Emily Moore

Ok so ive been trying to wrap my head around Winlink for the past few weeks and I feel like every time I think I understand it something else confuses me. I get the basic concept, email over radio, but the actual setup is where I'm losing the plot. Right now I have Winlink Express installed and I can connect via Telnet just fine which I know is just internet, not actual RF. I want to do real HF connections to a gateway but I'm not sure if I need to set up my own RMS gateway or just connect to someone else's. I have a Signalink USB and an IC-7300 and I've been using VARA HF which seems like the thing everyone's using now. I can hear stations on PSKreporter so I know at least I'm receiving something. The part that's confusing me is the difference between being a Winlink client (just sending/receiving my own mail) vs running an actual RMS gateway that other people can use. I don't think I want to run a gateway, I just want to connect to one. But the documentation kind of mixes these two things together and I'm getting lost. Also what do the different session types actually mean in practice, like when do I pick VARA HF vs Pactor vs Winmor. Anyone been through this recently and can explain it in plain terms

so ive been running a remote station for about 8 months now, got an IC-7300 at the home QTH with a remotehams RRC-1258 and a pretty solid fiber connection on that end, like 200 meg symmetrical. my end when im operating remotely is usually just whatever hotel wifi or home cable, and for the most part it works ok but ive been getting these dropouts that last maybe 3-4 seconds and then it reconnects, sometimes mid-sentence which is obviously brutal in a pile-up. the weird thing is the audio comes back fine and the rig control picks back up but the SDR portion through the remotehams software sometimes just freezes the waterfall completely and i have to close the SDR window and reopen it, doesnt drop the actual rig connection just the panadapter display. running the SDR as a separate stream alongside the main audio/rig control link. been messing with the jitter buffer settings and i lowered the audio quality a bit thinking maybe it was bandwidth but that didnt seem to help at all. anyone have a similar setup or know if theres a specific buffer setting in the remotehams client that handles the SDR stream differently than the audio? or is this just a fact of life with internet linked remote ops and im expecting too much from it

JS8Call activity is real but you gotta know where to look. 40m around 7.078 seems to be the most consistent spot at least in north america, and evenings local time tend to have more people actually chatting vs just the automated heartbeat stuff. the heartbeat and aprs-relay type functions make it look busier than it is in terms of real operators sitting at the keyboard. your comparison to PSK31 is fair. PSK31 is honestly still my favorite for a proper keyboard-to-keyboard qso when the band cooperates, theres something about the waterfall and seeing that little BPSK trace that just feels right. but JS8Call has saved me on marginal evenings where 20m was too long and 40m was getting noisy — that extra few dB of weak signal performance actually matters. i think of them as different tools. PSK31 when the band is decent, JS8Call when its sketchy or i want the store-and-forward stuff to work.

i did mine like 8 months ago and was in the same spot as you, had no idea where to start. ended up just using hamstudy every night for maybe 10 days and then took the test. passed with only like 2 wrong which suprised me honestly because some of the electrical theory questions felt like a guess. one thing i'd say is dont skip the questions you dont understand just because you can memorize the right answer without knowing why, especially the ones about like RF safety and frequencies because that stuff actually comes up when you start operating. but yeah it's doable for sure just start somewhere and dont overthink it

so ive been meaning to try LEO satellite work for probably two years now and last weekend i finally just did it. used a cheap arrow antenna and my ft-818 with a second ht for the uplink, just manually doppler tuned by ear which i know sounds crazy but it actually worked better than i expected once i got the hang of it the pass i worked was maybe 8 minutes overhead and i made 3 contacts, which felt pretty good for a first attempt. the linear transponder on AO-73 is pretty narrow so you really have to listen carefully and keep adjusting, i kept drifting off and losing myself in the passband which was frustrating. also had to hold the yagi and tune two radios at the same time which is basically a three handed job, my wife thought i looked ridiculous standing in the backyard pointing at the sky anyway my question is about tracking software. i was using Heavens-Above on my phone which worked fine for predicting the pass but i feel like theres probably something better for real time tracking and doppler shift display. what are people using these days, gpredict still the go-to or is there something newer worth trying

