James Moore18

so ive been using N1MM for probably 8 years now and honestly its great for contests, no complaints there, but outside of contest operating its kind of a pain to use as a general logger. the interface is obviously built around contest workflows and when im just sitting there doing casual ragchews or working some DX it feels like overkill and half the fields dont make sense for what im doing. someone at the club mentioned Log4OM and i downloaded it and poked around for like an hour but couldnt really figure out how the WSJT-X integration works with it. like does it just read the ADIF log that WSJT-X writes out or is there actual live UDP logging happening? i set up the UDP stuff with N1MM and WSJT-X a while back and that works pretty seamlessly but i dont know if Log4OM handles it the same way. also curious if anyone uses Log4OM for contests at all or if thats just not really what its for. i dont want to maintain two separate logging setups if i can help it but i also dont want to give up how well N1MM works during like a CQ WW weekend.

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly i cant figure out which one makes the most sense to start working toward. like i understand the basics — DXCC is 100 countries, WAS is all 50 states, WAZ is 40 zones — but i dont know which one is actually achievable for someone who is still pretty new and running maybe 100 watts into a dipole in the attic. i did manage to work about 23 states on 40m last weekend during a contest which felt pretty good, and ive worked maybe 15 or 20 DXCC entities since i got my general. so i guess im making some progress but i dont even know if those contacts count toward anything since i wasnt thinking about awards when i made them. do i have to specifically log them a certain way or submit something before they count? and does it cost money every time you submit credits? also someone mentioned lotw and i set it up but i honestly dont fully understand how it works with the awards tracking. any help appreciated, this stuff is kind of overwhelming when you first start digging into it

im in basically the same boat passed my tech last year and the rules stuff confused me for a while. what helped me was just finding a local club and asking questions because reading the actual CFR is honestly rough. someone in my club printed out a one pager summary of tech privileges and that was way more useful than staring at the FCC website for an hour

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and worked a ton of HF stuff, some 6m sporadic-e, even dabbled in meteor scatter on JT65B but EME has always been this kind of mythical thing to me. figured id finally try to get serious about it but honestly the more i read the more overwhelmed i get. right now im thinking 2m EME as a starting point since thats where most of the activity seems to be and theres a lot more station density for initial contacts. i have a decent yagi situation i could build on — currently running a pair of M2 2M5WL for a terrestrial moonbounce setup and access to a legal limit amp (ACOM 1010) so the power side is probably okay. but from what i can tell the antenna gain is going to be my bottleneck, like way more so than power. path loss on 2m EME is what, around 252 dB? i keep seeing people say you really want at least 4 yagis to have a reasonable shot at working other stations without them needing a giant array on their end too. is that actually true or can i squeak by with 2 long yagis and good digital modes? im running WSJT-X with JT65B capability already so the software side isnt totally foreign to me. mainly just wondering what the realistic minimum viable setup looks like these days with Q65 in the picture

yeah 2m is definitely the right band to start on, thats where the bulk of the EME activity is concentrated especially on weekends. single yagi EME is absolutely possible with JT65B, i wouldnt even say its a compromise, its how a lot of people run it now. you want something in the range of a 9 to 11 element long boom yagi, something with decent gain, and you really need a good preamp at the feedpoint because the path loss is brutal and your noise figure matters a lot more than most people realize coming from HF. power is the other big thing. 100w is on the low end but people have done it. you really want to be pushing 500w or more to have consistent results, the difference between 100 and 500w is significant on a path thats like 250,000 miles each way. also look into the WSJT-X software if you havent already, JT65B support is built right in and thats what basically everyone is using now for weak signal EME. CW EME still happens but youre going to need a much bigger station to pull that off reliably, big arrays, kilowatt, the whole deal.

