John Williams99

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, went up W4T/SU-001 which isnt the hardest summit but it was about a 4 mile hike in and i was carrying way too much radio gear like always. ended up using my FT-818 with a linked dipole i built from a kit and just threw it up in a tree with a bit of paracord, worked fine. made 11 QSOs on 40m and a few on 20m, got my 4 points which i guess qualifies it, but im reading conflicting stuff about the activation zone. like the rules say you have to be within 25 vertical meters of the true summit but some summits have these huge flat tops and i wasnt sure exactly where i was. does it matter a ton as long as youre clearly on the summit itself? i didnt want to be that guy who gets dinged for being 30m off or whatever. also noticed a few guys spotted me on SOTAwatch pretty fast after i self-spotted via the app, within like 2 minutes i had a pileup which was kind of overwhelming for someone who just got their general last year. overall though it was a blast and im definitely going back out. any tips for working faster or managing a small pileup would be appreciated, i was fumbling around trying to log and key at the same time

yeah don't do the chart thing, that's the old way and it'll slow you down a lot. what you want is to learn by sound from day one, never look at dots and dashes on paper if you can help it. the Koch method is what most people swear by now, you start with just two characters at full speed like 20wpm and you only add a new one when you can copy the first ones at like 90% accuracy. LCWO.net is free and does this for you automatically, i spent maybe 20 minutes a day on it for a few months and went from nothing to being able to ragchew on the air. the key thing everyone says and everyone ignores is keep the character speed high even if you slow down the word spacing. if you learn characters at 5wpm you'll just have to relearn them later when you try to go faster

yeah the mars mod on that radio is pretty straightforward, did mine ages ago. one thing worth mentioning is make sure you reseat the bottom panel connectors properly when you close it back up, i had a buddy who got intermittent issues on VHF for weeks after doing that mod and it turned out one of the ribbon connectors wasnt fully seated. minor thing but worth checking.

so ive been trying to get back into CW after maybe a 15 year break and i picked up a used Bencher paddle and hooked it to my K3 internal keyer and honestly the dits and dahs just sound... off? like not crisp. i know my fist was never great but this sounds worse than i remember. been practicing with the built in sidetone and something about the spacing between characters feels wrong but i cant put my finger on it exactly. been running around 15-16 wpm which is slower than i used to operate but i figured id work back up gradually. is this a keyer weight setting thing? i messed with the weight adjustment a little but honestly i dont fully understand what that does. or could it be the paddle tension/gap? the paddle feels a little loose maybe, the previous owner might have had it set different from what im used to. just wondering if anyone else went through this kind of re-learning thing and what helped

Finally made it out for my first POTA activation today at K-0832. Had my KX2 and what I thought was a fully charged 6Ah LiFePO4 battery, but after only making 6 contacts in 30 minutes the radio just shut off. Checked the battery and it was completely dead - barely got the 10 contacts I needed for the activation. Is this normal or did something go wrong? Used 20m CW mostly at 10 watts. Any ideas what might have caused this quick drain?

You need to answer 26 out of 35 questions correctly on the General exam - same format as Tech but deeper material. I'd suggest starting with the band plan sections since that's immediately useful knowledge, then work through the technical theory systematically.

oh man yeah that 13wpm wall is so real, i hit the exact same thing and honestly it lasted longer for me. what finally broke it was when i stopped trying to copy every single character and just let some go. sounds counterintuitive but when you panic about missing a letter your brain locks up and you miss the next three too. the other thing, and this is what a bunch of the old timers told me that i didnt believe at first — bump your practice speed way up, like to 20 or even 25wpm character speed but with extra spacing between characters. thats the farnsworth method if you havent heard of it. LCWO does this actually, you can set character speed separate from overall speed. what it does is train your ear to hear the characters as sounds not as dots and dashes, which is the whole game at higher speeds. counting dits and dahs is a dead end past about 10wpm, you probably already know that but its worth repeating. also are you doing any actual on-air stuff? even just listening to qso's on 40m or whatever. the real world stuff sounds different from generated practice and its good to just soak it in even when you cant copy everything. give it another few weeks with the farnsworth spacing thing and see if it moves at all

I've been using Mode B from the start and love it, but honestly Mode A is probably smarter for learning. The Bencher is an excellent choice - I have one too and it's more like art. Don't rush the learning process, it really does become second nature with practice.

the backup HT thing is real, I learned that the hard way at a public service event when my main radio had a connector issue and I was basically useless for about 45 minutes while someone tracked down a spare. now I keep a cheap Baofeng in the kit just for that reason, nothing fancy, just something that works on 2m and 70cm in a pinch. on the power question -- test it before you need it. seriously just run your 857 at a realistic duty cycle for a few hours and see where the battery sits. a lot of people are surprised how fast things drain when youre actually in a net versus just monitoring. the solar panel is worth having if you think youll be out more than one night, I have a 50W panel that rolls up and it adds maybe 3 lbs to the kit, not a big deal. also dont forget a way to charge phones and other stuff because in an actual emergency everyone around you is going to be asking and having a USB output on your power setup is just a nice thing to have. sounds like you've got the basics honestly. the other thing I always tell people is document everything in the kit -- like a little card that says what freqs are programmed, what power settings you normally run, that kind of thing. your brain does weird things under stress and you dont want to be guessing.

