David Anderson

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 mins from my house. ive been listening to other people do these for months on the clusters and youtube and kept putting it off because i was nervous about operating portable and not having my shack setup to fall back on. anyway i just went for it.
brought my FT-891 and a random wire up in a tree, ran about 25 watts and honestly the pile wasnt huge but i got my 10 contacts in maybe 35 minutes which felt pretty good for a first time. had one guy who kept calling over everyone else and it was hard to pull calls out but i managed. logged on paper and transferred to ADIF later which was kind of a pain.
my questions — is there a faster way to do the logging in the field? i saw someone mention using an app but i dont know which ones people actually use. also when i uploaded to the POTA website it said the park reference was pending, is that normal or did i do something wrong with the K-number? i used the one from the POTA.app website so i think it was right but now im second guessing myself.
also for anyone whos done a bunch of these — is 40m usually the go-to band or should i have been trying 20m too? i stuck to 40 the whole time because i know it pretty well.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 mins from my house. ive been listening to other people do these for months on the clusters and youtube and kept putting it off because i was nervous about operating portable and not having my shack setup to fall back on. anyway i just went for it.
brought my FT-891 and a random wire up in a tree, ran about 25 watts and honestly the pile wasnt huge but i got my 10 contacts in maybe 35 minutes which felt pretty good for a first time. had one guy who kept calling over everyone else and it was hard to pull calls out but i managed. logged on paper and transferred to ADIF later which was kind of a pain.
my questions — is there a faster way to do the logging in the field? i saw someone mention using an app but i dont know which ones people actually use. also when i uploaded to the POTA website it said the park reference was pending, is that normal or did i do something wrong with the K-number? i used the one from the POTA.app website so i think it was right but now im second guessing myself.
also for anyone whos done a bunch of these — is 40m usually the go-to band or should i have been trying 20m too? i stuck to 40 the whole time because i know it pretty well.

that toroid winding struggle is so real, i basically destroyed half a bag of t50-2 cores on my first kit lol. i use a clamp now to hold the core while i wind, makes it way easier to keep track. also started marking every 5th turn with a sharpie on the wire before i wind which sounds silly but it works
nice work getting it on the air

so i've been putting off building the QCX mini for like 8 months, just sitting in a box on my desk staring at me. finally sat down thursday night and knocked it out over two evenings. honestly the build went pretty smooth, took my time with the toroids because those always stress me out, but they came out fine i think.
anyway saturday morning i threw it in my backpack with a random wire antenna and a 3ah lipo and drove out to a state park about 40 minutes away. found a picnic table away from everyone, tossed the wire up into a tree maybe 25 feet or so, fired it up on 40m and just started calling CQ.
i was not expecting much honestly. 5 watts, compromised antenna, no amp, just me and this little thing the size of a deck of cards basically. but within maybe 15 minutes i had my first contact, a guy in indiana, then another in ohio, and then completely out of nowhere a station in ontario came back to me really clean. i was kind of stunned. sat there for about 3 hours total and logged 11 contacts including that canadian station.
i know thats not impressive numbers for a lot of you but for me it was kind of a moment. like it really clicked why people love this mode so much. the efficiency of it, running basically nothing and still making contacts, there's something almost meditative about it. already thinking about what to build next, maybe a 20m version or trying to get into CW a little more seriously because i feel like that would open things up even more.
anyway just wanted to share. if anyones been on the fence about QRP portable stuff, at least in my experience this weekend it really delivered.

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and im starting to get into chasing DX a bit more seriously, got my first pile-up contact last week with a station in the Azores which was pretty exciting. anyway ive been reading about all these different awards and im just kind of overwhelmed honestly. DXCC, WAS, WAZ, there's like a dozen different ones and i dont even know where to start or which one makes sense for me to pursue given that im running 100w and a dipole in the attic.
like do you have to submit all your contacts through LoTW or can you still use paper QSLs? and does it matter what bands the contacts are on for the basic awards vs the endorsements? i feel like every time i look this up i find a different answer depending on which page i land on. anyone gone through this process recently and can kind of walk me through how it actually works in practice?

been using mine for about two years and still find stuff in the menus i didnt know was there. the scope amplitude and reference settings are worth tweaking if you havent — out of the box the waterfall can wash out weak signals depending on your antenna situation. i run a pretty modest dipole and had to adjust the reference level down maybe 10dB from default to make weak DX actually visible on the panadapter instead of just noise floor.

The software is pretty good, but it's unable to help you in turning theory into reality. You might fall foul of cutting errors, or find that at UHF getting a driven element spot on is very difficult. I always cut elements slightly long and trim to resonance with an analyzer.

I was in the same boat like six months ago and I just used the HamStudy app on my phone whenever I had a few minutes, waiting in line at the store or whatever. Took me maybe three weeks of casual studying and I passed on the first try. The actual test session I went to was run by a local club in a library meeting room, very low key, nothing like the DMV lol. Definitely not as scary as I thought it would be going in.
One thing I'd say is dont stress too much about understanding every single concept before you go take it. Some of the questions about like RF propagation or whatever you just kind of memorize the answer and learn what it actually means later when you start operating. plenty of time for that after you get the callsign

that toroid winding struggle is so real, i basically destroyed half a bag of t50-2 cores on my first kit lol. i use a clamp now to hold the core while i wind, makes it way easier to keep track. also started marking every 5th turn with a sharpie on the wire before i wind which sounds silly but it works
nice work getting it on the air