Michael Wu

so ive been trying to get a proper remote station going for about 6 months now and im finally at a point where the hardware side is mostly sorted but the audio latency through RemoteHams is driving me nuts on SSB. im running an IC-7300 at the home QTH with a RCForb server setup, decent upload speed on the ISP end, like 35mbps up, and the control side is on a fiber connection. the latency isnt terrible, maybe 250ms or so, but on phone it just feels really clunky. like by the time i hear the other station come back to me ive already stepped on them twice. the SDR remote side of things actually works better for just listening around honestly. ive got an RTL-SDR dongle hooked into the same antenna feedline through a splitter and running that through the RemoteHams SDR interface and for just monitoring the band or checking propagation before i commit to actually operating, its pretty slick. lower overhead i guess since youre not pushing audio both ways. anyone running a full duplex remote on HF with acceptable latency? wondering if switching to something like hamradiodeluxe remote or even just a straight VPN + RDP approach would help. i know some guys do the internet linking thing through EchoLink or AllStar as kind of a workaround for certain modes but thats a different animal really.

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and keep telling myself ill get a proper go-kit together and just never do it. after watching some weather roll through last month and losing power for about 18 hours i figured okay this is the wake up call i needed. right now i have an FT-857D that im planning to use as the main rig, a 40ah LiFePO4 battery i picked up last year, and a SignaLink for digital modes. i built a little pelican-style case for most of it but im still figuring out the antenna situation. was thinking a end fed halfwave for HF and maybe just a mag mount for 2m/70cm but im not sure if thats good enough for actual emergency use or if i should do something more robust. the thing i keep second guessing is the power side -- like do i need a way to recharge the battery in the field or is 40ah enough to get through most scenarios? i have a small solar panel but havent really integrated it into the kit yet. also logging, do people still do paper logs for go-kit stuff or does everyone use a laptop? feels like a laptop is just one more thing to power and protect. anyway im not asking anyone to build this for me just curious what experienced folks wish they had thought of when they first put theirs together

Check your SSID situation first — if you're sending from APRSdroid and your radio is set to a different SSID they're essentially two separate stations as far as the network is concerned. messages sent to one won't show up on the other. also make sure the radio's TNC isn't fighting with the Mobilinkd at the same time, if both are active and keying PTT you'll get garbage packets. the D710 can be fussy about that. Also worth pulling the raw feed for your callsign on findu.com or aprs.fi and filtering for message packets specifically. sometimes they're going out but getting dropped somewhere in the IS feed or the message server just isnt routing them right. APRS messaging over RF has always been kinda hit or miss depending on how well your local digis handle the message ack cycle.

the compression thing is definitely not overrated, it matters a lot actually. most people either have it cranked way too hard which gives that pumping, processed sound, or they have none at all and they're getting walked over when band conditions get rough. on the 7300 i'd start with the mic gain so you're hitting maybe 50-60% ALC deflection on voice peaks, then bring the compression in gradually until you start hearing artifacts and back off from there. somewhere around 4-8 on the compressor level depending on your mic and voice is usually where i land. the hollow/tin can thing you're describing honestly sounds like a mic placement or room acoustics issue as much as anything in the radio. are you in a small room with hard surfaces. i had that exact complaint until i moved my operating position and put some foam behind the monitor. also double check that you dont have any of the noise reduction stuff accidentally engaged on transmit, ive seen that do weird things to audio on the 7300.

ok so i finally got my technician license last month and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater but nobody ever seems to hear me. did some reading and apparently i need to program a CTCSS tone into my radio but im not totally sure i understand what that even does or how to figure out which tone to use for a specific repeater. i have a baofeng uv-5r (i know i know, everyone has opinions about those) and ive been poking around in the menus but theres like two different tone settings, one says T-CTCSS and one says R-CTCSS and i dont know which one i actually need or if i need both. the repeater is listed on repeaterbook and it says the tone is 100.0 Hz but thats about all i know. any help would be great, been lurking here for a while and everyone seems really knowledgeable

so ive been trying to get winlink running properly for about three weeks now and im losing my mind a little bit. the basic setup is working — i can connect to an RMS gateway, handshake goes fine, but somewhere in the middle of actually transferring a message it just drops. doesnt matter if its a short message or longer one with an attachment, though the attachment ones fail way faster. running vara HF on a IC-7300 with the USB cable doing both audio and CAT, soundcard is set up in vara as the IC-7300 built in codec. level seems okay, i had it peaking around -10 to -12 on the vara waterfall. ALC is barely moving on the radio which i thought was the right approach. the winlink client is RMS express, latest version i think, and i can see in the session log it gets through the handshake and starts the transfer then just kind of stops. the gateway doesnt send a disconnect message, it just goes silent and eventually my side times out. i tried two different gateways and same behavior on both which makes me think its something on my end but i cant figure out what. anyone dealt with this or have a clue where to start? been reading the winlink wiki and honestly its a lot to absorb

ok so i just got my technician license about two months ago and ive been making contacts on 2m and some HF (got my general a few weeks after tech) and now im realizing theres like three different ways to confirm contacts and i genuinely dont understand which one matters or if i need all of them so from what i can tell LoTW is run by the ARRL and its the official one for awards like DXCC, eQSL is a separate thing that some people use, and then theres actual physical cards which i kind of love the idea of but seems expensive to send internationally. is there like a hierarchy here or do people just pick one and stick with it also do i need to upload every single contact or just the ones i care about confirming? my logging software is log4om and i see options for all three but havent set any of them up yet. kind of overwhelmed honestly

Started with EchoLink in 2018, migrated to AllStar in 2020. In 2011, I migrated my internet linking from EchoLink to Allstar. The *927_TECH* hub server is still maintained and linked into the Allstar 900 MHz network; but, the EchoLink side has become secondary. AllStar's learning curve is steeper but the payoff is huge for emergency use.

I'm getting conflicting advice on SSB mic gain adjustment. My IC-7300 manual says to adjust for slight ALC indication, but several online sources suggest keeping ALC at zero. Currently running a Heil PR-40 with the gain at about 40% and seeing 2-3 bars of ALC on voice peaks. Audio reports have been mixed - some say it sounds great, others mention it's a bit harsh. People commonly set mic gain too hot trying to squeeze every watt from their 100W rig due to fundamental misunderstanding of how SSB works. What's the consensus on proper ALC indication for clean SSB? Should I back off the gain even with good audio reports?