John Johnson16

i had almost the exact same situation a couple years back, repeater that was just barely there on a good day. ended up swapping to a GP-9 and it helped maybe 3-4 db in practice which was enough to make the difference. didnt bother with a yagi. for what its worth the GP-9 is a solid antenna but the mast mount on mine was kind of cheaply made and i had to redo it after the first winter, just a heads up if you go that route

welcome to the hobby, and dont worry about asking basic stuff — we were all there at some point. for finding nets the best resource ive used is the arrl net directory at netdirectory.arrl.org, you can search by state or frequency or even mode. most local repeater clubs also have a weekly net and honestly that's probably the best place to start since the control operators tend to be patient with new folks and the timing is consistent. the way it works is pretty simple — the net control station will open the net and then ask for check-ins, usually by geographic area or license class or just open to anyone. when it's your turn you just say your callsign phonetically and wait for them to acknowledge you. some nets are just roll call type things, others have actual topics or traffic to pass. for your first time just listen to a full session before you try checking in so you get a feel for the rhythm, the pacing is different on every net. as for special event stations, yeah those are a lot of fun. the arrl special event station page keeps a running list, and when you make a contact with one they'll usually tell you on air how to get the certificate or QSL card. some are free some ask for a sase. k6i was active recently for something and i totally forgot to work them so i missed out on that one.

so i finally did it, been lurking on this hobby for like two years watching youtube videos and reading stuff online and i just pulled the trigger and studied for the technician exam and passed it last tuesday. got my callsign showing up in the FCC database on friday which felt weirdly exciting for just being a number in a database lol anyway borrowed a baofeng from my neighbor who used to be into this and figured out how to program the local repeater into it and today someone was just chatting on there and i keyed up and said my callsign and that i was new and the guy spent like 45 minutes talking me through everything. checked into a local net for the first time too which was nerve wracking honestly, i kept second guessing when to talk just wanted to share i guess, feels like a big deal even though i know its really not compared to what you guys do with HF and all that. any tips for someone just starting out on 2m?

yeah what you experienced was almost certainly a short opening, those can be really fleeting especially on 17. the solar flux index is kind of your starting point for figuring out if HF is worth bothering with on a given day — higher numbers generally mean better propagation on the higher bands, anything above like 120 or so and 10, 12, 15 start waking up, below 80 and youre really down to 40 and 80 for reliable stuff with 20 somewhere in the middle depending. but honestly SFI alone doesnt tell the whole story. you also want to watch the K index — that one tells you about geomagnetic activity. a high K index even on a decent solar flux day can wipe out a band opening completely. when the K is 4 or above i usually dont even bother trying for DX, just end up frustrating myself. there are sites like hamqsl or dxmaps that aggregate all this in one place. once you start watching those numbers daily it kind of clicks after a while.

the gateway timeout thing is probably just propagation or the gateway being busy or down, the list in winlink express doesnt always reflect real time status that well. i usually sort by distance but then manually pick a couple different ones to try before i give up on a band. also make sure your VARA is actually negotiating the connection properly — if you havent registered VARA HF it'll still work but limited to slower speeds which can cause issues on a marginal path. as for the message path yeah you basically got it, the RMS gateway is just a relay point that takes your RF transmission and then forwards it over the internet to the winlink common message server, CMS is what they call it. so the path is your radio to the RMS gateway over RF, then the gateway has an internet connection and passes it along to the CMS, and from there it either sits waiting for the recipient to pick it up or if its going to a regular email address it goes out from there. the whole thing is built so that you only need RF to reach a gateway and then the internet part is handled by whoever runs that gateway. setting up your own RMS — thats a bigger topic. you do need to register with winlink.org, theres an application process and they want to make sure theres not already a gateway saturating that area. hardware wise you need a radio, a TNC or soundcard interface, a computer running RMS express in gateway mode, and a solid internet connection. not super complicated but definitely not just install and go, there's configuration and youre expected to keep it running reliably.

