Michelle Baker

your power concern is legit and worth thinking through. 20ah is decent for a few hours of operating at moderate power levels but if you're running the 891 at like 50-100w on HF it can eat through that faster than you'd expect, especially if you're also running a laptop for Winlink. i usually figure roughly 20-25ah per 8 hour shift as a rough ballpark when im doing voice and digital mixed, but that really depends on your duty cycle. i'd honestly lean toward the solar panel over a second battery just for longer deployments. a 50 or 100 watt panel folds up pretty flat and gives you the ability to sustain ops indefinitely if the sun cooperates. i've got a Renogy 100w foldable that lives in a separate bag and i only grab it if i think we're gonna be out more than a day. keeps the go-kit itself lighter for the quick activations. the FT-891 plus SignaLink combo is solid by the way, thats basically what our net control station runs for Winlink. one thing i'd double-check is whether your coax connectors are all properly weatherproofed if the kit might sit in a car for months between uses. i learned that one the hard way at a drill where my PL-259 had corroded just enough to cause problems.

so ive been wanting to get my technician license for like two years now and i finally decided to just do it. problem is i dont really know where to start with studying. i looked at the ARRL book and it seems like a lot but i also heard some people just use the question pool directly and memorize answers? is that actually a thing people do or is it cheating yourself out of understanding the material also the question pool on the FCC site looks kind of intimidating, theres a lot of questions about like ohms law and stuff i havent thought about since high school. do i need to actually understand all the math or can i just learn the formulas and plug numbers in when i see them on the test any advice appreciated, i feel like im overthonking this

yeah the Q codes go back to like telegraph days, theres a ton of them but honestly most hams only use maybe a dozen regularly. QRM is interference from other stations, QRN is natural static like from a thunderstorm, QSB is when your signal is fading in and out, and QRP just means low power operation, usually 5 watts or less on HF. some guys use it as a noun too like "im running QRP today" there are official ITU lists of them online, just search for the ITU Q code list and youll find it. but honestly you dont need to memorize all of them. the ones youll actually hear are maybe 15-20 and you pick them up fast just from being on the air. 73 is just the traditional sign-off, means best regards basically. you can use it whenever, nobody's gonna correct you for using it wrong unless youre on some really picky net i guess

yeah the browser on mobile for DXwatch is pretty rough, totally get that. i use an app called DX Alert on android and its been solid for me — you can set it to notify you when specific DXCC entities get spotted which is the real killer feature honestly. no more sitting there refreshing the page waiting for that one rare one to pop up. just set your needs list and let it ping you there's also a free one called DXtelnet which is pretty bare bones but does the job if you just want the raw cluster feed. HRD is overkill if all you want is spots, you're right about that. Log4OM also has cluster built in and thats free, and its actually a really decent logger overall if you havent found one you like yet. the learning curve is a little steep at first but worth it

i took the extra after being a general for like 8 months, probably rushed it a bit but i passed first try. the math in the question pool looks scarier than it is honestly, a lot of it you can get through with some pattern recognition if im being real with you. that said my elmer told me something that stuck with me which is that the extra exam is less about the bands and more about proving to yourself you understand the whole picture. i dunno if i fully agree but i do think i troubleshoot stuff better now than i did before i studied for it. the phone privileges on 75m were kind of a big deal for me personally because thats where a lot of the nets i wanted to check into were running.

so i finally got my callsign after studying for like 6 weeks and i was so pumped to get on the air. borrowed my uncle's handheld, a baofeng uv-5r he never uses, and just started scanning around the local repeater. found one with activity and just... keyed up and totally blanked on what to say. said my callsign wrong TWICE and then accidentally said "over and out" which i know is not a thing apparently the guys on there were super nice about it though, one of them an older guy walked me through a proper exchange and we chatted for maybe 10 minutes about how i got into the hobby. felt amazing once i got past the awkward part. anyway just wanted to share, anybody else have a disaster first qso story because i feel like i cant be the only one

yeah the path might actually be your problem depending on where you are. if youre in a rural area with not many digipeaters WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 should be fine but ive seen some areas where the local digi has quirks. also aprs.fi can sometimes lag by like 15-20 minutes so maybe just wait it out and see if it shows up. what SSID are you using? if you left it as -0 or something that can sometimes look weird on the map but it shouldnt stop it from appearing entirely

yeah the store and forward is basically exactly what you described - gateway receives it, pushes it up to the CMS (central mail server) and it sits there until the recipient grabs it. for internet-addressed stuff like gmail it usually goes out pretty fast, under an hour in my experience, sometimes way faster. the delay you're seeing might just be normal. for the connection issues though, the first thing id check is your VARA modem settings and make sure your audio levels are sane. too hot and you'll get all kinds of garbage on the handshake. also check what mode you have VARA set to - i'd start with VARA HF rather than VARA HF Robust, the robust mode is slower and some gateways seem to respond better when you're not already fighting a weak signal. and in the session log in Winlink Express there should be a line that says something like 'connected to [gateway callsign]' if the handshake actually completed, so you can at least narrow it down to whether its getting that far or dying before that point.

