John Anderson78

the antenna isolation question is the right one to be asking first because that's where most people hit a wall. if you're running 20 and 40 simultaneously on the same tower, you need to think seriously about the physical separation and definitely bandpass filters — the 4O3A or Array Solutions ones are what most serious SO2R ops use. the filters alone wont save you if your antennas are 8 feet apart and you're running legal limit, but if you've got reasonable separation and you're not both on harmonically related bands at the same time you can usually make it work. on the mental load thing — yeah, it genuinely takes time. i'd suggest trying it in a lower-stakes contest first, like a state QSO party or even just during a regular weekend pileup to get the muscle memory down. the trick i finally internalized is that you're not really running two radios, you're running one radio and using the other for what basically amounts to dead time exploitation. when you're waiting for a dupe to clear or taking a sip of coffee your main run frequency is just sitting there, so you use that time. once you stop thinking of it as two simultaneous tasks and more like opportunistic filling of gaps it gets a lot more natural.

could also be worth checking if the band data lines are all seated properly, i know thats kind of a long shot but i had a weird intermittent power issue on mine turned out to be a ribbon cable that wasnt fully clicked in after i had opened it up to clean the fan. probably not your issue since yours is band-specific and consistent but just something to rule out i guess.

yeah 10 has been doing exactly that for me too, im down in texas and its been feast or famine all month. what i've noticed is the openings are real but they're shorter than they used to be and they move around more in terms of direction. like one afternoon i had a solid path to japan for maybe 45 minutes then it just evaporated. the geomagnetic stuff definitely plays a role but honestly even with a clean K index it's been flaky. part of it might be that we're past the solar maximum peak and the flux is starting to drift a bit even if it's still high overall. i'd keep an eye on the NOAA 3-day forecast and also check the real-time A index not just K, the A gives you a better picture of how the day has settled out. dont give up on it though because when 10 decides to open up properly right now it is genuinely incredible

yeah 10m has been wild lately, i caught some of that too. worked a station in japan on a whim Tuesday evening which i was not expecting at all. the solar flux has been sitting pretty high and we had a couple of X-class flares go by without totally wrecking everything which is kind of unusual. if you havent already set up some alerts on DX maps or even just check the cluster in the morning you'll start seeing the patterns more. its a good time to be on HF honestly, bands like this dont last forever so might as well take advantage

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for contacts and all that but honestly it feels like a slot machine more than radio sometimes. you click a callsign, exchange grid squares, 73, done. i started poking around JS8Call a few weeks ago because i actually wanted to, you know, talk to people. the sensitivity on JS8Call is impressive — its built on the same WSJT-X engine so you get that weak signal performance but you can actually type back and forth. its slower obviously, maybe 25 wpm equivalent at the normal speed setting, but ive been having legit conversations on 40m with guys id never reach on SSB from here. my antenna situation is not great (end-fed in the attic, dont ask) so weak signal modes are basically my only option for reliable HF. the thing i cant figure out is whether theres enough activity to make it worth learning the software quirks. the heartbeat/relay stuff is kind of confusing and the UI takes some getting used to. anyone running JS8Call regularly on a specific freq or net? is 40m the sweet spot or do people mostly hang on 20?

so ive had my tech for about 4 months now and been doing some local repeater stuff but honestly its getting a little quiet on the ones near me. a buddy at the club mentioned there are like scheduled nets i could check into but i cant really figure out how to find them or know whats a good fit for a newer operator. i dont want to jump into something thats way over my head or where i'd feel out of place. also i saw something on qrz about a special event station happening next month for some historical thing, is that different from a regular net? like do you just call them or is there a specific way to work those. i feel like i'm missing something obvious here but nobody at the club has really walked me through the net thing step by step

As Tech you're limited to CW on most HF bands and small phone/digital segments. General gives you digital modes and SSB phone on HF bands below 28 MHz - opens up the entire world! 20m SSB was what convinced me to upgrade.