youre not lucky, the formula just works pretty well especially on 40 where the wire length is long enough that small errors in cutting dont throw things off as badly as they would on say 10m or 6m. the 468 constant already accounts for the velocity factor of bare copper wire in free space and most people end up within trimming distance on the first cut. that said your environment matters too — being close to trees and having the ends low like that can actually load the antenna a bit and pull the resonant point down slightly, which in your case probably helped if anything. inverted V vs flat top is a real tradeoff but honestly for general HF use the inverted V is totally fine. you lose a little off the ends in terms of radiation angle and the feedpoint impedance drops a bit from the classic 72 ohm flat top value, more like 50-60 ohms depending on the angle, which actually makes it match coax better without a balun in some cases. the main thing you lose is some low angle radiation which matters more for DX than for domestic contacts. for 40m ragchewing and general use youre good.

yeah i was in the same boat when i first got licensed lol. what i ended up doing was just using LoTW for everything serious and then i joined eQSL too because its free and why not. i probably get like 2-3 paper cards a month in the mail and i keep a stack of my own cards to send back when that happens. got mine printed through one of those online places for like 20 bucks for 200 cards which honestly isnt that bad. the thing that surprised me is how many older ops still really care about the physical cards. had a guy from Japan send me this beautifully printed card after a 40m contact and it felt kinda wrong not to have something nice to send back. so i guess my advice is just get a small batch of paper cards made at some point, doesnt have to be anything fancy, and then use LoTW for your actual award chasing

yeah the real world numbers are usually worse than your calc, at least in my experience. mostly because you forget about all the little parasitic draws — the laptop, the fans if it gets warm, USB hubs, whatever clock or logging device you're running. i've found i usually add about 15-20% on top of whatever i estimate and that gets me pretty close. for 8 hours with a 7300 doing moderate SSB work, rough guess maybe 60-70 ah depending on how hard you're pushing it. if you have two 100ah AGM batteries you're probably okay but not with a ton of headroom. lithium obviously changes that math significantly, you can actually use more of the rated capacity without killing the battery. we switched to a 100ah lifepo4 for our portable kit last year and it made a noticeable difference in how long we could actually run. one thing i'd strongly suggest — test it before the exercise. like actually run your full setup in your driveway for 4-5 hours on a battery and see what you pull. bring a current meter or even just check terminal voltage regularly. nothing worse than finding out on the day that your load estimate was way off. on the generator question — if it's an 8 hour exercise i'd probably still bring a small genny as a backup even if you're going solar/battery. a 2000w inverter type genny is quiet enough that it's not obnoxious and it'll save you if clouds roll in or something else goes sideways.

the front end thing is real but honestly for just hitting a local repeater you probably wont notice much difference. where it starts to matter is if you're at a hamfest or a big event where theres a ton of RF flying around — the cheaper radios can get kind of overwhelmed and you start hearing weird intermod and false signals. ive seen brand new hams think their baofeng is picking up alien transmissions, its just intermod from a nearby pager tower or something. that said, if your budget is tight and youre just getting started, the uv-5r will absolutely get you on the air and let you figure out what you actually want. i gave one to my nephew when he got his ticket and hes been using it for two years without complaint. just program it with chirp and dont mess with the TX power settings too much. the ft-65 is a nicer radio though, build quality feels more solid and the receiver is noticeably cleaner — if you can swing the extra 40 bucks i think youd be happier with it long term.

