Michelle Garcia

omg wait i had no idea 10m was even a thing to try, im pretty new and i only have a technician right now so i can only do a tiny slice of 10m but i did notice some weird signals on my RTL-SDR dongle yesterday around that time and didnt know what i was looking at. maybe that was it? is there somewhere i can check band conditions in real time or do you just kind of have to listen around and figure it out

so i finally decided to stop being lazy and build a proper dipole instead of using that trapped vertical i borrowed from a buddy. picked up some 14 gauge stranded wire from home depot, grabbed a center insulator i had in a junk box, and cut the legs to half wavelength for 40m. the math put me at about 33 feet per side which i know is a bit long but i wanted to trim to resonance. heres the thing though — when i put the antenna analyzer on it the SWR null is sitting around 6.8 MHz instead of where i want it which is somewhere around 7.150 or so. i was expecting it to be a bit long but this seems way off. the wire is just hanging as an inverted V with the apex at about 30 feet, ends maybe 8 feet off the ground. i used RG-8X for the feedline and its a fairly short run, maybe 40 feet to the shack. did i mess up the math or is the inverted V configuration changing the resonant frequency that much? i read somewhere the angle of the legs affects things but i cant find a straight answer on how much. also should i be using solid wire instead of stranded? a guy at the club said stranded doesnt matter but another guy said it does and now im confused.

so ive been messing around with an old antenna rotator for probably the last month or so and the controller on it is basically dead, the pot is shot and the original control box is just cooked. instead of buying a replacement i figured why not just roll my own with an arduino and a motor driver board. i've done some basic arduino stuff before like blinking LEDs and reading sensors so im not a complete newbie but this feels like a bigger step. the rotator motor itself is a pretty standard DC type, i think its somewhere around 24v. my plan was to use an L298N motor driver to handle the actual switching and then just have the arduino read heading from a replacement pot i wired in. eventually i want it to talk to my logging software over serial so it can point the beam automatically when i work a new grid or something. has anyone gone down this road already? im mostly worried about the feedback loop being stable enough that it doesnt just hunt back and forth forever around the target bearing. seen some guys use a PI controller loop for this but i honestly havent messed with control theory since college and i barely remember it also wondering if a raspberry pi would be a better choice here since it could just run a proper rotctld instance and integrate with stuff like gpredict without needing a separate computer in the loop. thoughts?

ha that feeling of the first qso never really goes away, i remember mine was on a handheld at like 5 watts and i was standing in my backyard in january freezing because i thought i needed to be outside for some reason. congrats on the 94 too thats a solid score. the repeater guys are usually pretty welcoming to new folks, stick around and youll probably end up as one of the regulars before you know it

roof mount is definitely the gold standard and yeah the difference is real especially when youre trying to hit something behind you, the body of the truck just eats signal on lower mounts. that said ive been running a lip mount on my tacoma for three years and it works fine for 90 percent of what i do day to day. unless you're trying to weak signal stuff or you notice actual dead zones i wouldnt lose sleep over it. the NMO on the camper shell is probably fine honestly. if you ever do want to go roof without drilling theres those magnetic mounts but they move around at highway speeds and i dont trust em long term. some guys do the gutter mount clips but your truck might not have gutters. i'd just leave it where it is and see if you actually run into problems before changing anything

ha i remeber my first qso i was shaking a little bit hitting the ptt. congrats on passing the exam, i just got mine about 2 months ago so i know exactly what that feels like. the baofeng will do fine to get started dont let anyone tell you otherwise, i ran mine for like 6 weeks before i upgraded. enjoy it

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and im starting to actually think about confirming contacts and chasing awards and stuff. but im totally lost on the whole QSL thing. like theres LoTW which i know the ARRL runs, and then theres eQSL which seems like a totally different thing, and then obviously the old school paper cards through the bureau or direct mail. do i actually need to be on all three of these? some people i talk to on the air are like yeah just use LoTW for everything, and then other people are like no eQSL is better for casual stuff, and then my elmer keeps insisting i should still send paper cards because thats the real tradition. i dont want to insult anyone but also i dont have time to be managing three different systems for every contact i make. also the LoTW setup with the certificate and TQSL software kind of intimidated me at first but i finally got it working last weekend so at least thats done. just not sure what the actual workflow is supposed to look like going forward.

honestly for Sweepstakes specifically i'd argue that SO2R gives you less of an edge than in something like CQWW just because SS is so mult-heavy and the mults are sections not entities, so you kinda have to work everything anyway. the rate optimization matters more in phone SS than CW in my experience just because the QSO times are longer and having something to do while youre waiting for the pile to clear on 40 is useful. that said your setup could probably work. the tribander on one radio and the 40m dipole on the other and just never cross-band when the bands are within a harmonic relationship of each other. its not ideal but people have done worse. what are you using for radio control and keying, thats almost more important than the antenna situation for getting started

This will be my second CQ WW SSB! Last year I made 89 QSOs with 100W and a dipole - way better than expected. My advice from a newbie: don't worry about rate, just enjoy hearing "the world wake up and go to sleep as the bands open and close".