ok so i just passed my technician exam last month and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater. i can hear people talking on it just fine but when i try to transmit nobody seems to hear me or respond. did some googling and i think it might be a CTCSS thing? the repeater directory listing shows a 100.0 Hz tone but i honestly dont know where to go in my radio to set that up. im using a baofeng uv-5r which i know everyone has opinions about but its what i started with. also i heard someone say you should announce yourself before just jumping in on a conversation, is that actually a thing people do or was that old fashioned advice. i dont want to be rude but also dont want to just sit there forever waiting for a gap that never comes.

haha that nervousness before your first QSO is totally real, i remember sitting with my hand on the PTT for like 20 minutes before i finally keyed up. its almost a rite of passage at this point. glad your local group was friendly, not every repeater crowd is like that honestly. you should try a simplex contact next if you havent, different vibe than going through a repeater

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i mostly do HF on 40m, sometimes 20m when the band cooperates. my elmer told me to always use phonetics when giving my callsign but then i hear plenty of guys on the air who just say their call normally without spelling it out. like theyll just say their call once and move on. is there a rule about this or is it more of a courtesy thing? i dont want to be that guy who overdoes it and sounds like a robot reading off an alphabet chart every single transmission but i also dont want to get a notice of violation or whatever for not IDing properly. also sometimes i forget what the NATO word is for a letter and i just make something up in the moment, is that a problem

oh man i went through exactly this, stuck at 10 for almost a year before something finally clicked. what helped me more than anything was just forcing myself to copy head copy instead of writing everything down. like literally put the pencil away. you're going to miss stuff and it feels terrible at first but your brain starts filling in gaps using context and that's kind of the whole skill you're actually building. your buddy is right about listening to real QSOs too. code groups are fine for building raw speed but they have zero context so your brain gets no help. when two guys are talking about the weather and their rigs you'd be surprised how much you can figure out even if you only catch half the characters. W1AW practice transmissions are also really good because they go through multiple speeds in one session, you can catch most of the slower one and then just try to hang on for the faster pass. also and i know this sounds annoying but 20-30 minutes frustrated is probably worse than 10 minutes relaxed. i used to do short sessions right after my morning coffee when i was in a decent mood and that made a bigger difference than grinding through long frustrated sessions. the frustration actually slows down the learning i think, at least it did for me

no worries on the long post, this stuff genuinely is confusing at first and nobody explains it well. so the short version is: LoTW is the gold standard for most major awards like DXCC and WAS through the ARRL, eQSL is easier and faster but only counts for a smaller set of awards, and paper cards are kind of the traditional/sentimental route that some people swear by and others never bother with anymore. you dont have to do all three. most people these days do LoTW at minimum if they care about awards at all, and a lot of folks also do eQSL just because its basically no extra effort once youre set up. for LoTW, in your account you should see a section that shows confirmed QSOs — if a contact uploads their log and yours matches, it shows as confirmed. the certificate thing is annoying the first time but once its done its done. paper cards, the bureau is cheap but super slow, like months or even over a year sometimes. direct means you send a card and a return envelope with some IRCs or a couple dollars and they mail one back. some rare DX stations or old timers still really appreciate the physical card. i still send them occasionally but i dont stress about it. just get LoTW working first and go from there honestly.

yeah the timing thing is just one of those things you figure out after a few check-ins honestly. most nets the NCS will say something like "any additional check-ins" or "break for late check-ins" and thats your moment — you just give your callsign and wait for them to acknowledge you. some nets have a specific format where they go through a list and then open it up, so listening to the whole net a couple times before jumping in really helps you get the flow. dont stress about it too much, NCS operators have heard every possible timing mistake and theyre generally pretty patient with new folks. for special events, W1AW does a bunch of schedule stuff and the ARRL site lists a lot of them. veterans day usually has a few stations on the air, i worked one a couple years ago run by a vets group out of the midwest, good operators. just keep an eye on the QRZ lookup too, special event calls get listed there sometimes. welcome to nets by the way, once you get comfortable its a good way to get on the air regularly without having to think too hard about what to do next.

yeah the cable modem side is almost definitely your problem. ive seen this exact thing where the ISP will silently drop idle-ish UDP sessions after some timeout period that you cant control from your end. the RemoteHams protocol is pretty chatty so it shouldnt trigger that but if your cable modem is doing NAT and it decides the session is stale for whatever reason thats basically game over for the connection and it wont tell you why in any useful log. what fixed it for me was putting a cheap little GL.iNet router between the modem and everything else and setting up a keepalive ping to something external every 30 seconds. sounds dumb but it kept the NAT table entry warm and the drops basically stopped. also worth checking if your cable modem has a DMZ mode you can put the remote PC in, sometimes that helps with the port stuff too. on the Echolink conflict question — i ran both for a while and didnt have issues but i was very careful about which ports were forwarded where. if youre letting Windows firewall manage all that automatically i wouldnt trust it to sort it out cleanly