John Johnson

so the way it basically works — all those sites (DXwatch, DX Summit, the cluster on QRZ) are pulling from the same underlying network of DX cluster nodes. operators around the world are posting spots either manually or through software, and those spots propagate through the whole network. so yeah you're mostly seeing the same data no matter which site you use, though there can be small timing differences and some sites filter differently by default. the QRZ logbook has a built in spot lookup which is handy if youre already on the site logging a contact, but for actual hunting i usually just have a browser tab open to DXwatch with filters set for my bands. you can filter by continent, band, mode, all that stuff. DX Summit (oh3bk) is another good one and has been around forever, feels a bit old school but reliable. for your radio software question — yeah HRD and a lot of other logging programs can connect directly to a cluster node via telnet. once you set that up spots can pop up in a bandmap or a window right inside the program and sometimes you can even click a spot and it tunes your radio. takes a bit of setup but once its working its pretty slick. just google your logging software name plus telnet cluster and youll find instructions for your specific program. spinning the dial is honestly not a bad way to learn the bands though, dont give that up entirely

so i finally did my first POTA activation yesterday at the state forest about 20 minutes from my house, been putting it off forever because i kept thinking i needed more gear or a better antenna setup or whatever. anyway i threw the KX2 in a backpack with my random wire and a 9:1 unun and drove out there, found a picnic table near the parking lot which felt like cheating but whatever got 10 contacts in about 45 minutes which i know is the minimum but man the last 3 were a struggle, 40m was getting noisy and i couldnt figure out if it was the antenna or just band conditions. packed up right as it started drizzling. logged everything when i got home and uploaded to the POTA website, showed as valid so i guess it counts lol. anyone else have a rough first activation like this or is it usually smoother

The task book structure is brilliant for tracking progress! It emphasizes that each ARES communicator needs proper dress, equipment, knowledge, and demeanor to support assigned tasks. Makes the whole organization more professional and accountable.

the ubitx v6 is actually a pretty solid starting point for what you're describing. its not the most polished thing in the world and the stock low pass filters have gotten some criticism but for learning and general portable use its hard to argue with the price. i built mine over a long weekend and had it on the air monday morning. just take your time with the winding on those toroids and double check your solder joints before you button it up. the other thing i'd say is dont overlook the QCX+ from QRP Labs. its single band but the receiver is genuinely excellent and its probably the best bang for buck QRP CW rig you can build right now. i use mine for SOTA activations and it just works. battery lasts forever too since the efficiency on that thing is really good. if you're doing mostly CW either one would serve you well but if you want SSB capability eventually then the ubitx makes more sense.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually so take this with a grain of salt but what helped me was just picking DXCC as the main goal and treating the others as bonuses. like when I work a state I note it but im not stressing about WAS specifically. one thing I will say is get your LoTW account set up properly before anything else because its kind of a pain if you have a backlog of contacts to upload later. I had like 8 months of logs to go through and it was tedious getting it all sorted out.

oh man dont worry about it at all, literally everyone does this the first time. i fumbled my callsign on my very first check-in and the net control just asked me to repeat it, no big deal. the thing is net control has heard it all and they genuinely want new people checking in. for most local nets the format is pretty simple — when they open it up for check-ins you just key up, wait a half second so your radio actually opens the repeater, then say your callsign phonetically if it helps. some nets want name and location too, just listen to what other people are doing for the first few weeks and copy that format. a directed net is more structured where you go through net control to talk to someone else, casual ones are basically just a roundtable. your net probably has a preamble at the start that explains which type it is if you catch the whole thing from the beginning.

so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now mostly for listening to airband, some HF with the direct sampling hack, and messing around with NOAA weather satellites. its been fine honestly but i keep reading about the SDRplay RSP1A and people acting like its a completely different world. the price jump isnt crazy, like 120 bucks or whatever, but i dont want to spend it if im just going to notice marginal improvement on the stuff i already do. main things i care about: HF reception is kinda mediocre with the direct sampling mode on the RTL, lots of images and it just feels noisy. also the dynamic range thing comes up a lot when people talk about the RSP1A and i sort of understand what that means in theory but not sure how much itd actually matter for casual monitoring. running SDR# on windows if that matters, might try SDRuno at some point. anyone actually made this switch and can tell me if the HF difference is noticeable or am i just reading too much into forum posts

oh man an end fed in the pines sounds perfect, i bet conditions were decent on 40m last weekend too. im still trying to work up the nerve to do my first one, been hunting WWFF references from home for a few months to get familiar with how it all works. did you spot yourself on the WWFF spotter or just rely on pota spots? im never sure if i should use both or just pick one when a park qualifies for both programs

just get the mag mount and dont overthink it honestly, i ran one for like two years before i bothered with a permanent mount and it was fine. if you park inside overnight just pull it off and toss it in the back seat

oh man i had the same exact feeling my first time, that little pileup moment is such a rush. i kept second guessing whether i was doing the exchanges right lol one thing i'd add is check out the POTA subreddit and also there's a really active facebook group where people post about upcoming activations and stuff. i learned a ton just from watching how other people log and operate from their posts and videos. also if you can ever go out with someone who's done a bunch of activations it really helps, i tagged along with a guy from my club before i tried solo and it made a huge difference