ok so ive been trying to work AO-73 for the past couple weeks and im just not getting anywhere. i can hear signals on the downlink pretty clearly, like i can tell theres a passband and i can hear guys making contacts, but when i transmit i either cant hear myself in the passband at all or i just blow everything up with full quieting and everyone disappears. my setup is a 2m yagi for uplink and a 70cm yagi for downlink on a separate radio. both antennas are handheld which is probably part of the problem but ive seen people work sats with way less so im not ready to blame the antennas yet. im running about 5 watts on uplink which i thought was reasonable. the doppler correction is where i think im totally lost. im using gpredict to track and it shows me the doppler offsets but im honestly not sure if im supposed to be tuning the uplink, the downlink, or both. ive read like three different guides and they all seem to contradict each other on this. one says tune your uplink to compensate, another says tune downlink only, another says tune both. i dont have a fancy radio that does auto doppler so im doing it manually which is probably a mess. any advice from people who actually do this regularly would be appreciated, been at it for two weeks and only made one contact and im pretty sure the other guy just barely heard me

went two years ago and honestly it wasnt bad, they had maybe 40 or 50 vendor tables and a few of the local clubs had booths set up. didnt find anything i was specifically looking for but picked up a bag of PL-259s for like 3 bucks so thats something. think the club also does a foxhunt in the afternoon which was fun to watch. probably going again this year if the weather holds up

I'm experiencing the well-documented TX power overshoot issue with my IC-7300 when using it with my Heathkit SB-1000 amplifier. The 7300 produces RF to the amplifier after PTT drop when going from transmit to receive, causing large RF sparks on the relay and potential damage to the amp itself. Has anyone found a solid workaround for this besides avoiding amplifiers entirely? I've read about bandpass filters helping but looking for specific recommendations on interface solutions or timing adjustments that actually work in the field.

I love FT8 for DXCC hunting but yeah, it's not much of a conversation. Try JS8 if you want something more chatty - it's based on FT8 but lets you actually type messages back and forth.

honestly im still trying to figure all this out. been chasing my first 100 entities and pileups are just intimidating to me. i didnt even realize you were supposed to listen to the split that carefully, i thought you just find where it says to transmit and go. gonna try paying more attention to where he's actually coming back from, that makes a lot of sense when you think about it

ran a DIY setup for years before switching to RemoteHams and honestly the main thing i noticed right away was the audio latency improvement. my homebrew thing was using mumble and it was fine but there was always this slight delay that messed with my timing on CW. the RemoteHams client handles that better in my experience, not perfect but better. the SDR remote part is genuinely useful, being able to see a chunk of spectrum before you commit to a frequency is a big deal when youre trying to work DX remotely and you dont know if a pile up already formed. my site is on a 4G LTE connection, probably 15-20 mbps down and maybe 5 up, and it handles everything fine including the SDR waterfall. id say you need at least solid 5 mbps upload at the site for it to feel snappy. below that and the waterfall gets sluggish first before the audio starts suffering. the subscription cost bugged me at first but i've stopped thinking about it. the time i save not driving out to reset stuff manually is worth way more than what they charge.

i used the gordon west book when i did mine last year and it was pretty good for explaining things in plain english but tbh i think i spent more time on it than i needed to. the question pool approach is totally legit for passing. one thing nobody told me is you should pay attention to the electrical safety and RF exposure questions because those trip people up and there's more of them than you'd expect. good luck, the exam itself isnt scary at all once you sit down for it

the WSJT-X to Log4OM UDP thing works well but just make sure your port settings arent conflicting if you ever try to run N1MM at the same time, i did that once by accident during a VHF contest and had QSOs going to both logs and neither was complete. took me a while to figure out why my dupe checking felt off mid-contest. just something to watch out for if you ever try to run FT8 alongside SSB or CW in a mixed-mode event.

Good catch on the coax issue! For 23cm EME, we typically use Q65-30B, Q65-60C, then Q65-120D in order of increasing sensitivity. Haven't used Q65-120D due to PA limitations myself. The longer transmission periods really stress the thermal design. Consider adding a duty cycle monitor - some ops limit to 50% for thermal management on these high-power microwave amplifiers.