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend, been meaning to try it for months after reading about it here and on the POTA forums. picked a local nature reserve that had a WWFF reference — KFF-something, i wrote it down somewhere — and headed out saturday morning with my KX2 and a linked dipole. the operating part went fine honestly, got my 44 contacts in a couple hours which i guess is the minimum for a valid activation, mostly 40m with a bit of 20m toward the end. but man the logistics were a pain. i had no idea the parking situation would be so bad, had to carry everything about half a mile from the car which with the tripod and battery and everything was just... a lot. and then of course it started drizzling around noon. also not totally sure i logged the reference correctly in my software. i was using HAMRS and just typed it in the notes field but im reading now that it needs to be in a specific spot for the WWFF upload? anyone done this before and know if i messed up the log or if theres a way to fix it after the fact

yeah the 10 meter opening last Saturday was something else, I worked 14 countries in about two hours from my backyard vertical which never happens. heard a pile of Spanish stations just absolutely booming in and even got a couple JA contacts which I wasnt expecting at all. the solar flux index has been sitting up in the 200s on and off which is wild compared to a few years ago when we were scraping for contacts. on the Icom thing I wouldnt read too much into the rumors until we actually see something official, remember last year people were convinced Yaesu was dropping a brand new flagship transceiver and it turned out to just be a firmware update announcement. that said I do think the 7300 is due for a refresh eventually, the SDR architecture is still solid but the front end could use some work if you ask me. guess we'll see in May.

so ive been contesting seriously for maybe 3 years now, mostly CQWW and SS, and i keep reading about SO2R being this massive rate multiplier but every time i try to actually run it i feel like im just making a mess of both radios instead of actually working stations efficiently. like i get the concept, run on one radio, S&P on the second while the other is in a lull, but in practice my brain kinda falls apart around hour 6 especially when the pileups get heavy. currently running a K3 as my main and i borrowed a friends FT-991 for the second radio last CQWW but the intermod between the two was pretty rough even with bandpass filters, i think the issue was i was too cheap to get the proper 2-radio setup with the RX antennas separated properly. or maybe my station just isnt laid out right for it. anyway the rate i was getting didnt really justify the headache. so whats the actual learning curve look like for people who got SO2R working well? and is there a threshold like number of contacts per hour where single radio just kind of plateaus and SO2R is the only way to push past it? just trying to figure out if i should invest more time into this or focus on other things like better antennas or improving my CW speed

oh man i remember this exact feeling when i was starting out, you're definitely not alone. ok so real talk — the Baofeng stuff works and there's nothing wrong with starting there, lots of people do, but the UI is genuinely kind of a pain and the manuals read like they were translated by a very tired robot. if you're ok with spending a little time on youtube figuring it out it's fine for getting on repeaters that said if your budget can stretch even to like $120-130 the Yaesu FT-65 is just a nicer experience. the menus make more sense, audio is clearer, feels more solid in the hand. i gave one to my daughter when she got her ticket and she figured it out without much help which says something. dual band meaning 2m and 70cm does matter in practice because a lot of repeaters around here are 70cm, so yeah id say it's worth having APRS is a bit of a separate thing — you'd need either an HT that has it built in like the Yaesu FT5DR or you'd connect a regular HT to something like a mobilinkd TNC and use your phone. don't worry about that part yet, get on the repeaters first and have fun with it

yeah the attic dipole thing is wild but low verticals on 40 really do struggle, especially receive. i went through something similar a couple years back. threw up an inverted V at like 28 feet at center because thats all i had and it wasnt perfect but the noise floor dropped noticeably and i started actually copying stations that were just mush before. sometimes getting away from ground level matters more than the math says it should.

yeah so your uncle is sort of right but also not entirely. the way it works now is you'll get a sequential callsign assigned automatically when your license is granted — that just happens, you don't really have to do anything. but you can absolutely apply for a vanity call at the same time or pretty much right after your license shows up in ULS. you don't have to wait for the sequential one to come in first or anything like that. the fee thing you're thinking of — yeah the FCC started charging $35 for new licenses and vanity applications a couple years ago. used to be free which was nice. so when you go to apply for a vanity you'll pay through pay.gov as part of the process. the application itself goes through the ULS system, you log in with your FRN and file a Form 605. the vanity application has a window period at the start where all the applications for a specific callsign get treated equally so it's not purely first-come-first-served on day one, just something to keep in mind if you're going after a popular or short call. honestly the hardest part is just picking what call you want and then checking if it's actually available. there are sites that let you search available calls by district and license class. good luck, it's a fun rabbit hole to go down

