David Williams99

so i've had my 857 for probably 6 years now and finally got around to doing the mars/cap mod to open up the TX a bit and while i was in there i figured id document some other stuff i've been doing to this radio over the past year or so because i havent seen a lot of people talk about the combination of mods together. the extended RX mod is dead simple, just the two diodes on the main board, D4901 and D4902 if i remember right, pulling those gets you coverage down into the AM broadcast band and up past 500mhz on the high end. reception quality drops off at the extremes obviously but for scanning its totally fine. the mars mod is also just a diode but i always forget which one and have to look it up every time. the thing i actually wanted to ask about is the DSP filter mod. ive been running the sherwood engineering narrow filter in the IF chain and the difference on crowded 40m SSB is actually pretty significant, like i can actually pull stations out that i was just getting walked over before. anyone else done this or messed with the internal filter options on the 857? curious if theres something better than what im running or if im already at the ceiling with this radio.

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now (general class) and i keep hearing people talk about checking into nets but honestly the whole thing is a bit confusing to me. like i know theres a net control station and you check in and say your callsign but beyond that i dont really know the etiquette or how to find whats actually active in my area or on hf. i tried jumping into something that sounded like a net on 40m last week and i think i messed up the timing or something because the net control acknowledged like 3 other stations and i never heard my call come back. not sure if i was too early, too late, or just buried under QRM. kind of embarrassing honestly. also saw something about a special event station for a lighthouse activation coming up next month and thought that might be fun to try. do those operate the same way as a normal net or is it more just a regular contact situation? any advice appreciated

so i finally got off my butt and did a proper WWFF activation at a state wildlife management area about 45 minutes from my house. ive been reading about it for months and just kept putting it off, but last saturday the weather was perfect and i threw my ft-891 in the car with my buddipole and just went for it. got there, found a decent spot away from the parking lot, set up in maybe 20 minutes and started calling on 40m. honestly it went better than i expected, made about 34 QSOs over a couple hours before the bugs got ridiculous and i had to pack up. logged it as KFF-something, the reference number i found on the WWFF database for that area. my questions are mostly around the logging side of things. do i need to upload to both WWFF and POTA separately or does one feed the other? i know some areas are in both programs. also does the 44 QSO minimum actually matter for WWFF or is that just for getting the full "activated" credit? i was 10 short and feeling a little bummed about it. and one more thing - does anybody bother with SSB only or do you mix in digital too, i was tempted to fire up ft8 but wasnt sure if that was kind of frowned upon or anything

so I finally did my first activation yesterday at a local state park, K-4829 if anyone knows it, and honestly it was kind of a mess but i think i still pulled it off. I was running my FT-891 off a 20ah lifepo4 battery and brought my end fed halfwave up in a tree maybe 25 feet which honestly was harder than expected because the branches were all super high and my throw bag kept getting stuck. anyway i got on 40 meters around 2pm local and started calling CQ POTA and... nothing. like 10 minutes of nothing. I wasn't sure if i was doing the callsign format right or if my antenna was actually working. eventually spotted myself on the POTA app and within like 2 minutes the pile started. nobody told me how much difference that makes. I ended up with 14 QSOs which i know barely qualifies but hey it counts right? logged it when i got home and uploaded the adif and it shows as pending. fingers crossed. for anyone else doing their first one — bring more rope than you think you need and get yourself spotted early. i wasted like half my battery just sitting there calling into the void before i figured that out.

cant speak to the 857 specifically but i did the same mod on an older 897 and honestly the main thing i noticed was just peace of mind more than anything measurable. warranty was already long gone on mine so that wasnt a factor lol. the fan swap sounds smart though, im paranoid about cooking finals on digital.

yeah fo-29 is hit or miss these days. i had a similar thing where i could barely hear myself and turned out my yagi polarization was off and i was losing like 3-4db just from that. might be worth checking if you have any way to rotate pol or at least know what you're transmitting. also what software are you using for the rotor? i switched to a different setup a while back and the tracking got way smoother, the satellite was actually in the beam the whole pass instead of lagging behind.

honestly depends a lot on what youre trying to do. if you want low angle radiation for dx the vertical wins on paper but only if the ground radial system is actually decent. most people underestimate how many radials you need to make a vertical actually perform — like 16 minimum buried radials to get close to what the models promise, and even then. if the borrowed vertical has maybe 2-3 radials on the ground thats probably more your problem than the antenna type itself. that said i switched to an inverted V a couple years ago and havent looked back, just way easier to deal with and quieter like the other guy said. 60 feet of space is plenty, you could even run it as a flattop if the height is an issue.

