Emily Wilson23

so ive been running a TNC-Pi on a raspberry pi with direwolf for a few months now and everything seemed fine, packets were decoding locally and i could see them in the direwolf output but then i noticed nothing was actually making it to aprs.fi. spent like two evenings staring at the config before i even thought to check if the igate was actually connected to the server. turns out my filter string was malformed and direwolf was just silently not connecting to the APRS-IS tier2 server. no error that i noticed anyway. once i fixed the filter it started pushing packets almost immediately. but now im seeing some packets decoded locally that never show up on aprs.fi even with decent signal, wondering if thats normal or if theres still something wrong. these are mobile stations passing through so maybe they just dont have enough coverage from other digis to make it all the way in. also curious if anyone is running a receive-only igate vs a full digi+igate combo and what your thoughts are on that. i dont have a great antenna situation for transmitting so im thinking maybe just focus on the igate side for now.

oh man yeah this happens to me every couple years. i usually just let it sit and eventually something pulls me back in, last time it was a contest i hadnt done before and that was enough to get the juices flowing again. dont force it. the radio will be there when you're ready

yeah cycle 25 has been something else, most of the predictions had us peaking around 2025 or so but the smoothed sunspot numbers have been running way ahead of what NOAA forecast. i was licensed back in the late 90s during cycle 23 and honestly this is starting to feel similar. 10m was basically a free DX machine back then, you could work europe with 5 watts and a wet noodle antenna if conditions were right. the thing people dont always realize is that even within a good cycle the day to day variation is huge. keep an eye on the solar flux index, anything above like 150 and 10m is usually worth a listen. spaceweather.com and DXMaps are both worth bookmarking if you havent already. enjoy it while it lasts because the low part of the cycle is genuinely depressing, you start to forget 10m can even do anything useful

so i finally got around to building a proper wire dipole instead of just using that crappy j-pole i've had for years. cut it for 40m using the standard 468/f formula which gave me about 66 feet total, 33 each side. strung it up in an inverted V configuration with the apex at around 30 feet off a tree in the backyard. the problem im having is at the feedpoint — i just twisted the coax center to one leg and shield to the other, wrapped it in self amalgamating tape and called it a day. SWR is reading around 1.8:1 at 7.150 which honestly isnt terrible but i was expecting it to come down a bit more. wondering if the feedpoint connection itself could be causing issues or if this is just normal variation from the inverted V geometry dropping the impedance a bit. also should i have used a 1:1 balun here? i didnt and now im second guessing that decision every time i see the shield getting warm after a long transmission. any advice from people who've actually built these things appreciated, im running about 100w and the antenna seems to be working but something feels off

the chirp at the start of each element is almost certainly your keying waveform yeah. if you're just hard-switching the oscillator or the PA without any shaping circuit you'll get that every time. classic thing that catches first-time builders. what you want is a simple RC network on the keying line to shape the rise time, something in the range of 5ms rise is usually enough to clean it up without making the dits sound mushy. EMRFD covers this if you dig into the keying chapter, but theres also a ton of stuff in the old QST technical notes about it. the heat issue is probably separate. what's your bias point on the 2N3553? if you're running it class A at those power levels it'll get toasty. class C would be more efficient for CW but you'd need to think about how that interacts with your keying. without a scope it's rough but you can at least measure the quiescent current at the collector and compare to the datasheet recommendations, give you a clue whether the bias is way off

yeah the formula is legit, ive built probably a dozen dipoles over the years and i almost always end up trimming less than a foot off each side at most. the bigger variable is honestly what the wire is near — buildings, gutters, wet ground right under the feed point, all that stuff shifts things around more than the cut length does in my experience. your inverted V is fine dont overthink it, mine has been up for three years in basically the same config and works great for everything except serious DX chasing where id want something with lower takeoff angle anyway.

so i've been licensed for about three years now and i keep telling myself i'm going to put together a real go-kit and then never actually do it. after the storms we had last month knocked out power for like four days in my area i decided enough is enough and i actually started pulling stuff together this weekend. right now i've got my FT-891 set aside for it, a 40ah lithium battery from bioenno, and i grabbed one of those harbor freight pelican-style cases to put everything in. i've got a roll of wire for a random wire antenna and a 9:1 unun i built last year. thinking about adding a small solar panel too but havent figured out which one yet. my question is — what do people usually forget when they're building these things out? i feel like i have the obvious stuff but i always see experienced guys at field day or SET events pull out things i never would have thought of. like i remember someone had this laminated card with local repeater frequencies and ARES net info and i thought that was so smart because who wants to be digging through their phone when things get hectic. also not sure if i should keep everything in one case or split it into like a radio case and a separate power/accessories case. curious what people who actually deploy with this stuff think about that.