the plateau you're describing around 12-13 wpm is SO common, almost everyone hits it there. what happens is your brain is still hearing individual letters and trying to consciously decode them, and at some point you have to make a mental shift to hearing whole words and common phrases as sounds instead of dit-dah sequences. its honestly less of a skill thing and more of a brain rewiring thing if that makes sense. what helped me break through was two things. first i bumped my character speed way up — like set farnsworth timing so letters come at 20wpm but with extra space between them. that forces your ears to learn the sound of each character at speed even if you're only copying at 12. second thing was just copying actual on-air QSOs, even if i only got maybe 40% of it. real signals with real fists and real QSB are different from perfect computer generated tones and your brain adapts fast when stakes feel real. took me probably 8 months total to get comfortable at 20 but i wasnt always consistent with practice so your mileage may vary

ok so i just passed my tech exam like two weeks ago and im still trying to figure out what exactly im allowed to do. i know i have HF privileges on 10 meters but beyond that its kind of fuzzy. like i was reading part 97 last night and honestly it reads like legal jargon and i kept getting lost trying to figure out if im allowed to do stuff like talk to international stations or if thats only a general/extra thing. also someone at the club meeting said something about 15 meters being off limits for techs entirely but then someone else said there was an exception for something? i dont even know what to search for at this point. is there a plain english version of part 97 somewhere that actually makes sense

that RPM-varying buzz is almost certainly your alternator. classic symptom. the good news is its usually pretty fixable. first thing i'd try before anything else is an inline noise filter on the power lead right at the radio — Astatic and a few others make decent ones and they're cheap enough to just try. also check that your power leads are going directly to the battery and not to some distribution block or fuse panel under the hood because picking up noise from other circuits is super common. the hood bonding strap can help too but i'd do the power supply stuff first since thats usually where alternator whine comes in. and honestly the mag mount situation might be making things worse since you dont have a great RF ground through the vehicle body. once you do the permanent mount with a good ground plane you might find a lot of it cleans up on its own. the 857d is a great radio in a mobile setup once you get the noise situation sorted, worth the effort for sure.

so ive been chasing SOTA for about 8 months now and finally decided to actually get off my butt and do an activation. im doing W4T/SU-031 this saturday, its only a 4 pointer but its close to home and the trail isnt too bad. already got my callsign registered on sotadata and picked my summit reference, just want to make sure im not missing anything obvious before i head out. my plan is to bring my KX2 with a 40m EFHW strung up in a tree or between a couple poles if i cant find a good branch situation. also bringing a 2m HT as backup. my question is mostly around the spotting side of things — do i need to self spot on SOTAwatch before i start calling CQ or can i just get on frequency and hope chasers find me? ive seen some activators post alerts days ahead but i also see people spot themselves right when theyre on the air. not sure which matters more. also how long do you typically need to stay on a summit to make the 4 contacts? is there any time minimum or just the 4 contacts and done? sorry if these are dumb questions, still figuring out the whole system

so anyway i finally got it working the way i want after about three weekends of messing around and figured id share what tripped me up in case anyone else is doing a similar install im running a Yaesu FTM-300DR in my pickup and the main thing that was driving me crazy was the squelch was constantly breaking on certain roads, took me forever to figure out it was the alternator whine getting into the audio. ended up being the power leads — i had them running too close to the ignition wiring under the dash. rerouted them straight to the battery with proper fusing at both ends and night and day difference honestly the other thing is the antenna placement, i was using a mag mount on the roof temporarily while i figured out where to permanently mount and the mag mount was fine but i noticed a real improvement after i drilled and did a proper NMO mount through the cab roof. not like huge but noticeable especially at the edge of the repeater coverage where i drive for work anyway if anyone else is fighting alternator whine thats the first thing id check, not the radio settings

oh man this is exactly where i am right now too, ive been eyeing the QCX Mini for months. did you find the assembly tricky at all? i do okay with soldering but some of those SMD components make me nervous looking at them. also jealous of the ohio contact, i need to just pull the trigger on one of these kits already

yeah the question pool thing is actually not as bad as it sounds once you get into it. the current tech pool has like 400 something questions and the actual exam only pulls 35 of them so if you grind through the pool enough times you start recognizing stuff pretty quick. i used hamstudy.org and honestly that site is really good, it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and focuses on those. took me maybe 2 weeks of like 20-30 minutes a day before i felt ready and i passed first try. the understanding vs memorizing thing -- i get what you mean but honestly for tech a lot of it is just rules and regs stuff that you kind of have to memorize anyway, and the technical parts arent that deep. if you want to actually understand the why behind things the ARRL handbook is great but its definitely overkill just to pass the exam. gordon west has a study guide thats pretty popular and it explains things in plain english if you want something more structured than just flashcards

