Ashley Johnson24

so i've been wanting to do this for probably two years now and last weekend i finally got my act together and did it. built a pixie kit first just to get my feet wet, then spent a few weeks putting together a slightly more serious 40m CW transceiver from a design i found on one of the QRP forums. nothing fancy, LM386 audio amp, NE602 mixer, the usual stuff you see in these low parts count rigs.
took it out to the state park saturday morning with a wire antenna i threw up in a tree, maybe 25 feet at the apex, fed with some old RG-174 i had laying around. running 3 watts roughly, maybe a hair less. honestly wasnt sure i'd hear anything let alone make any contacts but within maybe 20 minutes i had a guy in ohio coming back to me, then later a contact down into tennessee. both solid copy, nothing special but i was just sitting on a picnic table with a battery i charged the night before and making contacts, felt pretty wild.
the rig has a little drift issue when it first warms up which i know is pretty common with these vfo designs, anybody have a good trick for stabilizing that faster? ive tried the npо caps on the oscillator but honestly im not sure i placed them in quite the right spot in the circuit.

congrats on getting that first one done. i was super nervous my first activation too and honestly it went fine but i totally understand the feeling of everything going sideways. the spotting thing is huge, once someone spots you on the app the hunters find you real fast so thats good you had that happen. do you self spot or did someone else do it? i always forget to self spot when im actually operating lol

so i heard the Tri-County hamfest is back this year after they skipped it in 23 i think. been a while since ive been to one and i kinda miss just walking the tables and finding weird old gear for cheap. last time i picked up a barely used MFJ tuner for like 12 bucks which was pretty great. anyway just wondering if anyone from around here is planning to go and if the swap meet part is still in the morning or if they moved it around

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.

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.

honestly the Baofeng will work fine for hitting repeaters and local stuff, dont let anyone make you feel bad about it. ive got an old UV-5R that i still throw in my bag when i dont want to risk my nicer radio. the build quality isnt amazing and the programming software (CHIRP is what you want, not the Baofeng native software) can be a bit fiddly but its totally learnable.
that said if you think youre going to get seriously into this hobby, and a lot of people do once they get on air, it might be worth stretching to something like the Yaesu FT-65 or even a used FT-60. the FT-60 is practically indestructible and holds its value forever. i bought mine used like 10 years ago and its still my go-to HT for anything that matters. the menu system on Yaesu takes some getting used to but the audio is noticeably better than the Baofengs ive used and the receiver is way less prone to getting stomped by strong nearby signals.
for 8 miles simplex it really depends on terrain more than the radio honestly. what part of the country are you in, flat or hilly?

yeah you need 100 confirmed, not just worked — so LOTW confirmations count, paper QSLs count through the card checker process, and some awards managers will accept a mix. 87 worked with 62 confirmed means you're actually in decent shape, just need to keep at it and maybe chase some of those unconfirmed ones more aggresively. some dx stations are really slow to upload to LOTW so it might just be a waiting game for a few of them.
for mixed mode — basic DXCC is mixed, meaning any mode counts toward the same 100 entity total. so working Kazakhstan on SSB and FT8 still only gets you one entity credit for basic. now if you want the CW endorsement or the digital endorsement that's a separate thing, you'd need 100 confirmed specifically on that mode. the ARRL page is honestly a bit of a maze but once it clicks it makes sense.
WAS is totally separate, different award, different submission. but you're right that they kind of happen in parallel if you're just working a lot of stations in general. alaska tends to show up more than you'd expect if you're on 40m in the evenings, just have to be patient.

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.

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.

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for maybe two years now and i really like it for day to day stuff, the QSL management and the award tracking is great but every time a big contest rolls around i feel like im fighting the software a little bit. like during the ARRL DX last month i kept fumbling around trying to get the rate window visible and the bandmap wasnt behaving the way i expected
a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just run N1MM for contests and keep Log4OM for everything else, export the ADIF after and import it. seems like extra steps but maybe thats just how people do it. also ive been running WSJT-X on the side for FT8 and right now Log4OM is handling the integration fine through UDP but i heard N1MM can also receive the WSJT-X spots somehow and i havent dug into that yet
curious if anyone actually runs this kind of split setup or if you just picked one and stuck with it. im not a hardcore contester, maybe 4-5 contests a year, field day, the usual