wait you built a whole transciever and took it out the same week?? im still trying to figure out what kit to start with. did you have much electronics experience before or did you just kind of figure it out as you went? i keep reading about QRP and wanting to try but honestly the building part scares me a little

so i've been running a little handheld in the car for the past year or so and finally decided to do a proper mobile install with a real radio. picked up a used Yaesu FTM-400 a few months back and it sat on my desk forever because honestly the install intimidated me a bit. anyway got it done last weekend. ran the power leads directly to the battery with an inline fuse, used the split mount so the head unit sits on the dash and the main body is tucked up under the passenger seat. coax goes up through the firewall and up the a-pillar to a NMO mount i had drilled into the roof. put a Tram 1185 on there for now, figure i can upgrade the antenna later. first real test was driving around for about an hour hitting the local repeaters and honestly the difference from the handheld is just night and day. no more dropped audio, people can actually hear me clearly, its just... better in every way. wish i had done this sooner tbh. only issue i ran into was the head cable was just barely long enough to reach where i wanted the control head. anyone else run into that? wondering if there are extension cables available or if i just have to live with the routing i have now.

yeah the web-based clusters do have a bit of lag compared to connecting directly via telnet, it's not huge but when you're chasing something rare even 30-60 seconds matters. most people who are serious about it run something like DX4WIN or just a straight telnet session to a nearby cluster node. AR-Cluster or CC Cluster nodes you can find a list on the web pretty easy. the QRZ spots are pulling from the same general DX cluster network as near as i can tell, they just display it in a nicer way. honestly for casual chasing the web tools are fine but if you keep missing stuff it might be worth setting up a telnet connection through your logging software, most of them support it. i use Log4OM and just have it connected all the time in the background, spots pop up right on the bandmap which is really the killer feature imo.

the antenna thing is real, i went through the same debate. ended up with a Chameleon MPAS Lite and honestly for quick deployment its hard to beat, you can get it up in just a few minutes once you know what youre doing. the EFHW is great when you have time to tune and hang wire but in an actual activation when things are chaotic you really want something that goes up fast. stuff people forget — a headlamp with extra batteries, seriously this sounds dumb but ive shown up to two different events where guys were fumbling around in the dark. also a notepad and like five pens because youll lose three of them. and some kind of power distribution, a cheap PowerPole distribution block so youre not daisy chaining adapters. oh and food, not radio related but ive sat at a net control position for six hours with nothing to eat and its not fun. for VHF just throw a cheap handheld in there, you dont need the 891 doing dual duty if youre going to be doing ARES work, easier to just have a dedicated HT for local comms. that way HF and VHF are independent if something goes sideways.

so ive been running an old FT-450D for about four years and honestly it served me well but i kept eyeing the 7300 every time i was on eham or watching youtube videos. finally got one last month from a local ham who was upgrading to an IC-7610 and i have to say the difference is pretty substantial, at least coming from where i was. the real-time spectrum scope is the thing that gets me the most. i knew it was a feature obviously but actually using it during a pileup on 17m last weekend just clicked in a way i didnt expect. being able to see where activity is without spinning the dial is just... yeah. anyway the audio is noticeably cleaner too, my wife actually said something about it which was funny because she usually tunes out all the radio stuff completely. one thing i wasnt prepared for is how much time ive spent just in the menus trying to tweak things. the filter settings alone took me an afternoon. not complaining really just wasnt expecting to basically re-learn how to operate. anyone else spend a ton of time in the DSP settings when they first got one of these or did you mostly leave it stock?

yeah this sounds really familiar, went through the exact same thing when i first got my Bencher. honestly the first thing id check is your paddle tension and gap — if the gap between the paddle and the contact is too wide youre probably squeezing harder than you need to and that throws your timing off without you even realizing it. try tightening it so theres almost no gap, just a hair, and see if that helps you relax your grip a bit. for the Winkeyer i'd actually reset it to defaults before messing with weight ratios. the default 50/50 weight is a good baseline and you can drift into trouble real fast tweaking those numbers when you dont really know what direction youre going. and your elmer is right about the speed thing — i know it feels painfully slow but 10 wpm done clean sounds SO much better than 15 wpm mush. copying yourself back is the right instinct too, most people never do that and they wonder why nobody can read them

