David Johnson

oh man i remember being confused about basically all of this same stuff on my first one lol. i actually uploaded my log wrong twice before i figured out the ADIF fields thing. one tip — if you use HAMRS or Fast Log Entry in the field they both have WWFF/POTA modes built in and it saves you the headache of fixing the log later. i do paper backup too but having the fields right from the start is way easier.

im in kind of the same boat, building a 20m dc rx right now and the image rejection thing is what gets me. i know its a fundamental limitation of the design but still annoying when you hear a strong signal bleeding in from the image. have you looked at the phasing method at all? i was reading about it, basically two mixers 90 degrees out and then you cancel the image in audio but its way more complex to build. might be worth it though. also what did you use for the mixer, ring diode or something active? ive been going back and forth on that

so ive been noticing 10m and 12m doing some really strange things this past week or so. like monday evening i worked a JA station on 10m with a dipole and maybe 50 watts, pretty solid copy, and then tuesday the same band was completely dead, couldn't even hear the beacon network. checked my antenna thinking something came loose but everything looked fine. been watching the solar flux numbers on spaceweather.com and they were sitting around 180-something last week and now its dropped back down to like 145 or so. does that kind of drop actually happen that fast? i guess i always assumed solar flux kind of drifted slowly but maybe not. also there was some geomagnetic activity a few days ago, kp index got up to 5 or 6 which i know isnt great for HF but i thought that mostly messed with 40 and 80 more than 10. anyway if anyone has been watching conditions lately and has thoughts id appreciate it. im relatively new to actually paying attention to this stuff, been licensed about 3 years but mostly done local stuff until recently getting the itch for DX.

so ive been trying to get Winlink working for a few weeks now and i think i finally understand most of it but the gateway stuff is still kind of confusing me. basically i set up Winlink Express on my laptop, got it talking to my IC-7300 through a SignaLink USB, and i can see the waterfall in Vara HF and it looks fine. the problem is when i try to actually connect to an RMS gateway it either times out or i get a partial session and then it drops. i checked the gateway list and im targeting ones that show green or recently active, and im in the midwest so there should be decent propagation to at least a few of them. tried 20m and 40m at different times of day. sometimes the handshake starts and i can see VARA doing its thing but then it just falls apart maybe 30 seconds in. the message i was trying to send is pretty small, just a test message to my own callsign basically. is this a common thing when youre first starting out or am i missing something in the configuration. also not totally sure if my RMS hybrid settings are set right, i kind of just left those at default. any ideas would be appreciated, been banging my head on this for a while now.

so ive been going back and forth on getting a dedicated QRP rig for portable work for probably two years now and i finally just bought a KX2 a few weeks ago. been running it in the backyard mostly but took it out to a state park last weekend with a random wire antenna and a small lithium pack. honestly surprised how well it does with just 10 watts. i worked a guy in germany on 20m SSB which i did not expect at all, took a few tries but it happened. the built in ATU is a lifesaver for field work, i was using a pretty janky end fed situation and it just... tuned it up no problem. my only gripe is the knobs feel a little small and fiddly when youre cold, like i was out there in october and my fingers were not cooperating with the filter bandwidth knob. minor thing but worth mentioning if youre someone who does a lot of cold weather ops. anyway if anyone is on the fence about getting into QRP portable stuff i dont regret it. curious if anyone else here is running a KX2 or KX3 and what antennas they use for parks on the air type stuff

Make sure you have 'CI-V transceive' enabled in your TRX settings and consider implementing a state machine for collision protection. I've seen bus conflicts cause exactly the symptoms you describe.