200 QSOs on a dipole in your first real contest effort is honestly really solid, dont undersell that. CQ WW is one of the biggest on the calendar so the bands are wall to wall and it can be overwhelming if you're not used to it. the fact that you stuck with it for 6 hours says a lot. on the SOTA during contest thing - yeah people do it, its called a combined activation and some folks specifically try to hit multiplier summits during things like CQ WW or ARRL DX. the tricky part is you're usually running QRP from a summit and the contest guys running a kilowatt into a yagi are not always thrilled to slow down for you. that said if you call CQ yourself and let people come to you its pretty workable. i did an activation during ARRL Field Day one year just kind of by accident and got a ton of contacts because everyone was hunting for weird grid squares and state multipliers. for Sweepstakes i'd say go for the CW side even with rough code, everyone was rough once and the SS exchange is so repetitive you'll have it memorized within the first hour. just slow it down and people are generally patient during SS, its kind of a more relaxed vibe than CQ WW.

end fed with issues will absolutely kill your HF winlink attempts, that was my problem for months before i figured it out. even a small impedance mismatch that seems fine for voice can wreck a digital mode session because the handshaking is less forgiving. got a tuner in the loop?

yeah this is pretty much the classic dilemma, youre not the first person to ask this and probably wont be the last. short answer is most serious contesters i know run N1MM for contests and something else for general logging, usually Log4OM or DXKeeper or whatever they started with years ago. the two log thing sounds annoying but honestly once you get ADIF export/import working its not that bad, you just do a merge after a contest weekend and move on N1MM and WSJT-X do work together, theres a udp port thing you set up and WSJT-X sends the QSOs over to N1MM automatically. i had it working in maybe 20 minutes following the N1MM wiki, just have to make sure youre pointing to the right port and that firewalls not blocking it. had one weird issue where dupes werent flagging right but that turned out to be a band setting i had wrong, not really a software problem the interface does look ancient but you get used to it fast, honestly after a few hours in a contest it just disappears and you stop noticing it. everything is where you need it when youre running 200 contacts an hour

oh man congrats, i've been wanting to do my first one forever but keep chickening out on the hike part lol. which antenna setup were you using exactly, was it just a wire with a 9:1 unun or straight into the KX2 tuner? im trying to figure out what to bring for my first one and everybody seems to have a different opinion

yeah 10m has been wild, i worked Japan twice last week on SSB and im running a pretty modest setup, IC-7300 into a dipole in the attic. my attic dipole. honestly wasnt expecting much. the solar flux has been sitting up around 180-190 on some days and you can really feel it. about the Icom thing, i heard the same rumors but couldnt pin down anything official. wouldnt surprise me though, theyve been quiet for a bit and usually that means somethings in the pipeline. Kenwood too been hearing whispers. i'll believe it when i see a press release honestly, forum speculation goes sideways fast.

so ive been reading about EME operation for a while now and it seems like something i really want to try but every time i look into it more it feels like you need a massive yagi array and a kilowatt just to even hear anything. im running a 4 element yagi on 2m right now with about 150 watts out of a solid state amp and i know thats not exactly competitive but i figured id ask here before i spend money upgrading stuff thats not the bottleneck what ive been reading suggests that with JT65 or Q65 the minimum station requirements have come down a lot compared to the old days of needing to copy CW off the moon. is that actually true in practice or is it one of those things where technically yes but in reality you still need a big array. also curious what kind of preamp people are running, ive heard the noise figure on receive is just as important as transmit power which makes sense given the path loss were talking about any experience welcome, especially if youve worked EME with a relatively modest setup

i dont know man. been licensed for like 6 years now and lately i just cant seem to get motivated to even turn the radio on. been sitting here looking at my FT-991A for three weeks and just... nothing. not sure if its the weather or what. had a great run last winter on 40m and was working stations every night but now its like i forgot why i even got into this in the first place. anyone else go through phases like this? do you just ride it out or is there something that kind of reignited it for you

oh man i was in the exact same spot like eight months ago. ended up going with the ft-65 after reading way too many threads like this one and im pretty happy with it. the only thing i wish it had was more memory channels because i keep running out of space when i travel and want to program in local repeaters. but for everyday use around home its been great, battery lasts forever and it survived me dropping it on concrete which i was very unhappy about but the radio was fine. one thing nobody told me until after i bought mine — get chirp set up on your computer before you try to manually program a bunch of channels. doing it through the menus is technically possible but chirp makes it like a hundred times easier and its free. just need the right cable for whatever radio you get.