oh man I didnt even know Hamvention was coming up that soon, this will actually be my first year going. just got my general ticket in February so im still pretty new to all this. is it worth going even if your not super into contesting or DX, like is there enough there for someone who just wants to learn more general stuff and maybe find some deals on used gear?

im in basically the same boat as you, just got my general a couple months ago and been trying to figure all this out. one thing that helped me was downloading the DX Toolbox app on my phone so i can check spots without having to be at the computer. not perfect but its nice when im setting up the radio and want to see whats active before i even sit down

ok so ive been listening on HF for about two weeks now and i keep hearing and seeing stuff like QSL, QRZ, QTH, QRM and honestly i dont even know where to start with all of it. someone in a QSO (i think thats what the conversation is called?) said something about being QRP and i had to just nod along. is there like a master list somewhere or do people just kind of pick it up over time? also whats the difference between saying 73 and just saying goodbye, is 73 actually a Q code or something different entirely? feels like theres a whole second language layered on top of ham radio that nobody told me about before i got my ticket

yeah the collins filters make a real difference on those older icoms, done the same thing on a 735 years back. the 2.1 is a good middle ground for SSB honestly, i wouldnt go narrower unless youre really CW only because it starts to sound kinda boxy on voice. one thing i'll mention — if you havent already, look at whether your IF shift is calibrated right after the swap. sometimes the center freq is slightly off from the stock filter and you end up wondering why strong signals still sound a bit off even with the better filter in there. easy to tweak in the menu if i remember right on the 706.

yeah i caught some of that opening Tuesday evening, worked a couple of Florida stations from up here in the midwest which isnt too crazy but then out of nowhere a Puerto Rico station popped up super strong and we got it done in like 4 exchanges. my neighbor (also a ham, been licensed since the 70s) came over and said it reminded him of some of the openings he used to see back when solar conditions were similar to now. we're climbing toward solar max so this might just be the beginning of a good summer for 6m. on the IC-905 thing — i saw it at Dayton last year in the display case but they werent letting people actually use it. looked really well built. pricy though, not sure i can justify it when my IC-7300 does everything i actually need.

so ive been running a flat top dipole for 40m at about 35 feet for the past couple years, fed with coax and a 1:1 choke at the feedpoint. works fine, no complaints really. but i keep reading that an inverted V with the apex at that same height performs noticeably worse because the legs angle down and change the radiation angle or something. my neighbor just put up an inverted V with the apex at maybe 40 feet and he seems to be working roughly the same stations i am, sometimes better on certain paths. now im not trying to start a religious war here but i genuinely cant figure out if the difference matters at the HF level where atmospheric conditions are gonna swamp a few dB of antenna advantage anyway. the inverted V is obviously way easier to support since you only need one high point. i have two trees but one of them is starting to look sketchy and if it goes down im probably going back to a single support situation. anyone actually done a side by side on this or is it one of those things that looks big in theory but gets lost in the noise in practice?

i just did mine like two months ago so this is fresh lol. the operating procedures section threw me off a little, like knowing when to use certain modes and the band privileges for different license classes, theres a lot of specific numbers to keep straight. also the part about antenna theory i had to go over a few times. but yeah hamstudy will get you through it, i just kept drilling the questions i was getting wrong until they stuck. dont sleep on the part about electrical safety either, theres more of it than you'd expect

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done plenty of HF DX, some VHF contest stuff, but EME has always been kind of this mythical thing in the background that i never thought i could actually do. lately ive been reading more about it and with JT65 and stuff the barrier seems way lower than it used to be so im actually starting to think about it seriously. my current setup is nothing special for EME purposes, i have a 144mhz yagi that i use for weak signal work, maybe 14 elements, and a TS-790 running about 45 watts. i know thats nowhere near enough for traditional EME but i keep reading that small station EME is possible now with digital modes. is that actually realistic or are people exaggerating. like what is the actual minimum to make a contact, not just hear the moon noise but actually complete a qso. also confused about the az-el rotor situation. i have a small yaesu rotor but i dont think it does elevation. do i absolutely need elevation control or can you work a window when the moon is at a workable angle without it. feel like i might be overthinking the rotor thing but also dont want to spend months setting up only to find out ive been wasting time without proper pointing.