Different radio models can be challenging for SO2R since your brain has to adapt to different control layouts. Stick with identical IC-7600s - you made the right choice. For switching, the YCCC box has better integration with N1MM+ if you're using that logging software.

im kind of in the same boat as you, just a little behind — im at like 10wpm right now trying to get to where you are so take this with a grain of salt. but ive heard a lot of people say that 20 or 30 min a day is fine but it has to be consistent, like every single day matters more than doing a long session on the weekend. also apparently the session right before bed is good for retention or something, i read that on the QRZ forums. good luck, following this thread because ill be dealing with this same plateau soon probably

Welcome to DXing! You can absolutely mix both methods - many of us do hybrid applications all the time. For LoTW credits you must go into LoTW itself and select the QSOs you want to apply for. Start with LoTW for the common countries where stations regularly upload, then use paper cards for the rare ones that don't participate in LoTW yet.

so ive been working on this direct conversion receiver for 40m, mostly following the EMRFD design but with a few changes because i didnt have all the parts on hand. got it breadboarded last weekend and fired it up and honestly it works better than i expected in some ways and worse in others. the problem is the thing is pulling in broadcast stations like crazy, there's this massive AM station somewhere nearby i think around 1.2 MHz and it's just bleeding into everything. audio is loud and distorted and it basically covers the whole band when conditions are right. i've got a low pass filter on the front end but clearly it's not doing enough. the filter is a 5 element chebyshev thing i wound on T50-2 cores, calculated for 40m but i wonder if my winding is off or the core material is wrong for this. also getting a lot of hum, like 60hz hum that varies with the signal strength weirdly enough. not sure if that's the power supply or if i'm picking up the AM demodulation products or what. running it off a wall wart right now, probably should put a proper filtered supply on it but i wanted to see if it worked first. anyone dealt with this kind of broadcast breakthrough before? feels like a shielding issue too because moving my hand near the board changes things noticeably.

I used the ARRL license manual and HamTestOnline for my tech and general. The manual is good for understanding the why behind the answers but honestly for just passing the test the online practice exams are probably enough. Take practice tests until you're consistently scoring 85% or better and you'll be fine. The actual test is pretty straightforward, mostly multiple choice and they dont try to trick you

yeah what he said. also if you're not sure what to say just listen to how other people check in before you key up. i do that whenever i join a net i havent been on before, even now after like 12 years. some nets are super formal and some are just people chatting with a loose structure. the net control on a good net will guide you through it if you seem lost, thats literally part of their job. sounds like yours was decent about it.

man the rain on the way down is the worst, did my first activation in the smokies and my boots were completely soaked by the time i hit the parking lot. also dont worry about panicking during the pile, everyone does. i still mess up exchanges sometimes and ive done like 30 activations at this point

ok so i got my technician back in march and ive been listening to the local 2m net on tuesday nights for a few weeks now. everyone sounds like they know exactly what theyre doing and i keep almost keying up and then chickening out lol. like i know the basics but im not sure about the order of things — do you wait for the net control to call for check-ins and then just say your callsign? or do you say something else first? and what if i miss the check-in window, is it rude to just jump in later? also one time somebody came on and just started talking over the net like they didnt know it was happening, and net control handled it pretty gracefully but it made me more nervous about doing something wrong. anyway if anyone can just walk me through what a normal check-in actually sounds like i would really appreciate it

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and I got my sequential call which is fine but honestly kind of a mouthful. a buddy at my club mentioned I could apply for a vanity call and get something shorter or maybe even a 1x2 if I can find one thats available. I looked at the FCC ULS site and honestly it was a bit overwhelming. my question is basically — can I apply for a vanity call anytime or do I have to wait? I thought I read somewhere that there was a waiting period for certain call formats depending on your license class. I have a General right now. also does it cost money now or is that still free? I feel like something changed with that a couple years back but I dont remember the details. and one more thing — if I apply for a vanity call and dont get the one I want, do I keep my current call or does it change to something random? sorry if these are dumb questions, just trying to figure out if its worth going through the application before I start getting my callsign printed on stuff lol