain parts of it? and what about phone vs cw, im seeing different things in different places online and some of it seems contradictory or maybe just outdated i cant tell. also someone at my local club told me techs can do some stuff on 15 meters too but i looked it up and couldnt find anything about that, maybe he was thinking of something else? just want to make sure im operating legally before i actually key up anywhere, dont want to get in trouble right out of the gate.

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and im pretty close to getting it working but wanted to see if anyone else has gone down this road before i go too far in the wrong direction basically i have four antennas — a 40m dipole, an end fed half wave that i use on 20 and 15, a vertical for 10 and 6, and a 2m/70cm colinear — and right now im manually swapping the coax at the back of my radio which is obviously annoying especially during contests. i figured a pi zero w with a relay board would be the cheapest way to automate the whole thing and control it from a little webpage i could hit from my phone or laptop in the shack ive got the relays switching on and off fine, gpio stuff is straightforward enough, and im running a tiny flask app to serve up the control page. the issue im running into is latency with the relays i got off amazon — theyre the 4 channel 5v jobbers and they click but there's a noticeable delay between hitting the button on the webpage and the actual switch happening. not a huge deal for normal operating but it bugs me. also not 100% sure if these relays are actually rated for the RF current/voltage or if im going to blow something up eventually anyone dealt with this? is there a better relay module i should be looking at or should i just use a proper antenna switch and just automate the motor/actuator on it or something