yeah the tqsl setup tripped me up too when i first started, it's not exactly intuitive. once you get your certificate loaded and your callsign set up properly it actually works pretty smoothly though. to see your confirmed contacts you log into the LoTW website and under your account there should be a QSL section that shows your uploaded QSOs and which ones have matched. the matched ones show up differently from the unconfirmed ones. you'll start seeing confirmations trickle in as other stations upload their logs, some people batch upload once a week or once a month so dont expect instant results. as for whether to bother with eQSL — honestly i use both. LoTW is pretty much the gold standard for ARRL awards like DXCC and WAS, most serious stations are on there. but eQSL has a pretty big user base especially in europe and some parts of asia, and theres people who only use that one. they have their own awards too. it's free so theres no real downside to having an account on both and uploading to both, WSJT-X can actually auto upload to LoTW and some logging programs handle both. paper cards — i still send and receive them and i genuinely enjoy it. got a nice little pile going. but for award credit purposes, electronic is just way easier and most awards accept LoTW confirmations now. some rare DX peditions still do cards only for certain things but that's becoming less common.

so i passed my technician exam on the 14th and finally got my callsign assigned a few days later. been lurking here for like two months reading everything i could find. anyway i borrowed a baofeng uv-5r from my neighbor who used to be into this stuff and programmed the local 2m repeater in and just kind of sat there listening for a few days not sure if i was doing anything wrong. finally yesterday i just keyed up during a lull and said my callsign and that i was new and honestly expected nothing. but this older guy came back to me and we talked for like 20 minutes about nothing in particular. he gave me a signal report and told me about the local club's net on thursdays. i dont know why but it felt way more real than i expected it to. like i built this thing up in my head as scary and it was just... two people talking on the radio. weird in a good way i guess. anyway just wanted to share that somewhere. still figuring everything out.

I just did basically the same thing in my Tacoma last spring with an FTM-500 so the process is pretty similar. The battery run felt intimidating but honestly once I got under the hood and found the grommet to feed the wire through the firewall it was way easier than I expected. YouTube has some good videos specific to F-150s for finding the firewall grommets, worth searching before you start. One thing nobody told me that I wish I'd known - label both ends of every wire before you button everything up. Sounds obvious but I didn't do it and spent an annoying afternoon trying to figure out what went where when I had to pull the seat out later for something unrelated.

the dropout thing after partial handshake is almost always audio level related in my experience, i know you said you checked it but hear me out — the SignaLink pots are super sensitive and what looks right on a meter doesnt always translate to what VARA wants to see. there's a specific level calibration routine in the VARA HF setup where you transmit a tone and it tells you if youre clipping. if you havent done that exact step and just eyeballed the waterfall, worth doing it properly. i spent two weeks convinced my rig was broken and it was literally just the TX pot on the SignaLink a quarter turn too hot. also check your ALC on the 7300 — if it's moving at all during the VARA tones you're probably overdriving it and that'll cause all kinds of weird behavior mid-session. VARA in particular does not like any ALC action, it messes with the multicarrier stuff. set your RF power to like 30-40% and work from there rather than running full power through the modem.

not a dumb question at all on the USB/LSB thing — it's just convention that stuck around from the early days and nobody really changed it. below 10mhz is LSB, above is USB, 10mhz itself kind of gets used both ways depending who you ask. there's no deep technical reason you couldn't use USB on 40m, it would just confuse everyone and nobody would be where you're listening. on the audio thing, the stock HM-207 that comes with the 7300 is actually not terrible, the problem is usually mic gain set too high and the speech processor cranked up trying to compensate. classic combination that makes people sound harsh. i'd start by pulling the mic gain way back, like seriously lower than you think it should be, then bring the processor (the COMP setting) to maybe 5-8dB and see how the ALC is behaving. you want the ALC meter barely moving, not pegged. if it's slamming the ALC on voice peaks your audio is going to sound exactly like what that guy described. honestly the monitor function on the 7300 is your best friend here. record yourself, adjust, record again. it takes a while but you'll hear the difference when you get it dialed in.

