David Wilson59

headlamp. seriously. i know it sounds dumb but every single time i've deployed or even just set up at a field event after dark i end up wishing i had one clipped to the bag. that and a small battery powered fan for the summer, operating inside a trailer or a tent in july with a rig putting out 100w gets miserable fast the 857 is a solid choice for portable ops btw, good rig for that kind of thing

yeah the generator is not overkill, bring it. i made the mistake once of thinking solar would be enough for a similar exercise and by early afternoon we were brownout-ing the rig and had to back down to like 50w which isnt the end of the world but its annoying when everyone else is running full power. one thing i'll throw out there — if you haven't already, get a good inline power meter like a Powerwerx or even just a cheap watt meter from Amazon so you can actually watch your consumption in real time. really changes how you manage things in the field, you start noticing stuff like the laptop charger pulling way more than you expected or the radio drawing current even on receive if you have the display cranked up bright. EFHW vs Buddipole is honestly a personal thing but for 40m i'd go wire every time. Buddipole on 40 is kind of meh unless you do the extended version and that thing is a lot of pieces to keep track of.

thats awesome, i just got my ticket in March so i dont have the "coming back" experience but i totally get the wife not caring part haha. my girlfriend just kind of nods when i talk about propagation. what net were you on if you dont mind me asking, im trying to find some good ones on 40

This is fascinating! I'm just getting into antenna modeling. Could you share your 4NEC2 files? I'd love to reproduce these results and understand the radiation patterns better.

yeah what he said about LoTW, get that set up ASAP if you havent already because a lot of the credits you've already made might be sitting there waiting for you. i was surprised when i finally got my account sorted and loaded my logs — had like 30 something DXCC entities confirmed already without even realizing it. paper QSLs still count for all of them but honestly the bureau is slow and LoTW just makes everything cleaner. also 100w and a dipole is totally fine for WAS, ive seen people do it on way less

yeah same here, tried 40 a few nights ago and it was pretty rough. i think the solar flux has been doing something weird, saw it dip pretty low earlier this week. that said i jumped over to 80 and found a decent pile of activity around 3.900, might be worth a shot if you havent tried. some nights i think 40 just gives up entirely after local sunset for whatever reason

so i finally did it after putting it off for like two years. studied for about three weeks using hamstudy.org and passed with an 87 on my first try. went to a VE session at the local club which was a little awkward because i didnt really know anyone but the guys were all super nice about it. anyway got my callsign assigned four days later and immediately panicked because i had no idea what to do next. ended up just listening on the local 2m repeater for a few days before i got brave enough to say anything. my first QSO was with a guy about 20 miles away, just a quick signal report exchange but honestly i was shaking a little haha. he gave me a 5 by 9 and told me welcome to the hobby which felt really good. still figuring out what direction i want to go with all this. HF is obviously the dream but that feels like a whole other mountain to climb. anyone else remember what those first few weeks were like?

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about solar flux index and how it relates to band conditions but im still not totally clear on what numbers are actually good vs bad. like i understand higher SFI generally means better HF propagation but how high are we talking before 10m or 12m actually opens up for real DX work? i was watching pskreporter the other night and saw some spots from europe on 10m but when i went to call cq i got nothing, not even close. was using about 100w into a trapped vertical so its not like im running barefoot on a dipole or anything. also does the K index matter more day to day than the SFI? i feel like ive seen days with decent SFI where 20m was totally dead and then random days where it seemed great with nothing special going on. maybe i just dont know what im looking for yet. anyone have a good way to explain this stuff in plain english without sending me to a textbook lol

Installing a Diamond NR770H on my truck and running into some tuning challenges. Some dual-band antennas are designed so the 70-centimeter tuning depends on the harmonic of the 2-meter section, which means your UHF resonance is indirectly tied to how well the VHF portion was tuned. Therefore, always verify both bands after making UHF adjustments. Started with 2m band showing 1.3:1 SWR at 146 MHz, but 70cm was way off at 2.8:1. After adjusting the loading coil slightly, small adjustments less than a millimeter can shift the UHF resonance noticeably because the 70-centimeter band's shorter wavelength means small physical changes create large frequency shifts. Now both bands are under 1.5:1, but I'm curious about others' experiences with these trap-style mobile antennas. The interaction between bands seems stronger than I expected from the specs.

yeah the wobble at highway speed is a real thing with mag mounts and longer antennas, ive snapped a PL-259 connector that way before, not fun to diagnose when you're wondering why receive suddenly went to garbage. one thing worth considering if you really dont want to drill -- some people have good luck with the hatch/door jamb routing for the coax combined with a gutter mount or bed rail mount depending on what you have. not ideal electrically but better mechanically than a lip mount in my experience. though honestly for a permanent install on a truck you use a lot just bite the bullet and drill. resale value worry is overblown, a clean NMO install is basically invisible and you can always fill it with a rubber plug if you ever sell.

