David Wilson59

i just did a mag mount on mine and it works fine honestly, i know everyone says to do the NMO thing but i move my radio between vehicles sometimes so the flexibility is worth the small performance hit to me. havent had it fly off yet and ive done some long highway trips. maybe someday ill do a proper mount but for now its fine

yeah the POTA and WWFF overlap is totally normal, a lot of references cover the same physical areas especially with national forests and wildlife refuges. hunters can count the same QSO for both programs if you're activated under both. some activators actually self-spot on both systems at the same time which is fine, just means you get more callers which is never a bad thing. good call on hiking inside the boundary. the rules do say you need to be within the reference area, and while most people probably wouldnt know either way, its just cleaner to do it right especially for your first one. i had a similar situation at a wetland refuge where the parking was outside and i almost just operated from the car before reading the rules more carefully. for log uploads wwff.cc is still the main place, you create an account and submit there. i usually export from my logging software as an ADIF and just upload that. takes maybe 5 minutes once you figure it out the first time. congrats on the activation btw, first one is always the most nerve wracking

so i passed my technician exam last tuesday and today i finally worked up the nerve to key up on the 147.255 repeater in my area. my heart was literally pounding when i said my callsign for the first time. nobody answered for like 10 minutes and i thought maybe i was doing something wrong with the offset or tone, but then this older guy came back to me and we talked for probably 20 minutes about antennas and he gave me a bunch of tips. honestly wasnt expecting anyone to be that friendly. anyway just wanted to share because im still kind of buzzing from it. now trying to figure out if i should get a HF rig next or just stick with vhf for a while

73 is a big one people forget to ask about too -- its not technically a Q code but its everywhere in ham radio and it just means best regards or good wishes basically. and 88 means hugs and kisses which you hear sometimes. oh and OM means old man which sounds rude but its just what hams call each other, YL is young lady, XYL is wife lol. theres also a bunch of abbreviations that arent Q codes at all like FB which means fine business like "that's great" and CPY which is copy. once you start getting on the air yourself it clicks way faster than just reading about it

yeah JS8Call never really hit critical mass the way FT8 did and i think thats partly because FT8 scratches the itch for most people who just want contacts in the log. JS8Call is a different animal — its slower, the timing isnt as rigid, and you can actually type a message back and forth but most hams who got into FT8 dont seem to want that, they want the efficiency. that said i do see decent activity on 40m around 7.078 in the evenings, and 20m at 14.078 during the day can have a handful of stations depending on conditions. the JS8Call groups on facebook actually coordinate nets sometimes which helps. the relay/store-forward stuff built into it is genuinely clever for emcomm use, some ARES groups have been experimenting with it for exactly that reason but adoption is slow because everybody already knows Winlink. if you want actual conversation via digital modes and more activity than JS8Call, PSK31 still has a small but dedicated following. old school but people actually ragchew on it. 14.070 area on 20m, you can usually find someone especially weekends.

omg wait 10m was open?? i had my radio on 40m all day troubleshooting an antenna issue and totally missed it. thats always how it goes lol. ill make sure to check it today. i only got my general like 4 months ago so i havent really experienced a good 10m opening yet, most of what ive read says it used to be pretty dead. super excited to try it out finally.

yeah i was in the same boat like six months ago. what helped me was just emailing the net manager and asking directly, most of them are really happy to walk new people through it. ours actually does a little informal intro before the net starts on the first tuesday of the month specifically for new hams which is pretty cool. might be worth checking if yours does anything like that