the LiFePO4 question is pretty easy to math out honestly. IC-7300 at 100 watts draws roughly 20-22 amps TX, maybe 2-3 amps on receive. if you're doing typical emcomm traffic duty cycle is pretty low, like maybe 20-25% transmit so your average draw is probably somewhere around 6-8 amps depending on what you're actually doing. 100ah gets you through 12 hours with room to spare if you're not running hot the whole time, but i'd still bring a second battery just because murphy's law is real and equipment fails at the worst time. skip the generator if you can. ive been doing emcomm stuff for about 12 years now and every time someone shows up with a honda eu2200 or whatever they spend half the exercise managing fuel and exhaust placement. solar + battery is a much cleaner answer for daylight ops. even a 100 watt panel can keep up with your average draw if the sun cooperates. two panels and you're golden. on the antenna thing, EFHW on a jackite is hard to beat for quick deployment but yeah wind is always a risk if you're not guying the pole properly. ive switched to using three guy lines on anything over 20 feet and havent had a pole go down since. a hamstick on a mag mount or a quick vertical as backup is smart, just dont overthink it.

yeah the FT8 slot machine feeling is real lol. i went through that phase too. what pulled me back into actually enjoying digital was honestly just joining a few JS8Call nets, theres a guy that runs one on 40m on sunday evenings and once you're in a group it feels way more like ham radio. took me a while to find it though, the mode doesnt exactly advertise itself well. one thing i will say — if weak signal operating is what you're into, have you looked at WSPR at all? its not really a conversation mode obviously but running it in the background while youre doing other stuff and then checking wsprnet to see where your signal went is kind of addicting. i once got spotted in New Zealand on 100mw from my attic antenna and just sat there staring at the screen for like a minute. totally different vibe than FT8 but scratches a similar itch.

yeah the height thing is almost certainly your problem, or at least a big part of it. when you drop that far end down to 15ft you're putting part of the antenna really close to ground and that's going to shift the resonant frequency down and change the feedpoint impedance noticeably. a dipole close to ground doesn't really see the same 72 ohm impedance it would higher up, ground losses and capacitive coupling to the earth start pulling things around. the sloper angle itself can also matter more than people expect. if it's a true sloper (one end high, other end lower in a straight run) those can have some interesting radiation pattern effects and the impedance at the feedpoint tends to run lower than a flat dipole, sometimes down in the 30-50 ohm range depending on the angle and height. worth trimming a bit and seeing where it lands. if you can borrow that analyzer again even for an afternoon it would tell you a lot more than the rig's meter will, those built-in SWR meters arent super accurate below like 2:1 anyway.

i went down basically the exact same path a couple years ago trying to automate antenna switching for my 6m setup. ended up ditching the pi for that specific task and just using a standalone arduino mega with a ethernet shield so i could throw a simple web interface on it and control everything from any browser in the shack. way less moving parts than dealing with linux and rigctld and all that. pi is great but for something that just needs to flip relays reliably it feels like overkill sometimes that said if you want to keep the pi in the loop the nano as a coprocessor idea isnt bad, lots of commercial stuff basically does the same thing with a microcontroller handling the timing-critical stuff and a bigger processor handling the logic. just gotta get the serial comm solid

oh man i went through the exact same thing last year coming back after about 8 years away. mine turned out to be the keyer speed was right but my iambic mode was set to mode B and i kept getting extra dits at the end of characters without realizing it. switched to mode A and suddenly things cleaned up a lot. might not be your issue but worth checking what mode your K3 is set to if you havent already

im in basically the same boat, newer car and didnt wanna drill so i went with a mag mount for way too long lol. eventually just bit the bullet and did a proper NMO through the roof and honestly it wasnt bad at all. there are good kits with a nice low profile mount and if you use a quality cable seal its not going anywhere. resale value thing is kinda overblown imo, you fill the hole if you ever sell it and nobody cares. but yeah if youre not ready for that the hood lip mounts do work, my buddy runs one on a similar truck to yours and hes hitting repeaters 40+ miles out no problem on his 50 watt radio

That's the moment you stop worrying about gear limitations and remember that propagation doesn't read spec sheets. Your first activation will work fine even with a compromised setup. Just get on the air!