yeah every dB absolutely matters more at QRP, youve basically figured out the core thing that makes the whole pursuit interesting. when youre at 100w you can kind of throw power at problems but at 5w a bad coax connector or a poorly matched antenna will really show up in your log as... silence. most serious QRP ops ive talked to end up spending more time on antenna work than anything else, and a lot of them run end-fed halfwaves or resonant dipoles specifically to avoid losses in tuners and such. as for portable, yeah thats really where QRP shines in my opinion. ive been doing POTA runs for about two years now and a 3ah lipo will last me most of a morning activation easy at 5w, especially if youre running CW which your radio should be pretty efficient at. the whole thing fits in a small bag and you can hike somewhere nice and just operate which is a completely different vibe than sitting in the shack. dont let anyone tell you its frustrating, it is sometimes, but the contacts you do make feel earned in a way that 100w contacts just dont for me anyway

had almost the exact same thing happen to me when i first set up my D710. the radio was transmitting but turns out my TX audio level into the TNC was way off and the packets were basically garbage on the other end, so igates were hearing something but not decoding it properly. check your deviation — there's an internal pot on some of the older firmware versions that can drift. also double check that you're actually in packet mode and not APRS-mode without the TNC enabled, the menu on that radio can be a little confusing with how it handles internal vs external TNC. the WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 path is fine, thats what basically everyone uses. and -9 is the right SSID for mobile which is good. if you can borrow a second radio or SDR and just listen to your own transmissions, that would tell you a lot about whether the audio is actually clean or not.

so ive had my tech license for about 8 months now and really want to get on HF. been studying for general but honestly the band plan stuff is confusing me. like i get that we get more privileges but which bands are actually worth getting on as a new general? everyone says 20m but is that really where i should start? also do i need a different radio or can my ic-7300 do general class stuff already taking the test next month hopefully but want to make sure im not missing something obvious about what i can actually do once i pass

yeah i did almost exactly this with a Yaesu FT-991 a couple years back, used the band data from the linear amp jack. the bouncing thing is real and annoying. what i ended up doing was adding a 200ms delay after the voltage reading stabilizes before committing the relay state — basically just compare the current reading to the last reading and only switch if they match for like 5 consecutive polls. works pretty well in practice. as for the open circuit during transmit, i wouldnt worry too much about a few milliseconds but i wouldnt deliberately design around it being okay either. the 7300 has decent SWR fold-back but its not really meant to handle that repeatedly. i added a small piece of logic that checks a PTT sense line before allowing any switching — that way it just holds the current antenna if youre transmitting and does the switch when you let up. adds a tiny bit of lag but honestly never notice it in normal operation. the raspberry pi crowd will tell you to do all this in python on a pi zero but honestly for just reading voltages and driving relays the arduino is way simpler and boots instantly which matters if you lose power mid-contest or whatever.

yeah i made the same jump from a 590 and had similar feelings honestly. you kind of grieve the old rig a little which sounds dumb but its true. the 7300 waterfall spoils you fast though, after a month on it i borrowed a friends older rig for a field day type thing and felt totally blind without it. cant say much about your 40m noise specifically, my QTH is pretty rural so i dont fight a lot of that. but the touch screen gloves thing is a real issue, i actually velcro'd a cheap stylus to the side of the rig for winter portable ops, works okay

congrats man, that first contact feeling is something else. i remember mine, i was shaking a little and completely blanked on the phonetic alphabet when he asked me to confirm my call. been licensed about 3 years now and i still get a little buzz when i work somewhere new. dont stress too much about not knowing what to say, everyone on the repeater knows youre new and most of them genuinely enjoy elmering newcomers. get on there as much as you can and youll find your rhythm pretty quick.

so ive been messing around with an RTL-SDR v3 for about a year now, mostly doing HF with the direct sampling mod and running SDR# and occasionally SDRangel when i feel like fighting with it. honestly for what i paid its been great but im starting to feel the limits of it especially on the lower bands, lots of spurious stuff and the noise floor is noticeably worse than what guys are posting screenshots of with proper SDR receivers. been looking at the SDRplay RSP1B, its sitting around $130 or so depending where you find it. the RSP1 series has been around long enough that i trust the hardware wont just die on me, and RSPdx looked interesting but thats more money than i want to spend right now. my main use case is just HF listening, some 40m and 80m late at night, shortwave broadcast when theres anything left worth hearing, and occasionally poking around on 630m just to see whats there. main question i guess is whether the RSP1B is actually going to feel like an upgrade or if im chasing something that wont matter much with my antenna situation (end fed halfwave, not great, mediocre feedline). anybody gone that path or should i just get a HackRF and call it a day for the extra flexibility even though i know the sensitivity isnt as good

