Ashley Johnson24

I run JS8Call pretty regularly on 40m and sometimes 20m and honestly the activity is decent, not FT8-level obviously but theres usually a handful of stations calling CQ if you hang around long enough. the 40m evening hours are probably your best bet in North America. the SNR thing is real — JS8 Normal mode is noticeably less sensitive than FT8, maybe 4-5dB or so, and with a compromised antenna that does matter. but they added the Turbo and Fast modes which close the gap some. the Slow mode goes the other direction and actually gets you deeper into the noise but then youre waiting like 30 seconds per transmission so conversations get painful fast i think the honest answer is you kind of want both running. WSJT-X for the DX chasing and log filling, JS8Call for when you actually want to talk to someone. theyre solving different problems even if the underlying tech is similar. i use a SDRplay as a panadapter alongside my IC-7300 so i can watch both frequencies at once without having to retune constantly, makes it way more manageable

yeah we do quarterly exercises with our county ARES group and every single time something unexpected comes up, that's just the nature of it. the value isnt in running a perfect drill its in finding out what breaks under pressure before an actual event. sounds like your group learned a ton even if it felt messy in the moment. the power situation you mentioned is something we had to really hammer on after one exercise where half our portable stations ran dry within four hours. we ended up putting together a standard checklist that everyone is supposed to review before any deployment — not fool proof but it helped a lot. the go-bag standardization thing is tough because people have different radios and budgets but at minimum agreeing on power capacity and antenna type saves a lot of headache. net control discipline is probably the hardest thing to teach in a drill setting because the people who need the practice most are often the ones who dont realize they need it. we started doing a dedicated net control training session separate from the main exercise and that helped. also having a written net script that NCS follows keeps things from going off the rails when it gets busy. good luck with the debrief, sounds like your group is taking it seriously which is more than a lot of groups do.

yeah 15m has been doing exactly that here too, im in the midwest so maybe similar path geometry to yours. the thing about solar flux is it doesnt tell the whole story — you can have decent SFI but if theres even minor geomagnetic activity or a high-speed solar wind stream that didnt make the news it can just kill the higher bands fast. i usually keep an eye on the Kp forecast on spaceweather.com and also the NOAA 3-day outlook because sometimes there are coronal hole effects that dont show up in the SFI number at all. the JA opening you described sounds like a classic short-path peak. those can be sharp, especially on 15m when conditions are marginal — the path lights up, the MUF just barely supports it, and then it collapses. nothing wrong with your setup, thats just propagation being propagation. honestly working a JA with 100w and a dipole on a middling flux day is pretty solid, dont overthink it. 10m to south america in the afternoon is almost certainly TEP or a mix of F2 and TEP depending on your latitude. those can be very short windows. if you want to catch them more reliably try tuning up around 28.400-28.500 a bit before your local noon and just listen. FT8 on 10m will also show you when the band is barely cracked open even when SSB wouldnt be workable.

yeah your elmer isnt wrong, you do just kind of absorb them over time but there are definitely ones you'll hear constantly vs ones that are almost extinct. the everyday ones on phone are really just a handful -- QSL means confirmed or i acknowledge, QRZ is who's calling or sometimes used at the end of a transmission like who's next, QTH is your location, QRM is interference from other stations, QRN is natural static like lightning crashes, QSB is fading signal, QSY means change frequency, QRT means shutting down, QRX means standby or wait a minute basically. on CW you'll see a ton more because the whole point was brevity in morse. stuff like QRS (send slower please) or QRQ (send faster) or QNI which is net-specific not even an official Q code but people use it anyway. there's actually an official ITU list with like 50+ of them going back to maritime radio days but realistically maybe 15-20 get used with any regularity in ham radio. just hang around nets for a few weeks and youll have the common ones down without even trying

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

Modern speech processors are very touchy - you may find it easier to get talk power without distortion by leaving the processor off and using a narrower transmit bandwidth like 400-2600 Hz with a bit more mic gain.

i switched from a dipole to an EFHW last year and honestly cant tell the difference most of the time on 40. 80 is a bit worse maybe but i didnt have a great dipole for 80 either so hard to say. the convenience of running it along the fence was worth it for my situation, neighbor on one side is not a fan of visible wire antennas so keeping it low and along the fence helped a lot