Looking for current recommendations on CW practice software. What are you all using for daily practice in 2024? I've been testing several apps but want to hear real experiences from operators who've actually used them to build speed. Specific questions: Which apps support proper Farnsworth timing?Any good options for practicing callsigns and Q-codes?What about apps that work offline for portable practice?Currently copying around 12 WPM and want to get to 20+ for contesting. Free options preferred but willing to pay for quality.

I just passed mine two months ago. The filter design stuff and the op-amp questions tripped me up at first but once it clicks its not that bad. The full privileges thing honestly mattered more to me than I thought it would — there are some nice quiet spots in the extra portions of 20m especially. Good luck if you go for it, the question pool is public so theres no excuse not to know whats coming at least roughly.

Check your computer's audio levels too - many folks overdrive at the PC side. Set Digital Input Level or DIG Gain to around 50% in the rig's menu to place the input stage in its optimal range. Also monitor your signal with an external receiver if possible.

did the fan swap on mine last year and yeah same deal, huge difference. i used a different fan, just a generic 40mm 5v unit from amazon that i found with decent reviews, and it works fine but i bet the Noctua is quieter. might be worth the few extra dollars. on the mic element thing — i did try it, swapped in a Panasonic WM-61A capsule into the stock HM-219 body. takes about an hour if youre careful and you need to be comfortable with teeny tiny soldering. the result was noticeably better on the air, people were commenting without me even asking which is usually a good sign. that said i eventually moved to just using a Heil PR-781 on a boom and thats way better than either version of the stock mic so... yeah. if youre already thinking about an external mic id just do that instead of the element swap.

so ive been following the chatter about the IC-7760 since Icom announced it and honestly i wasnt that excited at first, seemed like a lot of money for what looked like incremental improvements over the 7300 or even the 7610. but then last tuesday we had that crazy 10m opening into europe and i was running my 7300 and just watching the cluster light up like crazy. managed a few QSOs into spain and portugal which i havent done from my QTH in probably 3 years. made me think about how different that might have felt with a radio that has better roofing filters and the dual receiver setup. anyway thats not really the point i guess. the point is conditions are coming back and if you havent been on 10m lately you should really check it out. propagation forecasts have been looking decent for the next few weeks according to a few sources im following. solar flux has been hovering up in the 150s which is about as good as ive seen it in a long time. anyone else working a lot of EU on the higher bands lately or is it just my area

I'd also check the PA bias voltages on the HF driver stages. The TS-590 has separate bias circuits for different band groups, and if one's drifting low, you'll see exactly this symptom pattern. Service manual has the test points clearly marked.

same thing happened to me when i put up a hustler 6btv a few years back. everyone talks about low angle radiation but nobody mentions it also receives every switching power supply and led driver in a three block radius equally well lol. i eventually just left the vertical up as a second antenna and used it for 10 and 15 mostly where it does seem to do better for me. on 40 at night my dipole wins almost every time. your experience sounds totally normal to me.

im kind of in the same boat, been at it about 8 months now and the sending catching up to copying took me way longer than i expected. one thing that actually helped me was slowing WAY back down, like uncomfortably slow, and just doing super clean sending for a while instead of always pushing speed. my elmer told me sloppy fast reps just wire in the bad habits and i think he was right because once i cleaned up at 15 i jumped to 22 pretty fast after that.

i went through exactly this about two years ago. ended up building a 9 element yagi first just to listen and honestly that taught me more than any reading did. you can hear the big stations no problem and it kind of calibrates your expectations. the frustrating thing is the moon isnt always in a useful position and you have to deal with the antenna tracking if you want to stay on it for more than a few minutes depending on your elevation and azimuth range. i built a simple Az/El rotor setup from scratch which was its own whole rabbit hole but whatever. also dont underestimate how much the ground gain situation affects things. when the moon is low on the horizon you get some help from reflections, but it varies a lot by QTH. im in a valley and it genuinely hurts my low angle shots. anyway my point is just start with a single long yagi, get the preamp sorted, use JT65 and you will make contacts. not a ton at first but they'll come. its a patience thing more than a money thing imo