Check your HRD linear transponder settings. These satellites receive a specific range of frequencies (typically 40 - 100 kHz) in one band, convert them to another band and amplify the converted signal for transmission back to your planet. The converted signal is inverted - LSB becomes USB etc. - this is known as an inverting transponder. Make sure the inverting option is checked for MO-122.

not to pile on but also check where the mic is physically positioned relative to your mouth. i had a similar thing going on and it turned out i was talking directly into the PR-40 head-on at close range and getting a ton of proximity effect pileup on the low end. moved it off to about a 45 degree angle maybe 4-6 inches away and it got way better without even touching the EQ settings. people dont always mention the physical stuff when they talk about SSB audio but it matters a lot with condenser-style mics

so ive been thinking about getting into CW for a while now and i finally decided to just go for it but i dont really know where to start. i downloaded a couple apps and they all seem different and i dont know which approach is actually the right one. some people say learn the letters first slow, other people say jump straight into high speed stuff and your brain figures it out? thats the koch method i think? im not sure if im doing it right honestly i guess my main question is just like... what actually worked for you. did you use software, did you just listen to QSOs on the air, did you take a class or whatever. im not in a huge rush but i also dont want to spend six months doing the wrong thing and still not be able to copy anything. any advice would be appreciated, even if its just what NOT to do

so i joined my local ARES group about four months ago and have been going to the monthly nets and training sessions but this weekend theres an actual activation for a county-level flood watch that got upgraded to a warning overnight. my EC called me this morning and asked if i could staff the EOC for a few hours tomorrow and i said yes before i even really thought about what that means i know the basics, ive done the ICS-100 and ICS-700 online courses and i passed my general last year. but like, what does it actually look like when you show up? do i just bring my HT or do they have equipment at the EOC already? and is there some kind of check-in procedure or does the EC just tell you where to stand? i dont want to look like an idiot showing up not knowing anything any advice from people who've done real activations would be really appreciated, even just like what to bring in terms of snacks and stuff because i have no idea how long ill be there

hamstudy is great, thats basically what i used and i passed first try. the electrical theory stuff looks worse than it is honestly. once you understand a few core formulas like ohms law and how to work out parallel resistance it kind of unlocks a lot of the other questions. the exam isnt asking you to be an engineer, just to recognize the concepts well enough to pick the right answer out of four choices. as for what you get with General, you open up big chunks of 40m, 20m, 15m, 10m and a few others. 20m is probably what most people go for first, its the workhorse band for DX during the day. 40m like you mentioned is fantastic in the evening for domestic contacts and some DX too depending on conditions. you dont get everything, Extra has some additional segments especially on the lower parts of some bands, but General is more than enough to have a really good time on HF. honestly just go for it, the jump from Tech to General is totally worth it

honestly the frequency issue you described is 100% operator discipline, SO2R wouldnt have saved you there. like if youre leaving a run frequency for 20 minutes chasing mults thats just... thats a rate killer regardless of how many radios you have. the whole point of SO2R is you keep one radio locked on your run freq and use the second radio to work mults during your QSB gaps and turnaround time. you never actually leave the run. that said setting up SO2R properly is a real project. the RF isolation between the two radios is the thing that bites everyone. i blew a front end on my old FT-1000MP because i thought a bandpass filter was enough and it wasnt, needed proper antenna switching interlock too. if youre on a trapped vertical for one band and the yagi for another you might actually have decent isolation already just by virtue of the antennas being on different bands but youd want to measure it. for sweepstakes specifically at 100w SO2R probably adds maybe 10-15% to your score if youre disciplined. the bigger gains are usually just from knowing when to run vs S&P and keeping your CQ rate fast. whats your exchange time averaging right now?

I've had both for about 2 years now. For just listening the SDRplay is gonna be way better, especially on HF. The hackrf is fun to play with but honestly for receive only the rsp1a blows it away. Much better dynamic range and the software support is pretty solid. Only get the hackrf if you plan on doing transmit experiments or really want the full duplex capability

so ive been chasing rare DX for about 6 years now and i always struggled with pileups, like genuinely got nowhere for the first few years. just calling and calling and never getting through. figured id share what finally clicked for me because i see a lot of people frustrated about this same thing. the biggest thing i changed was listening way more before transmitting. sounds obvious but i wasnt really doing it properly. i'd spend like 5-10 minutes just mapping where the DX station is actually listening — not where they say theyre listening, but where theyre actually pulling calls from. theres always a pattern if you watch long enough. sometimes theyre working stations 5-8 up from their TX freq, sometimes theyre drifting around, sometimes they have a slight preference for certain regions at certain times. second thing was timing. i stopped calling right after the DX station stops sending and started waiting maybe half a beat. the initial burst of callers is just noise to the DX op, like completely unreadable wall of sound. if you wait a fraction of a second the chaos thins out just slightly and your signal has a better chance of popping through. this alone probably doubled my success rate. also started running split properly — making sure my TX freq was actually clean before i started calling, not just hoping it was. checked it on the panadapter and you'd be surprised how often i was sitting right on top of another strong station without realizing. antenna helped too obviously, went from a dipole to a 4el yagi on 20m and the difference in getting through was night and day, but even before that the technique stuff made a difference. anyone else have tricks that actually work? not looking for the obvious stuff like 'get more power' lol