so ive been chasing DX seriously for maybe 3 years now and honestly for the first two of those i was just doing everything wrong in pileups. calling on the DX's frequency like an idiot, not listening for where they were actually pulling from, just throwing my callsign out there every time i heard a gap. the usual beginner stuff i guess. anyway there was a VP8 expedition last month and i really wanted it for a new one so i actually sat down and studied how the operator was working before i ever keyed up. spent like 20 minutes just listening. turns out he was working strictly split and pulling about 3-4 up most of the time but sliding around. so instead of parking on 3 up like everyone else i watched where he was actually coming back and nudged myself up to 4.5 and just waited. called once, clean, with good timing right after he sent his last QSL, and he came back to me first try. i think the biggest thing was just not being part of the wall of noise. everyone's stacking on the same spot and you're better off being slightly off to the side where the operator can actually pick you out. also my signal was probably cleaner because i wasnt fighting 50 other stations for the exact same slice of spectrum. running about 500w into a 4el yagi at 60ft so not exactly barefoot but not a kilowatt either. anyone else have techniques that actually work consistently? feels like every operator works differently and what works one time fails the next.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about solar flux and how it affects the bands but honestly i still dont fully get it. like i know higher numbers are better but what does that actually mean in practice for someone trying to work some DX on 10m? i checked the DX maps yesterday and saw a few spots coming in from europe and south america which was exciting, flux was showing around 145 or so. but then i tried calling CQ for like 45 minutes and got nothing. my buddy says my antenna is probably the issue (its a dipole at about 25 feet) but im wondering if i just missed the opening or something. it can feel so random is there a good resource for knowing when to actually sit down and watch for openings? i feel like im always reading about them after the fact on here

hamstudy.org is genuinely all you need, i didnt buy anything and passed first try. the way it works is it tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and drills you on those more, so its not like just reading through 400 questions in order. once youre hitting like 85-90% consistently on the practice tests you're pretty much ready. the actual pool repeats a lot of the same concepts just worded differently so once stuff clicks it clicks. the electrical stuff tripped me up at first, ohms law and calculating things with antennas, but theres youtube videos that explain it way better than any book. just search for tech license study and youll find people walking through the hard parts. i think it took me maybe 3 weeks of casual studying, not every day. dont stress too much, the test really isnt that bad once you stop looking at the whole pool as one giant wall of text.

honestly the doppler on LEOs still makes my head hurt sometimes and ive been doing this for years lol. one thing that helped me was just doing a few passes in receive only — dont even transmit, just track yourself listening to other guys working the sat and watch how the signals move across the passband as the pass progresses. gives you a real intuitive feel for the rate of change before you add the complexity of trying to work someone at the same time. also are you accounting for the transponder inversion offset correctly in gpredict? theres a setting where you put in the transponder passband limits and whether its inverting, and if that data is wrong the auto doppler correction is going to fight you the whole pass. the AMSAT website has a satellite status page with all those parameters updated pretty regularly

so ive been licensed for about three years now and mostly just done local stuff and the occasional contest but lately ive been getting really into DX and i think i want to start actually going for DXCC. problem is every time i look into it i get confused about the whole LoTW thing vs paper QSLs, and whether i should also be tracking WAS at the same time or just focus on one thing. like is there a strategy people use or do you just work everything you can and sort it out later? i have about 47 confirmed entities in LoTW already just from random contacts i never thought about, so i guess im not starting from zero. running 100w into a pretty decent dipole up about 35 feet if that matters. any advice from people whove been through this would be great honestly. also not sure if i should be paying for the ARRL account upgrade thing right away or wait until i have more confirmations

yeah did mine about four years ago, same diode. never had any issues and the radio has been solid. the ALC thing on 10m youre probably not imagining it completely — i noticed something similar but it was within spec when i actually measured it so i stopped worrying. the 857 ALC can be a little twitchy anyway especially up high in frequency, stock or not. the speaker mod is definitely worth doing if you spend any real time listening on it without headphones. i used a small 8 ohm driver from an old portable radio and it made a noticeable difference. just make sure whatever you drop in there fits without touching the board, clearance is tighter than it looks once you route the wires. honestly the hardest part of that whole mod is just not stripping the tiny screws getting the case off for the third time

yeah 1.4:1 without a balun and a choc block center is pretty solid for a first build honestly. i ran a dipole for almost a year with no choke and the main thing i noticed was my feedline was picking up noise from somewhere in the house, took me forever to figure out that was the issue. once i added a cheap 1:1 choke balun it got noticeably quieter on receive. might not be your situation but worth keeping in mind if you start hearing weird noise floors.

done almost exactly this with a pi zero w and an uno clone for my shack. works most of the time lol. the one thing i'd add is think about what happens when the pi crashes or the script dies — make sure the relays fail in some sane state so you're not transmitting into an open or into the wrong antenna. i added a watchdog timer on the arduino side that defaults back to the vertical if it stops getting commands from the pi after a few seconds. took me a while to think of that but glad i did because the pi has locked up on me twice and it just falls back cleanly now instead of leaving things in a weird state.