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for about two years now and honestly i really like it for day to day stuff, the QSL tracking and award chasing features are great and it syncs nicely with WSJT-X through the UDP port which was kind of a pain to set up at first but once it clicked its been solid. but contest season is coming up and everybody keeps telling me N1MM is basically the only real option if you take contests seriously at all. i tried running N1MM last year for the CQWW and yeah it's clearly built for that kind of operating, the SO2R stuff and the bandmap integration are on another level compared to trying to do a contest from Log4OM. but then i end up with logs split across two programs and merging them back into Log4OM afterward is always kind of a mess, adif import works but there's always something weird with the dupes or a few records that come in wrong. anyone settled on a clean workflow for this? like do you just accept that contest logs live in N1MM and your main log lives in Log4OM and you do a periodic import, or is there a better way to keep everything in sync. also curious if anyone is running WSJT-X feeding into N1MM during a contest — does that even make sense or do you basically stop doing FT8 contacts during a contest and just focus on phone/CW.

yeah they're mostly pulling from the same underlying cluster network but theres definitely some differences in how fast they display and how they filter duplicates. DX Summit (oh7rda.fi) tends to be pretty snappy in my experience. QRZ's spot page is fine but ive noticed it can lag a bit sometimes, could be a few minutes behind. DXwatch has good filtering options — if you look at the top of the page there should be band filter buttons, might be a dropdown on mobile not sure. once you get that set to 20m it gets way more manageable. the dead frequency thing is totally normal by the way, dont get discouraged. a popular DX station can move or disappear in literally seconds especially if there was a pileup. some guys spot stations just as theyre signing off. you kind of learn to move fast or just accept youll miss some. it gets easier when you start to recognize the patterns of when certain dx is active

congrats on the ticket. so the baofeng thing -- yeah it's kind of a running debate that never really ends. honestly for just getting on repeaters and learning the hobby it'll do the job fine, the radio works, it receives okay, and if you drop it or lose it you're not out much. the build quality is what it is but plenty of people have been using them for years without issues. that said if you want something that'll last and has better audio and just feels more solid, the yaesu FT-60 is a really classic choice and goes on sale sometimes around $100. i handed mine down to my nephew and it still works perfectly after like 8 years. there's also the Yaesu FT-4XR which is newer and cheaper, decent little radio for the money. the main thing i'd say is dont get too hung up on the perfect choice right now. get something in your budget, learn your way around a real radio, figure out what you actually want from the hobby and then you'll know a lot better what to look for in your next one. and there will be a next one, trust me on that.

so ive been running Log4OM for a while now and honestly i like it for day to day stuff, the QSO entry is clean and it syncs with LoTW without too much fussing around. but every time a contest rolls around i feel like im fighting it, the contest modules just dont feel right to me compared to what i hear people saying about N1MM. the thing is i dont really want to run two separate logging programs if i can help it. ive got everything set up in Log4OM, my ADIF history going back a few years, all my awards tracking. switching feels like a headache. but i tried N1MM during the last CQ WW and i have to admit the logging speed is just on another level, especially with SO2R stuff and the bandmap integration. its just built for contesting in a way that Log4OM isnt, at least from what i can tell. anyone actually use both regularly? like Log4OM for normal hamming and N1MM just when a contest starts? or is there a better workflow. also how are people handling WSJT-X with this — right now i have WSJT-X logging directly to Log4OM via UDP and it mostly works but i get occasional duplicate entries that are annoying to clean up.

hamstudy.org is basically the standard answer here, just use that. its free, it pulls from the actual question pool which is what the test is drawn from, and it tracks what you know versus what you keep getting wrong. i studied maybe 3 weeks for maybe 30-45 min a night and passed no problem. your friend isnt totally wrong either, a lot of the questions you will just kind of absorb by repetition even if you dont fully grasp the underlying concept right away, and the understanding tends to come later once you're actually on the air messing with stuff. the ARRL technician manual is solid if you want actual explanations but honestly for just passing the test its overkill. id say hamstudy, give it 2-3 weeks, do like 5-10 practice exams and if youre hitting 85%+ consistently you're probably fine. the real pool is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so theres some room.

Just used my new BattleBorn 100Ah during Hurricane Milton response - ran my 7300 plus laptop for 12 straight hours without breaking a sweat. The voltage regulation is incredible compared to my old Optima YellowTop. Initial cost hurts but the cycle life makes it worth it long-term.