Tom Wilson

AO-73 was my first satellite contact too, maybe two years ago now. i remember the doppler thing being really disorienting at first. what helped me was just doing a few passes where i wasnt even trying to make contacts, just listening and watching where my downlink drifted so i could get a feel for how fast it moved at different points in the pass. near AOS and LOS it moves faster, middle of the pass near max elevation its more stable. also if you havent already check out the AMSAT frequency chart, they keep the transponder passbands updated and some of the numbers floating around on older pages are slightly off which will mess up your doppler corrections in gpredict.

ive had almost the exact same problem with a little 80m rig i built last winter, the key click thing drove me insane for weeks. turned out for me it was partly the shaping but also i had the oscillator running all the time and just keying the PA, and there was still enough of a transient getting through to cause the glitch. ended up adding a small relay to mute the rx during tx which helped a lot for monitoring but didnt fix the actual chirp obviously lol 3 watts on 40m with a decent antenna is actually pretty usable btw, dont get discouraged. ive worked a bunch of states with less than that running QRP CW

yeah propagation on 40m can be really weird for those mid-range distances, youre sometimes in that awkward skip zone where groundwave is too weak and skywave is overshooting. might be worth trying 80m for shorter paths or just watching the band conditions more closely before initiating. the RMS Trimode channel selector in Winlink Express will actually show you which gateways have had recent activity if you sort by last heard, that helps filter out the dead ones.

ohio to western pa on 7 watts is still something to feel good about, dont sell yourself short. ive made contacts on 5 watts that i couldnt replicate on 100 the next day, propagation is weird like that. keep at it and you'll start getting a feel for when the bands are working for you

yeah the cluster can feel like drinking from a firehose at first, totally normal. dxwatch lets you filter by band which helps a lot — just set it to whatever band youre planning to operate on and ignore the rest for now. 17m and 20m are probably your friends with 100w and a wire, you can actually work some decent DX on those without needing a kilowatt and a beam. for apps i've been using DX Toolbox on iOS for a while and it pulls cluster spots and also has propagation info which is handy. theres also Ham Radio DX on android that a few guys at my club use and seem happy with. the QRZ app itself has improved a lot too, you can log contacts and pull up info on whoever youre working pretty quick. honestly just try a couple and see what sticks, they all have slightly different interfaces and it comes down to preference. one thing i'd say is dont stress too much about working every spot you see. just watch the cluster for a while, tune around when something looks interesting, and you'll start to get a feel for what signals are actually making it to your area.

so i finally got off my butt and participated in one of the county ARES exercises after being a member for like two years and just never actually showing up to anything. i was pretty confident going in, i mean ive been licensed for six years, run a decent station, figured id have no problems. yeah not quite how it went. the scenario was a simulated earthquake, EOC gets activated, we're supposed to establish comms between three shelter locations and the EOC using nothing but simplex HF and VHF because we assumed the repeaters were down. first thing that happened is i completely blanked on net control procedure when it was my turn to check in. like just totally froze up. i know this stuff in theory but when there's an actual person on the other end timing you and the whole net is waiting... different story. also the ICS paperwork stuff caught me way off guard. i had done the online courses years ago and kind of forgot most of it. the served agency guys were pretty patient about it but i could tell they were used to people showing up underprepared. anyone else have a similar wake up call at their first real drill? and is there a good way to practice the net control side of things without waiting for the next official exercise? feels like that's really where i fell apart.

direct conversion receivers are kinda finicky about that stuff — the diode ring balance matters a lot more than people realize. if your diodes arent matched reasonably well you lose a chunk of conversion efficiency and the LO rejection goes to hell too. worth grabbing four diodes and checking them with a DMM at least for roughly similar forward voltage. also 30 feet of random wire going straight into a mixer is asking for trouble, there's no filtering happening and you're probably getting all kinds of junk in there. even a simple low pass filter before the mixer makes a noticeable difference on 40m. the AF amp side is worth checking too, what are you using there, just a single transistor stage or something like an LM386?

so ive had this 857 for probably 6 years now, bought it used off a guy at a hamfest and it's been rock solid until about two weeks ago. started noticing my signal reports were way down on 20m and when i finally put a wattmeter inline i'm only seeing about 8-12 watts out on a good day when it should be doing 100. the ALC looks normal on the display, no faults showing, and it receives fine. tried it on 40 and 15 and same deal across the board so it's not band specific. already reseated the finals connector and checked the obvious stuff. PA supply voltage looks okay at the connector. wondering if this is a classic driver stage issue or if the finals themselves are going. haven't pulled the board yet because i keep second-guessing myself on where to probe first. anyone been through this on the 857?

i just started looking into QRP stuff after seeing a post somewhere about POTA and wow there is so much to learn. didnt realize you could build your own radio like that, i thought that was just something people did in like the 1950s lol. the Rockmite sounds cool but i read its only one frequency? is that a problem for actualy making contacts or do enough people know to listen there