yeah what he said. i'd just add that i personally use all three and it's not as annoying to maintain as it sounds once you get your logging software set up to auto-upload. i use Log4OM and it pushes to LoTW and eQSL pretty much automatically after i close out a session. physical cards i only do direct mail for really special contacts, like a rare DXCC entity or something. sending everything through the bureau is fine but like i said it's slow and you kind of forget about it. congrats on the Japan contact by the way, JA is a great first DX

so ive had my TS-590SG for going on 6 years now and honestly it still works great but i keep reading about the IC-7300 and the 7610 and wondering if im missing out. the SDR waterfall stuff looks genuinely useful not just gimmicky. my main thing is contesting and some casual DX, not super serious about either just enjoy it. the 590 has always had solid rx in my opinion, noise floor is fine for my suburban QTH which already has its own issues anyway. but the UI feels dated now and i got to admit watching guys on youtube with the 7300 touchscreen makes me a little jealous. probably a stupid reason to spend money. anyone gone from the kenwood to the icom lineup recently? or even the 7610 specifically. wondering if the jump from a one receiver radio to the dual watch on the 7610 is actually useful in practice or just a spec sheet thing

so i finally joined our county ARES group about 4 months ago after getting my general, been doing the weekly nets and some of the online training through ARRL and honestly i feel pretty good about the theory side of things but next month our group is doing an actual activation drill with the county EOC and im kind of nervous about it like i know what ICS is supposed to be and i understand net discipline and all that but theres a difference between reading about it and actually sitting in an EOC with a real served agency depending on you. our EC has been great about explaining things but i dont want to ask too many basic questions and look like i dont belong there anyone been through their first drill activation and have any tips? mostly worried about the radio side, like how formal is it really, do they expect perfect procedure every single transmission or is there some grace given to newer operators during training exercises

im pretty new to chasing dx so take this for what its worth but what helped me most was just... slowing down and actually listening before i transmit. sounds obvious but when youre excited about a rare one its hard not to just start calling immediately lol. i worked my first ever african station last month on 17m and i think the reason i got through is i waited like 5 minutes, figured out the op was only working europe for a bit then swung to north america, and jumped in right at that transition point. pure luck maybe but felt good

yeah same boat here not too long ago. one thing that actually helped me was recording myself with a little voice recorder app on my phone and listening back. painful but you can really hear where the timing goes wrong. also slowing way down helped, like even slower than felt comfortable, just to build the muscle memory clean before speeding back up. the 590 keyer is decent so its probably not the radio.

so ive been chasing DX for about three years now and always struggled with pileups, like really bad. i'd just call and call and never get through and end up giving up frustrated. last weekend there was a pretty rare one active from a central african entity i wont name because im still not sure if the log is confirmed but i actually got through and wanted to share what finally clicked for me. the big thing was listening way more before calling. sounds obvious but i mean really listening — figuring out where the DX was coming back, how far up or down in the split they were working, the rhythm of how they were picking calls. this particular op was clearly working up about 3-4 kHz and then occasionally jumping way up when the pileup got thick. once i figured that out i started placing my call maybe 1 kHz above where everyone else seemed to be hammering and it worked on like the third try. also ran 100w into a vertical which honestly surprised me, i always assumed i needed an amp to have any shot. timing the call to end just as they finish their QRZ or the tail end of a previous QSO also seems to matter a lot. anyone else have techniques they've found actually work vs stuff that just sounds good in theory?

so i finally sat down last weekend and built my first real dipole from scratch, 40m cut to the standard half wavelength formula, 468/f and all that. used some 14 gauge stranded copper wire i had laying around from an old spool, fed it with about 50 feet of RG-8X through a 1:1 choke balun i wound myself on a type 31 toroid. the problem is the SWR at resonance is sitting around 1.8:1 which isnt terrible but i was hoping to get it down closer to 1.2 or so. i have it up in kind of an inverted-V configuration with the apex around 30 feet and the ends dropping down to about 10 feet off the ground. the legs arent exactly equal either, one side had to be shortened a bit to go around the garage. i trimmed both ends a couple times trying to get resonance to land on 7.200 and it did get there but that SWR wont budge much below 1.8. is this just the inverted-V geometry doing this? i know the angle affects the feedpoint impedance. or could it be the balun? i honestly wasnt super confident in my winding job on that toroid, only did about 10 turns of RG-8X and now im second guessing the number of turns. any thoughts appreciated, been at this for two days and starting to wonder if i should just buy a commercial antenna at this point lol

yeah this tripped me up too when i started. i think the way i finally got it was just -- if theres any noise or the signal is weak or youre on HF, spell it out. if youre on a crystal clear local repeater checking in at the club net, you can just say your call and nobody bats an eye. contesters though, i watched some contest operating videos and they use phonetics for literally everything because every second counts and they dont want to have to repeat themselves.