Steven Clark

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF DX but a buddy of mine at the club just did his first moonbounce QSO on 2m and now i cant stop thinking about it. i know its a massive undertaking and the path loss is insane, somewhere around 250dB if i remember right, but the idea of bouncing a signal off the moon and having someone hear it on the other side of the world is just... i dunno it hits different than a normal pile-up. anyway im trying to figure out the antenna situation first because i know thats usually the biggest limiting factor. i have room for something decent in the backyard, maybe a 4-yagi array if i push it. i see a lot of guys running 4x9el or 4x12el setups on 144 MHz, is that the realistic minimum to actually make contacts these days or do you need more. and is the H-frame vs X-frame mounting thing a real performance difference or just aesthetics. also running a single large yagi and just doing JT65 EME contacts, is that even feasible anymore or is it a waste of time trying. i know i have a lot of questions, i just want to make sure i go in with a reasonable understanding before i start spending money on this stuff

Typically radio hams set up initially on one of three bands: 144MHz, 432MHz, or 1296MHz. For your first EME setup, I'd recommend 2m over 70cm - 144MHz moonbounce sits on a knife edge – it works, but only just, but there's more activity and larger community support. You'll need excellent timing synchronization and a good preamp.

This is exactly why I started with a simple manual A/B switch before investing in fancy SO2R gear! But seriously, have you tried operating with reduced power to isolate whether it's RF-related? Also check that your headphone impedance matches the controller specifications - some units are sensitive to load mismatches.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and i cant make up my mind. currently running a 40m half wave dipole up about 25 feet in an inverted V config, center fed with some old 450 ohm ladder line i had lying around going into a tuner. works ok but im wondering if a vertical would do better for DX since the takeoff angle would be lower. the thing is i dont have a great ground here, just a suburban lot, and everyone says you need a really solid radial field to get a vertical performing well. had a buddy run an endfed vertical last summer and he said it was hit or miss, some days great some days terrible. not sure if that was the antenna or just conditions. anyway my dipole at 25 feet is probably radiating at like 45 degrees or something like that, which isnt ideal for working europe from the midwest but it does ok. thinking about maybe putting up a trap vertical or one of those fan verticals to compare but id have to build something since the commercial ones are kind of pricey right now. anyone gone through this same decision and actually done a proper comparison? or am i overthinking it

i literally just passed my general like three weeks ago after being a tech for two years so good timing on your question lol. i was nervous about it too but honestly the hardest part for me was the regulations stuff not the theory. like remembering which emission types are allowed where and the third party traffic rules and all that. the electrical questions i just kind of memorized without fully getting it and that worked fine for passing. one thing i'd say is dont sleep on the propagation section. i thought it'd be boring but once i started reading about how 20m and 40m actually behave at different times of day i got genuinely interested and it made me want to get on HF even more. now i'm saving up for a used IC-7300 or maybe a Xiegu G90 if i want to spend less and the whole thing has kind of snowballed for me

LoTW is absolutely the way to go for DXCC credits these days, most serious DX operators upload there regularly and the ARRL processes it all automatically once you link your account. you still need paper QSLs from some entities that just never adopted LoTW but honestly for the first hundred or so confirmed youll probably get there mostly through electronic confirmations. the tricky ones like some of those rare Pacific entities might need cards but cross that bridge when you come to it. on the WAS and WAZ question — yes, start logging everything now with the intent of tracking all three. the contact data is the same, you just need different confirmations depending on the award. WAZ is only 40 zones which sounds easy but some of those zones are genuinely hard to fill, zone 2 up in the arctic regions can take ages to snag depending on the solar cycle. with the 7300 and a vertical you should be fine for the bulk of them though, that radio punches well.