yeah this happened to me too when i first got into APRS. turned out the igate near me was an old setup running UI-View that the owner just never updated and it had some filter that was only passing certain SSIDs or something weird. i never fully understood it but once i found a different igate path to hit my stuff showed up fine. one thing you can do is grab a cheap RTL-SDR and run it as a second receiver just to confirm your transmissions actually sound like proper APRS audio — sometimes the deviation is off on the radio and it sounds fine to you but the igate cant decode it. the D710 shouldnt have that problem out of the box but worth ruling out

so i finally got called up for an actual activation last month — county EOC needed amateur radio support during the flooding event we had here in the valley. ive been doing the monthly ARES nets and the SET exercises for almost two years now and honestly thought i had a pretty good handle on things but man, real world is just different. the biggest thing that caught me off guard was how much waiting there is, and then suddenly everything happens at once. during the SET we always had kind of a structured flow but at the actual EOC there were periods where nothing was coming through on the nets for like 45 minutes and then the served agency liaison dumped three traffic requests on me at the same time. my ICS message handling was fine i think but i kept second-guessing myself on the proper format for the radiograms we were passing to the section. also nobody told me to bring food. that sounds dumb but i was there for 11 hours and the EOC had some sad vending machines and that was it. the experienced guys all had go bags with snacks and everything worked out. lesson learned i guess. anyway curious if other people felt the same way their first time — like the training is good but it doesnt fully prepare you for the real thing?

congrats on the first activation, 11 QSOs is solid especially for a first time out. yeah the pileup thing when you self-spot is completely normal, some of the regulars have SOTAwatch alerts set up on their phone and they literally jump on within seconds. best thing to do is just take a breath and work through them one at a time, no rush. you dont have to answer in order or anything. the S2S situation -- yes you do log that separately, there should be a field in the SOTA CSV format or if youre using an app like SOTA Goat or Activator Log it usually has a dedicated S2S checkbox or field. both you and the other activator get bonus points for it so its worth making sure its recorded right. when you upload your log to the database just make sure that contact has the other persons summit reference in the right column and it should process correctly. as for references changing, they generally dont get reassigned but summits do occasionally get removed from the program if a resuevey shows they dont meet the prominence requirements. thats probably what youre seeing in older logs, summits that were valid at the time but have since been delisted. the references themselves dont get recycled though as far as i know.

yeah the 3.3v to 5v thing bites everyone at least once. those cheap relay boards usually have an optocoupler that wants a proper 5v signal to trigger reliably — 3.3v is kind of in the grey zone depending on the specific board you have. some of them actually work fine on 3.3v, some dont, total lottery. easiest fix ive found is a BSS138 based level shifter, you can get a little sparkfun board or the adafruit one for a few bucks and it cleans everything right up. alternatively if you want to avoid the extra board, look for relay modules that specifically say "active low" with optocoupler isolation and are labeled 3.3v compatible — they do exist. sainsmart has some that work fine direct from the pi gpio without any drama. the chatter is probably just the marginal trigger voltage causing the coil to not fully latch. once you get solid logic levels that should go away. i ran a similar setup for about two years driving a 6-position antenna switch and it was completely reliable after sorting the level issue.

honestly your coworker isnt wrong, the question pool approach works and thats basically what everyone does. the FCC question pool for Technician is publicly available and the actual exam questions are pulled straight from it, so if you can get through the whole pool and understand why the answers are what they are, youre gonna pass. i used HamStudy.org when i was studying and it was pretty solid, does spaced repetition so it keeps drilling you on the ones you keep getting wrong. took me maybe 3 weeks of like 20 minutes a day and i passed with only a couple wrong. the Gordon West book is popular too if you want something more structured, explains the reasoning behind stuff which helps it actually stick. but if youre just trying to pass fast, question pool + hamStudy is probably your fastest route. the satellite and weak signal stuff makes way more sense once you have the license and start poking around anyway.

yeah the question pool is literally the exact set of questions the test is pulled from, all of them are published publicly by the NCVEC and the test will only have questions from that pool, no surprises. so technically you could just memorize answers without understanding anything and still pass. a lot of people do that honestly. but i'd say at minimum try to understand the basic electrical stuff and the regulations because that actually matters once you're on the air and trying to figure out what you're allowed to do. HamStudy.org or the Ham Radio Prep app are both really solid, they track which questions you keep getting wrong and keep drilling you on those. three weeks is plenty of time if you put in maybe 20-30 minutes a day. the pool for tech has like 400 something questions and the test is only 35 of them so.

so i heard the Tri-County hamfest is back this year, think its in late october? havent been since like 2019 and im curious if its still worth the drive. last time i picked up a pretty decent MFJ tuner for cheap and some coax ends. wondering if the swap tables are still a thing or if they killed that off like some of the other fests have been doing lately also if anyones going from the northwest side lemme know, wouldnt mind carpooling honestly the parking situation over there is always kind of a mess

