Ashley Wilson95

I upgraded last spring after sitting on my Tech for almost four years and wish I had done it sooner. The exam itself was manageable, I used the ARRL General Class book which goes into more depth than just flash cards but I think that helped me actually understand what I was doing when I got on HF instead of just passing a test. One thing nobody told me was that even after you upgrade you still gotta think about what equipment you need since most HTs obviously wont do HF, so factor in the cost of a radio and an antenna because that adds up fast. But once you get on 20m and actually make a contact somewhere across the world on your own radio its a completely different feeling than repeater stuff, worth it for sure.

not dumb questions at all, this stuff confused me for a while too when i first started chasing DX. so yeah entities are definitely not the same as countries — the ARRL has what they call the DXCC list and it has like 340 something current entities on it, some are just weird little islands or specific territories that have their own status for historical or political reasons. Bouvet Island is a good example, technically Norwegian but it counts as its own entity. there's a searchable list on the ARRL website and LOTW will actually show you the entity name when a contact gets confirmed so that makes it pretty easy to track. for the credits — any mode, any band counts for the basic DXCC award as long as the contact is confirmed. so if you work someone on 40m FT8 and they upload to LOTW and it matches, thats a credit. once you hit 100 confirmed you apply for the basic award and yeah there's a fee, i think its around $15 for members but check the current price. after that you can apply for endorsements like Mixed, Phone, CW, and individual band awards, each of those has a fee too but its not crazy expensive. mixed is just whatever mode gets you there fastest. honestly just keep logging everything and watch your LOTW totals, it'll start making sense real quick once the confirmations start rolling in

That's fantastic propagation for this time of year! I worked JA on 15M last night around 2300 UTC with similar numbers. Try 12M too if your antenna covers it - sometimes those quiet geomagnetic conditions really help the higher bands stay open.

congrats on the first one, that feeling after you close out a successful activation is pretty hard to beat. to answer your questions — the summit reference needs to be exact when you upload, like letter case and the hyphen all have to match what's in the database or it'll kick back an error. sotadata is pretty picky about that stuff but once you do a couple uploads it becomes second nature. posting on SOTAwatch ahead of time is definitely not required but honestly it makes a huge difference in how fast you get your 4 contacts. chasers around the world are watching the alerts and spots and they'll come find you, otherwise you're calling CQ into the void hoping someone happens to be listening. i usually post an alert the night before with an estimated time and frequency and then self-spot when im actually on the air. some activators dont bother and still get their contacts but it can take longer especially if you're on a less popular summit. S2S is just summit to summit and yeah you log it the same way basically except you want to note the other person's summit reference in your log. when you upload to sotadata there's a field for it. both of you get points for S2S which is a nice bonus, chasers love confirming those too.

yeah that sounds pretty familiar honestly. when i was learning i had the exact same thing happen around 18-20 wpm, and for me it really was just technique catching up with my brain. the paddle gap adjustment made a huge difference though — if the contacts are too close you get a hair trigger and your fingers start firing dits you didn't intend. try opening up the contact spacing just a tiny bit and see if that helps you stay cleaner at higher speeds. also one thing that helped me was not trying to speed up gradually during a session. id just sit down and do everything at one comfortable speed for a whole week before bumping it up. the Koch method talks about this but even outside that framework it seems to work. your brain needs time to burn in the patterns at each speed before the muscle memory is really solid. the MFJ keyer should be fine for what youre doing, i wouldnt blame the hardware yet.

I just did my first SOTA last month and was amazed how quickly the contacts came once I spotted. Had my 4 QSOs in 15 minutes! The community is super supportive of new activators.

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now, got my general last spring, and i keep telling myself im going to get a proper go-kit together but i just never do it. last month we had a pretty bad ice storm here and the local ARES group got activated and i showed up with basically nothing organized — just my HT and a random bag of cables i grabbed on the way out the door. felt pretty embarrassed honestly. so now im actually trying to do this right. i have a Yaesu FT-857D that i was thinking about using as the main rig since its pretty compact and does HF/VHF/UHF. power is the big question for me. do most people run a dedicated battery setup in their kit or just rely on whatever power is available at the served agency? i was looking at those bioenno lithium packs but theyre not cheap. also wondering about antennas — i assume a portable dipole or something like a buddistick type thing? idk also what do you keep in the kit that isnt radio stuff? like documentation, logs, that kind of thing. i feel like theres a whole organizational side to this that i keep overlooking