that plateau around 13-14 is super common, almost everybody hits it there. what helped me was honestly just switching away from copying every letter to trying to copy whole words. your brain is still sounding out individual characters and writing each one down which works great up to a point but then it becomes the bottleneck. try not writing anything, just listen for a few minutes. sounds counterintuitive but it starts training you to recognize patterns instead of decoding sounds. also the Farnsworth method helped me a lot — basically setting the character speed high like 20-25 wpm but the word spacing slow enough that you have time to process. LCWO lets you do this. what happens is your brain starts learning what 20wpm characters actually sound like instead of a stretched out version. when you narrow the gap over time you kind of arrive at real speed without realizing it. took me a few months of that before 20wpm started clicking. Q and Y will come, they just take longer for some people, hang in there.

the plateau around 12-15wpm is super common and it usually means your brain is still hearing individual letters instead of words and sounds as a whole unit. what helped me break through was honestly just forcing myself to go faster than i was comfortable with, like setting the trainer to 18 or even 20wpm and just accepting i was gonna miss a ton at first. you kind of have to teach your ears to hear at the new speed even if your brain hasnt caught up yet. also worth trying the word training mode if you havent, not just random characters. common words like 'the' and 'and' and callsign patterns start to become these little sound chunks your brain recognizes without having to decode letter by letter. that was a big shift for me. took probably another 2-3 months after i changed my approach but eventually it clicked. still not a contest guy but im comfortable at 18-20 now for normal qsos.

ok so ive been doing SO-50 passes for a few months now with a handheld and a cheap arrow antenna and that part i mostly have figured out. but i keep reading about linear transponder birds like AO-73 and FO-29 and i guess im confused about the fundamental difference in how you actually operate them vs a straight FM repeater like SO-50. with SO-50 i just dial in the uplink and downlink, correct for doppler manually as best i can and key up. simple enough. but from what i understand with a linear transponder youre putting in SSB and the whole passband can have multiple QSOs happening at once? and you have to track your own downlink and adjust? i tried a FO-29 pass last week with my FT-817 and a yagi i threw together and i could hear what sounded like two guys talking but i couldnt figure out what i was supposed to be transmitting on to even try to get in there. doppler was all over the place and i kept losing them. is there a good way to get started with this or should i just stick to FM birds until i get better tracking software sorted out. im running gpredict right now on a linux box which works ok for predicting passes but i havent figured out how to get it to drive the radio for doppler correction automatically yet.

so i finally finished building the QFX-40 kit (well, a knockoff of it anyway, one of those chinese kits off aliexpress) and took it out to the park yesterday with a random wire antenna and a 4ah lipo i had sitting around from an old RC project. figured id share some thoughts since there isnt a ton of casual writeups about the lower budget end of QRP first thing that surprised me — making contacts at 5 watts is actually harder than i expected but also way more satisfying when it works? spent like 45 minutes calling CQ on 40m and got nothing, then switched to hunting and worked a guy in ohio from here in tennessee on the first call. so thats something. the audio on RX is thin but workable and the keyer they included is actually pretty decent for a kit this cheap battery life is ridiculous though, like genuinely shocking how long it lasts compared to running even 25 watts on my regular rig. been thinking about doing more SOTA stuff and this might actually be the way to go. anyone else gone down this road and have tips for portable ops? im still figuring out what antenna setup makes the most sense for throwing in a pack

the barrel sound is almost always too much low-mid boost or a resonance thing happening. on the 7300 the TX equalizer defaults are actually pretty decent for most mics but if you went in and started bumping the lower bands around 200-400hz range that'll do exactly what you're describing. i'd honestly just reset the TX equalizer to flat first and see if that changes the reports you get. also check your TX bandwidth setting, if it got narrowed down to like 1.4kHz or something trying to cut noise it'll sound pretty hollow. the other thing with Heil mics specifically is mic gain — they're pretty hot and people tend to run them too high. the 7300 mic gain for SSB i usually keep around 40-50% and let the compressor do a little work but not a ton. if you're running the mic gain high and the compressor is also cranked that combination can really mess with the audio quality even if the ALC looks okay. ALC not pinning just means you're not overdriving the final, it doesn't tell you much about how the processed audio actually sounds.

