Robert Taylor83

so i've been putting off building one of these for like two years now, always told myself i'd get around to it, and last month i finally just ordered a QCX mini kit from QRP Labs and sat down and did it. took me about three evenings spread over a week, my soldering isnt the greatest but i followed the instructions pretty carefully and honestly the whole thing just worked first time i powered it up which i was NOT expecting.
been running it portable a couple weekends now, just hiking out to a local park with a random wire thrown up in a tree and the little rig running off a small lipo pack. made a contact into michigan last saturday with like 4 watts on 40m and the other guy gave me a solid 579 which honestly felt like a bigger deal than any of the contacts i've made with my 100w base station. there's something about the whole low power thing that makes every contact feel a lot more satisfying, not sure how to explain it.
anyway wondering if anyone else has been doing QRP portable stuff and has tips on antennas for field use. i've been reading about end-fed half waves and wondering if those are worth the hassle compared to just tossing a random wire up

Are you implementing Kenwood TS-480 emulation for the IC-718 CAT interface? That's usually the most compatible approach. The ESP32 Arduino core has some quirks with serial buffer handling compared to ATmega chips.

so ive been messing with LEO sat ops for a few months now and finally got a decent enough setup to try AO-73. running a yaesu ft-818 for the uplink on 435 and a separate sdr++ on a v-dipole for the downlink around 145 mhz. tracking with gpredict which honestly works pretty well once you get the TLEs updated.
the problem is i can hear the transponder passband fine, and i can even hear other stations working each other which is cool. but when i try to transmit i either cant find myself in the passband or i pop up way off from where i think i should be. ive got the doppler compensation running on gpredict and its supposed to be talking to my radio via hamlib but im not totally sure the rig control is actually doing anything. like the dial doesnt seem to be moving the way i expect during a pass.
anybody run into this before with gpredict and an 818? wondering if its a hamlib config thing or if im just not understanding how the doppler correction should work on a linear bird. uplink and downlink doppler are obviously different frequencies and rates so im not clear on whether gpredict handles that automatically or if i have to set it up a certain way.

So I upgraded to General about three weeks ago and got my sequential callsign assigned, which is fine but its kind of a mouthful and honestly just not very memorable on the air. I started looking into the vanity call process and I think I understand the basics but there are a few things that are tripping me up.
From what I can tell you submit through the ULS on the FCC site, pick your preferred callsign from whichever pool you're eligible for, and then there's like a filing window where other people can also apply for the same call. After the window closes if nobody else applied you just get it, but if multiple people applied it goes to whoever has some kind of preference based on license class or whether you held the call before or something like that. Is that right? I feel like I read like five different explanations and they all contradicted each other a little bit.
Also I read somewhere that 1x2 and 2x1 calls are only available to Extra class, is that still the case? I'm General so I'd be looking at a 1x3 or 2x2 format I guess. Just want to make sure I'm not wasting my time applying for something I'm not even eligible for. Been using AE7 lookup tools trying to find something decent thats not already taken but the pickings are slim in my district.

oh man the feeling of making a contact at QRP power is something else isnt it. i remember my first one and i kept thinking the other guy was going to say QRZ or ask me to repeat but nope just a clean exchange. kind of changes how you think about RF in general
i cant really help much on the antenna question since im still figuring that out myself — i have a buddistick i've been experimenting with for portable but im not totally convinced its the best choice for low power, feels like it has a lot of loss. might just go back to a simple dipole hung from a tree or something

oh man i remember being exactly where you are, it felt overwhelming at first but once you just start submitting stuff and see the credits tick up it becomes kind of addicting honestly. one thing i wish somebody had told me early on is to make sure your LoTW certificate is set up correctly with the right callsign and the right dates, i had a mismatch early on and lost credit for like a dozen contacts that never matched properly
also dont sleep on the lower bands for chasing new entities, 40 and 80 meters at the right time of day opens up stuff that 20 meters never will. thats kind of how i got hooked, stayed up late one night and worked a station in the Indian Ocean on 40 that i never would have caught otherwise

so i was just doing my usual morning check on pskreporter and noticed a huge cluster of 6m spots across the midwest and into the southeast, logged like 14 states in about 45 minutes which is more than i usually get in a whole week on that band. not sure if its an Es opening or what but the spots were showing some pretty long haul paths too, saw a few Caribbean stations showing up around 0900 local which got my attention fast.
also heard a rumor that Icom is doing some kind of announcement next month, somebody on the reflector was talking about a possible successor to the 7300 but i have no idea if thats just wishful thinking or if theres actual substance to it. would not surprise me, that radio has been out for a while now and the market seems ready for something new. anyway if youre on 6m keep an eye on the DX clusters this week, conditions seem really favorable right now

oh man i remember being exactly where you are, it felt overwhelming at first but once you just start submitting stuff and see the credits tick up it becomes kind of addicting honestly. one thing i wish somebody had told me early on is to make sure your LoTW certificate is set up correctly with the right callsign and the right dates, i had a mismatch early on and lost credit for like a dozen contacts that never matched properly
also dont sleep on the lower bands for chasing new entities, 40 and 80 meters at the right time of day opens up stuff that 20 meters never will. thats kind of how i got hooked, stayed up late one night and worked a station in the Indian Ocean on 40 that i never would have caught otherwise

Are you implementing Kenwood TS-480 emulation for the IC-718 CAT interface? That's usually the most compatible approach. The ESP32 Arduino core has some quirks with serial buffer handling compared to ATmega chips.

so ive been messing with LEO sat ops for a few months now and finally got a decent enough setup to try AO-73. running a yaesu ft-818 for the uplink on 435 and a separate sdr++ on a v-dipole for the downlink around 145 mhz. tracking with gpredict which honestly works pretty well once you get the TLEs updated.
the problem is i can hear the transponder passband fine, and i can even hear other stations working each other which is cool. but when i try to transmit i either cant find myself in the passband or i pop up way off from where i think i should be. ive got the doppler compensation running on gpredict and its supposed to be talking to my radio via hamlib but im not totally sure the rig control is actually doing anything. like the dial doesnt seem to be moving the way i expect during a pass.
anybody run into this before with gpredict and an 818? wondering if its a hamlib config thing or if im just not understanding how the doppler correction should work on a linear bird. uplink and downlink doppler are obviously different frequencies and rates so im not clear on whether gpredict handles that automatically or if i have to set it up a certain way.

Think of it this way: An inverted linear transponder reverses the ordering of frequencies between input and output. The Doppler shift shifts the input and output frequencies the same way, and so there is some cancellation due to the reversing effect of the transponder. This makes manual tuning much easier compared to non-inverting transponders.