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (general) and i finally got a decent HT, a Baofeng UV-5R which i know people have opinions about but its what i could afford right now. anyway theres a couple repeaters listed on repeaterbook for my area and i programmed them in but when i key up nobody ever responds and i cant tell if im actually hitting the repeater or not. i did figure out that some of them need a CTCSS tone to open the squelch on the input side and i think i have that set right but honestly im not 100% sure. one of the repeaters just says 100.0 on repeaterbook and thats what i put in but the other one doesnt list a tone at all — does that mean its carrier squelch? or does it mean the listing is just incomplete. i tried just transmitting without any tone on that one and still nothing. also i dont really know what the etiquette is for just calling on a repeater when you dont know anyone. do you just say your callsign and say youre monitoring or is that weird? i dont want to come across as annoying but i also kinda want to actually talk to someone lol

so ive been messing with Winlink Express for a couple weeks now and i think i finally understand the basics but the RMS gateway part is still confusing me a bit. like i get that the gateway is basically the middleman between my radio and the internet side of Winlink, but when i pull up the gateway list in the software it shows like 50 gateways within range and i have no idea how to pick the best one. do i just go by distance or does the frequency matter more? some of them show as busy or restricted and i dont really know what that means in practice. also i set up a session last night on 2m packet through a local gateway and the message went through fine but when i tried HF winlink on 40m using VARA HF it just kept timing out. not sure if thats a propagation thing or if im doing something wrong with the VARA modem settings. my sound card levels looked okay but maybe not? running an IC-7300 into the RigPi and the CAT control seems fine because i can see it keying the radio, just the session never completes. one more thing — for message handling, is there a standard way people organize their outbox for emcomm stuff? like do most groups use standard ICS forms through the Winlink form templates or does everyone just kind of do their own thing

so ive been watching the solar flux numbers creep up over the past few weeks and figured id finally get some decent DX on 17 meters, which has been my favorite band for a while now. last tuesday the SFI was sitting around 178 and the K index looked pretty calm, maybe a 2, so i figured alright lets do this. set up around 1400 UTC and just... nothing. i mean i could hear some weak SSB from what sounded like it might have been somewhere in eastern europe but couldnt pull a callsign out of it. tried for maybe 45 minutes and gave up. then i come back maybe 3 hours later not even really expecting anything and worked 4 stations — JA, two from UA9, and a ZL — like back to back within 20 minutes. didnt change anything on my end. same antenna, same power. is this just how 17 is right now or am i missing something about when the band actually opens toward the pacific vs europe? i feel like i dont have a good mental model of how to predict this stuff beyond just checking propquest or voacap and hoping for the best.

so ive been wanting to get into QRP for a while now and last month i finally pulled the trigger on one of those 40m CW kits, the kind you solder yourself. took me about two evenings to put together and honestly the process was half the fun. i'm not great at soldering fine pitch stuff but the components on this one were pretty forgiving. anyway got it on the air last weekend running about 4 watts into a end-fed halfwave i strung up in the backyard and made contact with a station in ohio from here in vermont. nothing crazy but man the feeling of talking to somebody with a radio you built with your own hands is something else. there's something almost philosophical about it i dunno. for anybody on the fence about trying QRP i'd say just do it. the kits aren't that expensive and even if you mess up a solder joint it's usually fixable. my only real complaint is the receive sensitivity isn't quite as good as my main rig but for portable use it's going to be perfect. already thinking about taking it out to a park or summit sometime this summer and just seeing what i can work with a wire and a battery.

I had almost the exact same thing happen when I got my first iambic paddle and it drove me crazy for like two weeks. Turned out part of my problem was that I was coming from a straight key and unconsciously holding the paddle a split second too long — my brain was still thinking in the old mode. The keyer was faithfully interpreting that extra contact time as two dits. Slowing down a bit and really paying attention to how long you're actually pressing helped me a lot. Also some folks find the iambic mode B vs mode A makes a difference depending on your sending style, worth poking around in the 7300 menu if you havent already.

ok so the good news is you dont need morse code anymore, they dropped that requirement back in 2007 so youre fine there. the license levels are Technician, General, and Amateur Extra — Technician is the entry level one and thats where everyone starts. the test is 35 questions multiple choice and you need to get 26 right to pass, and honestly its not that bad at all. the best thing i can tell you is just use HamStudy.org or the Gordon West book, a lot of people swear by the book but i personally just drilled flashcards on hamstudy for like two weeks and passed no problem. the question pool is public so what you study is literally what shows up on the test, theres no trick questions or anything. just put in maybe 30-45 mins a day for a couple weeks and you should be good. look up a VE session near you through the ARRL website when youre feeling ready, some clubs even do walk-in testing which is nice if youre the type that just wants to get it done

full SO2R is genuinely a pain to set up right and imo not worth it unless your really committed to competitive single op. the bandpass filter situation alone took me months to get dialed in, was running a pair of K3s and the intermod when both were txing on adjacent bands was just brutal until i got a proper 6-pack filter setup sorted. even then you have to be thoughtful about band combinations. for most casual contesters i think learning to really optimize your single radio operation gets you further faster. stuff like keeping your fingers on the keyboard shortcuts, having N1MM set up the way you actually like it, knowing when to spot vs not in assisted. the SO2R multiplier guys at the top of the boards are impressive but they've also been doing it for 20 years and have stations purpose built for it.

the frequency offset thing trips up almost everyone at first. in Vara HF the frequency you set in the software is the center of the passband, and then your radio needs to be in USB mode and you dial to whatever the listed gateway frequency is. do NOT apply any additional offset in Winlink Express on top of that or you end up way off. one thing i see people do wrong constantly is having the IC-7300 in USB-D mode vs regular USB — for Signalink you actually want plain USB, not USB-D, because USB-D routes through the built-in codec and it can mess with the levels. for picking gateways, closer is generally better for a first test just to give yourself the best shot at a clean connection, but honestly just look at the waterfall and pick one where you can actually hear activity or at least where the band seems open. the RMS list shows last heard time too which helps. once youve got one successful session under your belt the rest starts making sense pretty fast.