yeah the listening thing is huge and most people skip it entirely. i worked VP6R back whenever that was and the guys who were breaking through consistently were clearly doing exactly what you described, they werent just spraying their call every 10 seconds hoping something stuck. the DX op had a pretty obvious pattern of working up the band maybe 3-4kHz then jumping back down, once you see that you can anticipate where to park instead of chasing them. one thing i'd add for 40m specifically is dont underestimate how much a good antenna matters more than power at that point. a 3-ele at 40ft is decent but if you can get it higher the low angle radiation really helps punch through. i run a 4-el at about 65ft and the difference from when it was at 45 was noticeable in pileup situations. also — and this is kinda obvious but people forget — make sure your keyer timing is clean. sloppy dit-dah spacing in a pileup is a great way to get passed over even if you're loud.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a couple months now and figured id just ask. my lot is pretty small, maybe 60 feet wide, and i've got some decent trees but nothing that lines up perfectly for a full half wave dipole on 40. i can get close — maybe 62 or 63 feet of horizontal run if i really stretch it — but one end would be drooping pretty bad because the anchor tree is shorter than i'd like. the other option i keep coming back to is a vertical. i know they have that low angle radiation thing going for them which sounds great for dx, but everyone keeps telling me ground radials are a whole project in themselves and i rent so i really cant be burying a bunch of wire. was thinking maybe a elevated radial setup with like 4 radials, has anyone done this on 40 specifically and how much of a pain was it to get the feedpoint impedance somewhere usable mostly interested in working dx when conditions allow but i also ragchew a fair bit regionally so its not purely a dx antenna situation. just want something that actually works and doesn't drive my neighbors crazy

yeah i'm kind of in the same boat as you, been eyeing QRP kits for ages. how did you do the alignment, did you need any special equipment? i dont have an oscilloscope or anything fancy and that part always made me nervous about getting into kit building

im pretty new to hf, just got my general like two months ago, and ive been nervously lurking on 10m waiting for something to happen because everyone told me to watch that band when the cycle picks up. is that what a real opening feels like then? i tuned around yesterday afternoon and heard some spanish speaking stations but wasnt sure if i should just jump in or wait. didnt want to step on anyone. maybe next time ill just go for it, whats the worst that can happen i guess

congrats on the ticket. ok so here's my honest take after going through this same thing a few years back — the baofeng UV-5R or one of the variants is genuinely fine for what you're describing. people who say they're garbage are usually comparing them to $200+ radios which isnt really fair at your stage. the audio quality is a little rough and the UI is not great but it transmits and receives on 2m and 70cm and for local repeater work thats really all you need right now. that said if you can stretch to around 100-120 bucks the Yaesu FT-65 is a noticeable step up in build quality and the receive is cleaner. i gave mine to my wife when i upgraded and shes been using it for two years with zero issues. APRS and wires-x you definitely dont need yet, those are rabbit holes you can go down later once you figure out what you actually want to do with the hobby. just get on the air first and worry about features later.

im in basically the same boat passed my tech in the spring and was totally lost on this too. what helped me was the ARRL band plan poster they sell, i just hung it next to my radio so i can check before i transmit anywhere new. also the ham study apps usually have little summaries of this stuff that are easier to read than the actual rules. dont stress too much about making an honest mistake when youre learning, just dont be doing something obviously wrong on purpose and youll be fine

Hey don't sweat it at all, everyone fumbles their first few check-ins and the net control ops have heard it all before. Most voice nets I've been on handle late check-ins by just waiting for a pause and then keying up with something like your callsign and the word "late" or "mobile" depending on your situation. The NCS will usually work you in. As for the traffic vs general check-in thing — yeah that can be confusing at first. If you dont have any formal NTS traffic to pass you just check in as a casual or listener check-in, some nets call them different things. You definitely didn't do anything wrong. The fact that you got in there and did it is the whole point honestly. Some guys I know been licensed 10 years and never once checked into a net so you're already ahead of the curve there.

im basically in the same boat as you, upgraded to general in the spring and been doing the CW academy thing. one thing that helped me a lot was slowing down on the software and bumping the character speed up while keeping the word speed lower — i think thats called farnsworth spacing? it forces you to hear the letters as sounds instead of counting. i was skeptical but it really does work once you push through the weird feeling of it. havent made a contact on CW yet but getting closer. good luck with the keyer stuff, ill be watching this thread