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after that storm last month that knocked out power for three days i finally got serious about it. i put together what i think is a decent go-kit but im not totally sure if i have everything i actually need or if im just hauling around a bunch of stuff that sounds good on paper. right now i have my FT-857D, a 40ah lifepo4 battery with a decent charger, about 30 feet of RG-8X, some random connectors i threw in a ziploc, my basic toolkit, a notepad and pens (yes actual paper lol), and ive been messing around with a buddipole for the antenna situation. also threw in a copy of my license and some local repeater freqs written down because i dont fully trust my memory under stress. what im not sure about is the power management side of things. like how long can i realistically run HF at low power on that battery, and should i be thinking about solar as a backup for the backup. also not sure if i need a second radio or if thats overkill for most situations. anyone been through an actual deployment or just has their kit dialed in, id love to hear what you actually use vs what just sits in the bag

so we had a pretty significant ice storm roll through our county last weekend and the local ARES group got activated for the first time since i joined about 8 months ago. i've been to all the nets and done the ICS courses online and thought i had a decent handle on things but honestly nothing really prepares you for the real thing we were deployed to the county EOC and i was assigned to handle HF traffic between our county and the neighboring one because the repeaters were having issues - some kind of power problem at the hilltop site. ended up running Winlink for most of the afternoon and a little bit of voice on 40m. the EC was great, really calm and kept everyone on task. i was fumbling around with the laptop more than i'd like to admit but eventually got into a rhythm one thing that caught me off guard was how much just sitting and waiting there is. like a lot of it is hurry up and wait. and then all of a sudden someone needs something and you need to be on it immediately. also the served agency people (county emergency management) were really nice but had basically no idea what we actually do or what our limitations are, so there was some back and forth on expectations anyway just wanted to share for anyone whos thinking about joining their local ARES group and wondering if its worth doing all the training. it is. even if you feel underprepared going in, the training does kick in. mostly.

yeah the layout thing is probably a big part of it. i had almost the exact same problem on a regen i built last year, ugly style on copper clad, and the audio was oscillating and just generally bad. ended up putting a small shield between the RF and audio sections made from some scrap copper clad and it helped a lot. not a perfect fix but enough to make it usable. also are you shielding the LM386 circuit at all or is it just out in the open? those things pick up all kinds of garbage if they're exposed.

yeah im in a similar boat, built my first dipole last spring and went back and forth on the balun thing forever. ended up just making a choke out of like 10 turns of RG-8X on a 4 inch PVC form, cost nothing and i feel better about it. whether it actually made a difference i honestly cant say, but my SWR got a little more stable across the band so something changed. your setup sounds totally reasonable though, 25 feet for 40m is decent especially inverted-V, the lower angle on those legs helps with regional contacts anyway.

so ive been watching the solar flux numbers for the past few weeks and they've been bouncing all over the place. had a day last tuesday where the SFI was up around 180 and 10 meters was absolutely alive, worked a bunch of stations in europe and even heard some JA's coming through around 1400 local which I wasnt really expecting at all. then literally two days later the flux dropped back down to like 130 something and 10 went completely dead, couldnt even hear stateside stations well. my question is basically how do you guys actually use the solar flux data to decide when to get on the air? like do you just check it in the morning and make a plan or is it more of a real time thing where youre constantly refreshing the DX cluster and seeing what opens up. I know about checking the A and K index too for geomagnetic stuff but honestly the relationship between all these numbers still feels a bit fuzzy to me. been licensed about 2 years now and still learning how this all ties together.

I was in the same spot about a year ago. What got me was the Gordon West study book, some people swear by it. I paired that with the Ham Radio Prep app on my phone and just did it on my lunch breaks. Passed first try though I definitely had a couple questions on the exam where I was just guessing if im being honest. One thing nobody told me beforehand — bring your ID to the VE session, I almost forgot mine and panicked in the parking lot. Also the fee for the FCC license is like 35 bucks now that you have to pay separately after you pass, that surprised me. Used to be free I think.

The closer gateways dropping mid-handshake is actually a pretty classic symptom of audio drive issues, weirdly enough. Too much signal into Vara can cause it just as much grief as too little. With the SignaLink you want your TX drive trimmed pretty conservatively — a lot of people crank it up thinking more is better and it just clips everything. Also check if those specific gateways are running an older version of Vara on their end, because there were some compatibility quirks with 4.7.x and certain older installs that got mostly sorted but not totally. On your store-and-forward question — yeah Winlink handles that automatically through the CMS (the central message servers). You dont have to do anything special. When you connect to any RMS gateway it syncs with the CMS, so it doesnt matter which gateway you hit, your messages are always available. The gateway itself isnt storing them, the CMS cloud thing is. The gateway is really just a radio-to-internet bridge essentially.

yeah been there... i always bring a backup battery now even for short activations. learned that lesson the hard way on a sota peak where i hiked 3 miles just to have my lifepo4 crap out after 45 minutes. now i carry two smaller batteries instead of one big one