Building a 2M setup and debating between a homebrew 8-element collinear versus a commercial 7-element yagi. Collinears claim 3-10 dB gain depending on elements, with 7.5dBd achievable. That's about 6dB better than a 1/4-wave reference and 10dB over a magmount. However, higher gain means narrower elevation pattern. For local repeater work and some weak signal, which would you choose? Collinears concentrate signal at low radiation angles for better DX but I'm concerned about coverage gaps.

Prosigns are different again - letters strung together as one continuous symbol, like CQ for "calling any station" or AR for "end of message." In contests you'll also hear cut numbers - like using N for 9 instead of sending all five dits and dahs.

the touchscreen thing is real, i did the exact same thing for the first week. eventually just stopped leaning on the desk i guess. you can also lock the touchscreen if you dig into the menus, theres a setting for it, though i forget exactly where it is off the top of my head — somewhere under function or maybe the set menu. worth poking around. the fan on mine does the same, seems like it comes on earlier than it probably needs to but icom probably just tuned it conservative. havent had any heat issues and i run it at 100w through a fan dipole pretty regularly. overall still think its one of the best bang for buck rigs out there right now especially used, the guy who made the 7610 upgrade probably paid a lot for not that much more in actual on-air performance depending on what youre doing.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check in to my local 2m net last tuesday and i think i messed it up but im not totally sure. the net control said QRZ and i just said my callsign and my name and that was it, but then a couple other people checked in and they also gave their location and said whether they had traffic or not. nobody said anything to me about doing it wrong but i felt kind of embarrassed after. is there a standard way to check into a net or does it vary? i looked it up a little bit online but got kind of conflicting info. also at one point i keyed up while someone else was already talking which i didnt realize until i heard the squelch tail and felt like an idiot. just want to make sure im not annoying people before i try again next week

so we finally pulled off our county ARES simulated emergency test last saturday and honestly it was a mixed bag but in a good way if that makes sense. we had about 14 operators show up which was better turnout than i expected, set up a net control at the EOC and had check-ins from three shelter locations plus a couple mobile units running around doing health and welfare traffic. the big lessons for us — and i know this sounds obvious in hindsight — was that nobody had practiced actual formal message traffic in forever. like people know their callsigns and can ragchew all day but when we started passing ICS-213 style messages through the net it got real slow real fast. one of our guys who's been licensed since the 80s said the same thing happened in his section during a real activation after a tornado, everyone froze up a little on formal procedures because day to day we just dont do it. we also had a net control handoff that got kind of ugly because the relief operator wasnt sure where we were in the log. something as simple as keeping a shared whiteboard or even just reading the net status out loud before handing off would've fixed that. anyway wondering if other groups have found specific drills or exercises that help people stay sharp on message handling without making it feel like homework. we want to do monthly stuff but dont want people to stop showing up because its boring.

The first WIDEn-N digi should insert its callsign before forwarding to show packet origin. If you're not seeing that callsign substitution in your raw packets, the digipeater may not be APRS-aware. Try WIDE2-1 instead - you rarely need more than single hop and it reduces network congestion.

so ive been interested in ham radio for probably two years now and kept putting it off but my neighbor finally convinced me to just go for it and take the technician exam. problem is i have no idea where to start with studying. i looked at the question pool online and honestly it was kind of overwhelming, theres like 400 something questions and i dont know which ones actually show up on the test or if i need to memorize all of them. someone told me to just use hamstudy.org and grind through it but another guy at the club meeting said i should actually read a book first so i understand the concepts not just memorize answers. i kind of see both sides of that but i also dont want to spend months on this when the test is only 35 questions. does anyone have a sense of how long it actually takes to be ready? im not totally new to electronics but the regulations stuff is where im worried.

ok so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just ragchewed and did some local nets but lately ive been getting really into DX and i think i want to actually go after DXCC properly. i have maybe 40-something countries confirmed in Logbook of the World already just from casual operating but never really paid attention to what counts and what doesnt. the thing confusing me is all the different awards — theres DXCC obviously but then WAS and WAZ and i see people talk about chasing credits on all of them at once. is that something you do simultaneously or do most people focus on one first? also some of the entities i worked i didnt have the other station upload to LoTW and i dont know if i can still get those confirmed somehow. one was a pretty rare one too which is annoying. any advice from people who have actually gone through this would be great, im running 100w into a dipole so not a powerhouse station but i seem to get out ok