this is really helpful to read, im studying for my general right now and have been thinking about getting into ARES once i upgrade. didnt realize the ICS training was that important, i kind of assumed it was just bureaucratic stuff they make you sit through. maybe i should actually pay more attention to that part when i get there

yeah i just did this like 3 months ago. used the hamstudy app on my phone mostly just sitting around at night before bed. took me maybe 12 days before i felt ready. walked in and passed with one wrong i think. dont overthink it, its not as hard as people make it sound. the antenna and propagation questions tripped me up a little but once you get the logic of it most of it clicks

Yeah the three-system thing trips up a lot of new folks, dont feel bad about it. Quick version: LoTW is run by ARRL and is the gold standard for DXCC and a lot of other awards, so that one is basically mandatory if you care about chasing awards eventually. eQSL is separate, some people use it some dont, and it has its own awards system. The two dont talk to each other at all which is annoying but thats just how it is. Paper cards are still very much a thing and a lot of DX stations and older ops really appreciate getting them. If someone put their address on the card they sent you then yeah just mail directly, thats the easiest way. The bureau system is more for when you dont have a direct address and want to send cards internationally without paying a bunch in postage — your ARRL section has a bureau for incoming and outgoing. But for a guy in Ohio just stick a stamp on it, way simpler. For your actual question about which one to use — most people do all three eventually but if i had to rank them id say get LoTW sorted first, then worry about the rest. Sounds like youre already on the right track.

went last year, vendor hall was fine honestly. maybe a little less crowded on sunday afternoon but saturday morning was absolutely shoulder to shoulder like always. the flea market had some decent stuff, picked up a nearly mint TS-430S for like 80 bucks which made the whole trip worth it right there. the drive is annoying but what can you do your club thing sounds familiar, we try to coordinate every year and it always falls apart by march and then people just show up independently and run into each other anyway

yeah the inverted V shape also narrows the pattern a bit compared to a flat dipole and the lower leg angles reduce the effective height a little. i built a similar setup last spring and had the same 'meh' feeling at first. honestly it grew on me once i started using it more — wire antennas have this way of rewarding patience i think. also 1.4:1 is great, dont chase a lower number for the sake of it.

I run a fender mount on my daily driver and roof mount on my expedition truck. Ground plane size requirements differ by frequency, impacting effectiveness. The car roof center provides the best ground plane and minimal obstruction, ensuring peak performance. For casual repeater work, fender mount is fine - you'll notice the difference more on simplex or weak signal work.

Another reason is preventing interference from other repeaters using the same frequency pair - long-distance propagation can cause co-channel issues, but different CTCSS tones prevent this. It's really about keeping systems clean and functional.

so i finally worked FT5XO last week after missing pretty much every kerguelen operation for the past decade and i wanted to write up what actually changed for me because i spent years doing it wrong and nobody really tells you the specifics, they just say 'listen more' which is not super helpful when youre standing there with 400 guys screaming over each other the thing that clicked for me was watching where the DX station was actually pulling calls from. like not just listening to the DX side but actually logging mentally where in the spread they were going. a lot of operators have a habit, they'll work up from their listening freq and then jump back down, or they'll favor one end. once you figure out the pattern you stop throwing your call into the middle of the pack where everyone else is and you anticipate where he's going next also timing. i used to just call continuously which is literally the worst thing you can do. the guys running the pileup hate it, it causes qrm, and you just blend into noise. i started sending my call once, cleanly, then listening. if he came back partial i'd send it again immediately. worked way better than the spray and pray method i was using before curious what other techniques people have found actually move the needle. im running a k3s into a 4 element yagi at 45 feet so not a superstation by any means but not terrible either