Emily Moore

800 miles on 4 watts is awesome, what antenna were you using for that. im also building my first qrp rig (a bitx40 kit, not scratch built like yours) and im trying to figure out what kind of portable antenna setup makes sense for parks activations. did you wind your own toroids for the output filter or use premade ones

I've tried several apps and Morse Mania is by far the best - whether learning to hear or send, it provides excellent practice at your own pace. Best for basic training, though I wish it had easier speed/spacing adjustments - currently training at 25 WPM with 3 WPM Farnsworth spacing.

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF-1234 or whatever the reference number is. had been meaning to do it for months and just never got around to it. anyway i threw the end-fed in a tree, ran 25 watts on the KX3 and just started calling CQ WWFF on 40m. honestly didnt expect much but i ended up with like 47 QSOs in about 2.5 hours which felt pretty good for a first attempt couple things im not sure about though. first, the minimum is 44 QSOs to count as an activation right? i kept seeing different numbers mentioned on different sites and got confused. also do all those contacts need to be with different callsigns or can you work the same person on multiple bands and count them separately also noticed there were a few people calling me that had WWFF in their exchange which i think means they were activating another reference at the same time? i logged them but wasnt sure how that works exactly. feels like theres a lot of little rules i dont fully understand yet but the actual operating part was really fun, way more enjoyable than i expected sitting in the woods with a thermos of coffee

honestly the General exam isnt that scary, i was in the same boat as you worrying about the math stuff. theres some impedance and reactance questions and yeah a little ohms law but most of it you can just memorize the answer pool and youll be fine. the question pool is public so just grab the ARRL General study guide or use HamStudy.org which is free and just drill the practice tests until you're consistently hitting like 85% or better and you'll pass no problem. took me maybe three weeks of casual studying doing like 20 minutes before bed. as for getting on HF without spending a fortune, look around for a used Yaesu FT-450 or an Icom IC-718, you can find them for $300-400 sometimes less if you're patient on QRZ classifieds or eham. not fancy but they work. and honestly before you even buy anything, find your local club because a lot of elmers will let you sit in and operate their station first so you can figure out if you actually like it before dropping cash on gear

paper logging is totally fine if youre just dabbling, i did my first few contests that way. but yeah N1MM is worth learning even if it feels like a lot at first. also Field Day in June is maybe a friendlier starting point if you want something more relaxed and community oriented — lots of clubs set up and welcome newcomers to sit in. CQ WW is great but it is pretty intense compared to Field Day where theres usually someone around to explain whats happening

this is something i've wondered about too, im pretty new to chasing DX seriously and pileups still stress me out a bit if im being honest. one thing someone told me at a club meeting that helped — on SSB, listen to the DX op's mic audio and try to match your audio characteristics roughly. like if he's got a lot of high end cut off, you sitting there with a super processed voice might not cut through as well as someone with a more natural tone. i have no idea if that's actually true or if it was just old elmer wisdom but it stuck with me. probably more important is just audio clarity, my old mic was a bit muddy and when i swapped to a better one i started getting replies faster in pileups, or at least it felt that way.

I'm experiencing IMD issues with my current audio interface setup when running FT8 and FT4 modes. Running excessive IMD causes decoding errors especially in crowded band segments, though both modes can tolerate modest distortion thanks to forward error correction. My current setup is a homebrew interface with an FTDX-101D, and I'm seeing some splatter that's making me unpopular with adjacent ops. Looking for recommendations on commercial interfaces that provide better linearity. I've read I should set RF output to no more than 50% of rated max and aim for no more than 80% of configured power during transmission. Anyone have good results with specific interface models for multi-carrier digital modes?

the waterfall freeze thing with RCForb is a known annoyance, or at least it was for me. what fixed it on my end was bumping up the SDR buffer settings in the server config — theres a tab for it i forget exactly where but it's in the audio/SDR settings area. default buffer is pretty small and over a WAN connection with any jitter at all it just falls apart eventually. i went to something like 4096 and it got way more stable. still not perfect but i can run 2-3 hours without a drop now. on the echolink question yeah you can run it on the same box, i do. just make sure echolink is using UDP 5198/5199 and your RCForb stuff is on its own ports, theres no real conflict as long as your router isnt doing something dumb with NAT. the only issue i had was echolink hogging CPU when a net was active and it caused some audio glitching on the remote side. ended up giving echolink its own low priority in task manager and that sorted it out mostly.

the cap is probably fine but honestly for rotator pot noise i just do a rolling average over like 10 reads and it smooths out fine for display purposes. depends how twitchy your display is i guess. if youre using the heading for actual closed-loop control then yeah youd want to be more careful about it. pi zero w is a solid choice if you want the network stuff. i use one in my shack for a bunch of random things — flrig over network, some basic gpio stuff for switching. just be aware the zero w can be a little slow for some things and the single usb is annoying when youre trying to set it up. get a hub or just use a pi 3 if you have one sitting around

so ive been using WSJT-X for FT8 stuff for about two years now and it logs to its own internal log which i then export to ADIF and import into Log4OM and that whole workflow is kind of a mess honestly. every time i forget to export before closing WSJT-X i end up with duplicate entries or missing contacts when i finally sync everything up. a buddy of mine runs N1MM for all his contesting and he says just use N1MM for everything, but from what i can tell N1MM is really built around contests and the everyday logging side feels like an afterthought? like i do some contesting, mainly sweepstakes and the occasional VHF contest, but most of my operating is just ragchewing and chasing DX on 40m so i need something that handles both reasonably well without me having to juggle three different logs. Log4OM has been pretty solid for the day to day stuff, the bandmap integration is decent and i like how it handles the award tracking for DXCC but ive heard people say it gets bloated or slow over time. mine has maybe 8000 QSOs in it now and it does seem a bit sluggish when i open the statistics page. anyone run N1MM alongside Log4OM or do you just pick one and stick with it. and does anyone have a clean way to get WSJT-X talking to both at the same time without losing your mind

yeah the app route works fine for most people, but i'd say dont completely skip understanding why the answers are what they are. the tech exam has a few questions on things like RF safety and you really do want to actually get that stuff, not just memorize it, because it matters once you're actually on the air. the question pool for technician is public and only changes every four years so whatever youre studying now should be current through mid 2026 i think. one thing that trips people up is the math questions, there arent many but if you havent done ohms law since high school it might feel weird. just practice E=IR and the power formula a few times and youll be fine. also check if there's a local club near you, a lot of them run free licensing classes and sometimes they do the exam the same day which is convenient

welcome to the hobby. same thing happened to me, family had no idea why i was so pumped about talking to a stranger on a radio when i have a phone in my pocket lol. its hard to explain. what radio did you end up getting? im still on a baofeng myself but thinking about upgrading at some point

i was in the same boat when i got my tech, took me forever to figure out the 10m phone thing. ended up just downloading the arrl band chart as a pdf and keeping it on my phone. also just a heads up, even once you know the rules, its worth double checking your radio is actually set to the right mode before you transmit cause i almost keyed up in the wrong segment once when i was messing with the settings and wasnt paying attention