"A wise ham once said, 'A ham has two ears and one mouth. Therefore he should listen twice as much as he talks.' Be sure to say exactly what you mean. THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK!" Keep your instructions clear and brief, and don't be afraid to politely redirect stations if they get off-topic.

Totally get the paralysis from reading too much online, happens to everyone. Honest answer for your situation - if $60-150 is the budget and you're just getting started on local repeaters, the Baofeng UV-5R or the UV-82 will do exactly what you need. People love to complain about them but they work fine for a new ham hitting repeaters in town. The programming is a bit annoying without software but grab CHIRP (free) and a cable and it's pretty painless. If you can stretch toward the top of your budget the Yaesu FT-65 is a real step up in build quality and the receive audio is noticeably better. Also way easier to program by hand if you end up not wanting to mess with a computer. I'd probably lean that way if you can swing it. APRS is a whole separate thing - you'd need something like an FT3DR or a TH-D75 for that built in, which are way above your budget, but you can always do APRS later with an app and a cable. One thing at a time.

I did my third activation a few weeks ago and ran into the same battery situation you mentioned, its always something right. I use a 4ah lipo now which gets me through a full morning pretty comfortably running 10 watts. anyway welcome to the addiction, once you start looking at WWFF Watch and realizing how many references are within an hour of you it kinda takes over your weekend planning a little bit

yeah the opto isolator is definitely the right call, RF getting into the arduino will drive you crazy and its hard to debug because it shows up as random weird behavior not obvious errors. i used a PC817 on a similar build for my IC-7300 and it cleaned everything up right away. the 7300 outputs proper logic levels so maybe slightly different situation but the principle is the same for the band voltage filtering i'd put a small cap across the input too, like 100nF to ground right at the arduino pin, helps a lot with transient spikes during TX. and make sure your ground is solid between the radio chassis and the arduino ground — i had a floating ground issue once that made no sense until i traced it back to that the pi is overkill for pure relay switching, the arduino is totally fine for this. the pi makes more sense if you want to add logging or a web interface or something but for just reading band data and flipping relays the uno is perfect and simpler to keep running 24/7 without worrying about SD card corruption or whatever

6 contacts isnt too bad for a first go honestly, especially if conditions were rough. the key thing with wwff is getting spotted - did you use the wwff database or at least get on dx cluster? most chasers are looking for new parks so if they dont know youre there you'll sit calling cq forever. also yeah definitely announce your reference number regularly, like every few cqs. helps people know what park youre activating

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech class) and i finally got a baofeng programmed up and ive been trying to get into a couple of the local repeaters listed on repeaterbook. some of them i can hear traffic just fine but when i key up nobody seems to hear me or i get a weird beep and then nothing. i figured out that most of them need a CTCSS tone to access them but here's where i get confused — do i set the tone on transmit only, or on both transmit and receive? i've seen it called PL tone sometimes too and i wasnt sure if thats the same thing. also there's one repeater that i got into and said my callsign and nobody responded and i wasnt sure if thats normal or if theres some kind of etiquette thing i was missing. like do you just wait? say your call again? i dont want to be that guy who annoys everybody on the repeater but i also dont know what i dont know if that makes sense

Are you monitoring your own signal at the remote end? Try using one of the HF WebSDR receivers to monitor your output signal quality - helps verify the CW timing is clean on-air even if it sounds delayed locally.

yeah i went through basically the same thing, tried a few different apps and none of them really stuck until someone on here (or maybe it was the reddit) told me about Morse Mania on my phone. its kind of gamey which helped me not quit after day three lol honestly i still cant copy a full qso but i can get callsigns and RST reports now which is kind of what you said you wanted so maybe thats a good starting point. dont get discouraged if some letters just wont stick, for me it was B and 6 that kept tripping me up for like two months for some reason

i was terrified my first checkin too lol. just do it, worst case net control asks you to repeat yourself and thats fine, happens to everyone. i checked into my first net and completely blanked on phonetics halfway through my callsign and just said the letters regular and nobody cared at all

As a fellow newer ham, I'd say set a budget and stick to it. My first hamfest I went nuts buying stuff I didn't need. Focus on maybe one good dual-band handheld or a simple antenna project.