Ashley Johnson24

so im listening to this dxpedition yesterday and they keep saying up 5-10 but then they seem to be working stations all over the place. one minute theyre answering someone at up 8 then next time its like up 2. is this normal or are they just not managing the pile very well i spent like 2 hours calling and got nothing which is fine but it felt like there was no pattern to follow. usually i can figure out where theyre listening next but this was all over the map. anyone else notice this with some of the newer expeditions

went through this exact thing about 6 months ago. one thing nobody told me that tripped me up — the call you want has to actually be available, meaning the previous holder has been expired long enough. i think its like 2 years after expiration before it goes back into the pool but dont quote me on that. i ended up not getting my first choice because someone else applied the same window but i got my second pick which im pretty happy with. the AE7Q website is super useful for checking availability and looking up call history, saved me a lot of time

yeah i caught about 45 minutes of that opening and it was something else, had europe coming in S9 on the vertical which almost never happens for me this time of year. worked a handful of italian stations and one guy in greece who had a massive signal. the solar flux has been creeping up lately so hopefully this becomes more regular as we head further into the cycle. dont give up on it, just keep the radio on in the background when you can and have the cluster alerts set up, thats the only way i ever catch these things during the week

so ive been going back and forth on this for like three weeks now and honestly i think im just spinning my wheels. i have a decent sized backyard, probably 80 feet usable end to end, and im trying to decide if i should just put up a simple 40m dipole or go with a vertical. currently running an IC-7300 into a tuner and whatever antenna i build will be my main HF antenna for a while. the thing is, my yard slopes down toward the back so the dipole would be kind of a sloper anyway, apex maybe at 30 feet if im lucky off a mast i already have. ive read conflicting stuff about whether a sloping dipole changes the radiation pattern much vs a flat one. some people say it works great, others act like anything less than horizontal is a compromise. meanwhile a vertical seems simpler to erect but then everyone talks about needing a good radial field and i dont have a lot of open space around where it would go. has anyone actually compared these two in a situation like mine and noticed a real difference on the air? not looking for theoretical answers, more like what actually worked for you

so ive been going back and forth on this for probably two months now and im just gonna ask. i have a pretty typical suburban lot, maybe 60 feet usable in the backyard before i hit the fence. the house is on one side, neighbors garage on the other. right now i have a temporary end fed wire just draped over a tree branch and its honestly been working better than i expected but i want to put something real up. the plan was a 40m dipole in an inverted V off a 30ft mast in the middle of the yard, feed it with coax and call it a day. but then i started reading about verticals and now im second guessing everything. the lot isnt big enough for good radials on a vertical anyway i dont think, and i cant get a dipole at a real half wave height obviously, so im not sure which compromise is better. mostly interested in domestic ssb, maybe some casual DX if conditions let me. anyone been in a similar situation and figured out which way to go

Are you running the latest 3.14 API? CubicSDR version 0.2.8-test3 works with RTL-SDR v4 and SDRPlay RSP1B receiver if you have SDRPlay 3.14 API. The VHF artifacts might be driver related - worth checking SDR++ as an alternative to eliminate software issues.