yeah the single yagi thing is real, EME has changed a lot since the JT65 days and even more since people started running Q65. a single long yagi, like a 9 or 12 element reasonably high gain one, can work if your station is otherwise tight. meaning low loss feedline or ideally the LNA literally at the antenna, and a decent power amp. you wont be running skeds with everyone but activity weekends you can find stations with big arrays that will hear you even if you cant hear them as well. for your space situation honestly a 2-3m dish is pretty compelling. the gain on a proper 2.4m dish is somewhere around 20-21 dBd at 144 which is competitive with a 4x9 array and its a lot simpler mechanically in some ways, though you absolutely need decent az/el tracking which is its own rabbit hole. yagi arrays have the advantage of being more forgiving on the pointing and you can build them incrementally, start with 2 yagis, add more later. the LNA placement is not optional if you want to be serious about it. coax loss before the first amplification stage kills your noise figure. even 1dB of loss there matters at moonbounce signal levels. most people use a relay-switched LNA right at the boom or at the feed. SSB Electronic and Kuhne make good ones, some people roll their own. your ft-991a should be fine as the IF radio if you bypass the preamp stage and manage levels carefully into wsjt-x.

congrats on the first one, it's kind of addicting isnt it. regarding the park reference on SSB, there's no strict rule honestly, most activators just work it into their exchange naturally. something like "you're 59 here at K-4567, thanks for the call" works fine. the person who told you you were doing it wrong was probably just being picky, ive heard it done a dozen different ways and as long as the hunter hears the park number youre good. for the logging -- yes you do have to upload your log yourself through the POTA website. it doesnt happen automatically. you go to your account, hit upload log, and it takes an ADIF file. if your logging software can export ADIF youre pretty much set. usually shows up within a day or two after you submit it, sometimes faster. make sure the park reference is in there correctly or it wont credit right.

CHIRP is absolutely worth learning! I maintain a master spreadsheet with all my local repeaters, then import it into CHIRP when I get a new radio. Takes 5 minutes to program vs hours of manual entry. PC programming is essential for managing many programmable channels - your fingers will thank you.

did this exact comparison a few years back actually. had a dipole at about 35 feet and put up a vertical with 32 radials over a couple weekends. honestly the results were kind of nuanced and not the slam dunk either way i was expecting. for DX yeah the vertical had a noticeable edge on signals coming in low, stuff from EU and JA especially in the mornings. like stations that were S5 on the dipole were sometimes S7-S8 on the vertical. but the vertical also picked up WAY more noise, my local QRM went through the roof. the dipole was quieter by probably 10dB in certain directions just because of the pattern. so if i was calling CQ domestically or working any stateside stuff the dipole was more comfortable to operate. ended up keeping both and just switching between them depending on what im doing. for a serious DX session late at night when the band is actually open the vertical wins. just casually ragchewing with guys a few states over, dipole all the way. if youre only gonna have one antenna and your noise floor is already rough i might actually stick with the dipole unless you can get that vertical up high enough to really matter

okay so i passed my technician exam like two months ago and ive been mostly on 2m and 70cm which is fine but i want to get on HF and i keep reading different things about what techs are allowed to do. someone at the club told me i can use some HF privileges but then another guy said basically no you cant really do anything useful down there without a general. i looked up part 97 but honestly its kind of hard to parse if youre not used to reading that kind of legal document. something about 10 meters and CW on some other bands? im just not sure what the actual limits are and whether its even worth buying an HF rig before i upgrade. also does any of this change depending on if you have a Technician license from before 2000 or something, i saw something about that online

the NATO phonetics are the standard — alpha bravo charlie and so on — and yeah those are what you want to stick to, especially if theres any chance youre working someone where english isnt their first language. the whole point of that alphabet is that those specific words were tested to be recognizable across a ton of different accents and languages. "london" for L works fine if youre just chatting with your buddy locally but in a pileup or on a net it can cause confusion especially if conditions are rough as for when to use them, general rule ive always gone by is: give your callsign in phonetics at least the first time in any exchange, or anytime you think theres a chance the other op might have gotten it wrong. on a clear local repeater with good signal? you can probably just say the letters normally. on HF with any kind of QSB or noise floor? phonetics every time, no question. some contesters will drop them when running fast but thats a different situation entirely

yeah i had the exact same problem when i put my 7100 in my jeep, drove me crazy for weeks. ended up being that i hadnt grounded the radio body to the frame, just had the negative going back to battery and thought that was enough but it wasnt. added a short piece of 10 gauge from the radio chassis to the nearest bolt on the body and the whine dropped like 90 percent. still had a little left and a cheap inline noise filter from Amazon on the power leads got rid of the rest. total cost like 8 bucks for the filter lol.

So im finally gonna do my first flora fauna activation tomorrow at the state park about 45 minutes from here. Been putting this off for months but weather looks good and i got the weekend free. Planning to take the ft-891 and my buddipole, maybe try 20 and 40m if conditions are decent. I already registered on the wwff site and got my reference number but honestly still feel like im missing something obvious. The logging part seems straightforward enough but what about qsl cards - do most activators send them or just upload to lotw? And should i be calling cq wwff or just regular cq portable? Any other gotchas i should know about? Really dont want to mess this up on my first try.