I'm still on single radio and reading this thread trying to figure out if SO2R is even worth it at my license level — i just got my extra last year and i've only done maybe 4 or 5 contests seriously. is it something you can ease into or do you basically have to rebuild your whole station? seems like a big investment in switching and filtering before you see any benefit

so i've been chasing this one entity for probably eight months, K1Z was active for a few weeks last year and i couldnt get through no matter what i tried. just brute forcing it with 100w into a dipole wasnt cutting it obviously. finally got through last month on a different expedition and wanted to share what actually made a difference for me because most of the advice i found online was either too vague or just said 'get a better antenna' which ok thanks first thing that helped was actually listening way longer before transmitting. like embarrassingly long. i spent probably 20 minutes just figuring out where exactly the DX station was listening, not just 'up 5' but where in that spread they were actually coming back. you can tell after a while if they're moving systematically through the pile or just cherry picking signals. once i had that figured out i'd place my call just slightly above or below where everyone else was clustered. not by much, maybe 200-300hz, just enough to be a distinct signal. second thing, and this sounds dumb but i was sending my full callsign every time for months. switched to just the last two letters when the DX was clearly getting partials and that helped a lot. timing is huge too — coming in right as the pile starts to die down after a QSO, not right when everyone piles back on after a callsign is sent. anyway curious what techniques other people use, especially for working split on phone vs cw because i feel like im still leaving stuff on the table with SSB pileups

ok so ive been interested in ham radio for probably a year now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and it got me curious. i finally decided i want to actually get my technician license but im kind of overwhelmed by where to start. like do i just show up somewhere and take a test or is there coursework involved? i looked at the FCC website and it was not super helpful for a complete beginner also how hard is the tech exam actually? i have a pretty decent background in electronics from tinkering with stuff but no formal training. someone at work mentioned hamstudy.org but i dont know if thats legit or just some random site. any advice would be appreciated i just dont want to spend months studying if i dont need to

Thanks for doing real testing instead of just theory! I'm setting up my first mobile rig and was leaning toward mag mount for convenience. A good antenna outside the vehicle will make the biggest impact on your radio system performance - cutting corners or buying cheap Chinese junk will just frustrate you. Sounds like NMO is worth the installation effort.

ok so i finally sat down and actually participated in CQ WW SSB instead of just listening to it like i have the past two years. ran about 6 hours total across saturday and sunday from my modest setup, just a 100w rig and a wire dipole in the attic, and i ended up working like 47 countries which i honestly did not expect at all. the pileups were insane, especially on 15m saturday afternoon when the band opened up. i had no idea what i was doing half the time, kept forgetting to give my full callsign and exchange in the right order, had one guy pretty annoyed at me i think lol. but by sunday morning i kind of had a rhythm going. anyway it got me thinking about ARRL Field Day next year because i know our local club does a big setup but ive never joined them for it. is that worth going to as a newer op? and also someone mentioned SOTA to me at the club meeting last month but i still dont fully understand how that works — like do you have to hike to a specific summit that's on some list? or can it be any hill basically. also wondering if there are any good contests coming up before the end of the year that would be good for someone still learning the ropes

went through almost the exact same thing last year. ended up with the RSP1A and honestly its a pretty solid jump from the v3 dongle, especially on HF — the preselection filters actually make a noticeable difference and you're not getting that LW/MW broadcast bleed everywhere. noise floor is meaningfully lower. i run it in SDRuno mostly but you can use it in SDR# with a plugin, its a bit fiddly to set up but works fine once you get it going. if youre not transmitting the HackRF is genuinely overkill and the ADC resolution on it is only 8-bit anyway which is actually worse than the RSP1A for pure receive sensitivity. people forget that. the HackRF is great if you need wide tuning range and TX for stuff like replay attacks or testing, but for just listening the SDRplay wins for the money in my opinion. theres also the RSPdx if you want to go a step further on HF specifically but thats another jump in price.

180-190 on 15m ssb is respectable, dont be too hard on yourself. i've seen people claim higher but conditions and where you're located matter so much. what antennas are you running? that changes the whole picture on rate more than most people want to admit. ive been doing single radio contesting for years and keep going back and forth on whether SO2R is worth the station complexity for someone not in a great RF location like me (suburban lot, neighbors, the whole deal). curious what your second radio setup looks like band-filter wise.

congrats on the first one, that's always the hardest part just getting yourself out there. HAMRS handles the park reference automatically when you set up the activation at the start, it embeds it in the ADIF file so when you upload to pota.app it reads it correctly. you dont need to manually add it to each contact as long as you started the log properly with the park selected. just double check before you upload that the park reference shows in the file header, you can open the ADIF in any text editor and look for the MY_SIG_INFO field, should have your K- number in there. as for announcing on air, most activators i hear just say something like "this is W1XYZ, activating K-1234, Parks on the Air" at the start of each CQ. some people drop the full explanation after the first few contacts and just say the park number. doesnt really matter much as long as hunters can hear the reference. the main thing is saying it clearly enough that people logging you can get it right. and yeah the spy thing happens more than you'd think, i usually just say i'm talking to people around the world and that either impresses them or they walk away faster

so ive been licensed for about a year now, general class, mostly doing stuff on ft8 and occasionally some ssb but everyone keeps telling me i should learn cw and honestly im kind of curious about it. the problem is i have no idea where to start. like i tried looking stuff up and theres like a million different methods and apps and some people say learn by sound not by memorizing dots and dashes and others say use the koch method and i dont even know what half of this means is there like a standard way people do this or does it just depend on the person. also how long does it realistically take before you can actually have a qso with someone, not just copy slow practice transmissions. im not in a huge rush just want to know what im getting into before i commit to practicing every day