yeah the pi in the middle approach is exactly what i ended up doing after trying to wrestle with string parsing on an uno for way too long. the mega is better but honestly python on a pi zero just handles all that UDP and serial stuff so much more cleanly. i wrote a little script that listens for N1MM broadcasts, pulls the freq and mode out, and sends a two-byte command over serial to the arduino which just does a lookup table for which relay combo to fire. works solid, been running it for like 8 months with one reboot for a power outage. the warm relay board thing — depends on what relays you're using and what voltage youre switching. if theyre just coax relays for HF and the coils are rated right it should be fine. if it's warm to the touch but not hot i wouldnt worry. if you can smell anything or its uncomfortably hot to hold your hand near, id check your coil voltage and make sure you have flyback diodes on all of them because without those the arduino pins will get cooked eventually even if it seems fine now

ok so i passed my technician exam about 3 months ago and ive been mostly on 2m and 70cm doing local stuff but i keep reading that techs can do some HF too and i honestly cannot figure out from the FCC part 97 stuff what exactly im allowed to do. like i tried reading the actual rules and it just made me more confused not less. i know theres something about 10m and maybe 15m? or maybe its just certain parts of those bands i dont know. and what about power limits, is it different for techs on HF vs general class operators. sorry if this is a dumb question i just cant get a straight answer from googling it

so ive been working on CW for about eight months now and i honestly dont know what im doing wrong. started with the Koch method back in the spring using LCWO and got up to around 13wpm which felt great at the time but now i just... cant seem to move forward. every time i try to copy at 15 or 16 i fall apart after maybe 30 seconds and then i get frustrated and drop back down to 13 where it feels comfortable again. my goal is 20wpm because i want to get on 40m CW and actually have real QSOs without making a fool of myself. right now i can handle the slower QRS stuff but even that feels shaky when someone sends with really clean fist versus a straight key with weird timing. anyway wondering if anyone else hit this wall around 13-14wpm and what actually helped. ive heard people say just push through but that feels like not real advice lol

whats the point of the extended tx mod if youre licensed for all the normal bands already, genuinely curious not trying to start anything. is it just for the testing flexibility you mentioned or is there actually something useful outside the ham allocations that hams are doing these days

so ive been chasing LEO satellites for a few months now mostly just FM birds like SO-50 and PO-101, got pretty comfortable with that whole thing. decided to jump into the linear transponder world with AO-73 last week and man its a whole different beast. my main issue is that i keep losing my own signal during the pass. i know about the doppler shift obviously and ive got gpredict running on my laptop feeding corrected frequencies to my IC-9700 but somewhere in the middle of the pass i just... lose myself. i can hear other stations fine, the transponder is clearly working, but i cant find my own downlink anymore. im transmitting SSB on the uplink and listening on the downlink passband and i just drift off apparently. is this a case where i need to be manually tweaking the RX frequency even with doppler correction running? i thought gpredict handled all that but maybe im missing something in the rig control setup. or is this more of an antenna issue, im running a pair of yagis on an az-el mount that i built last year. any ideas would be appreciated, this has been frustrating me for a few passes now.

honestly i felt the exact same way about FT8, like congrats you exchanged a signal report with someone 8000 miles away and now what. i tried JS8 for a while and it scratched that itch a bit more but i eventually ended up going back to PSK31 for ragchewing because theres still a decent community on 20m around 14.070 and the mode is old enough that a lot of guys have it just sitting there in their logging software already. not as weak-signal capable obviously but if conditions are even halfway decent its perfectly usable and a 10 minute conversation actually feels like a contact. just something to consider if the whole appeal is actual communication vs just the technical challenge of the weak signal side of things.

you're gonna be fine, seriously. the first one always feels like a bigger deal than it is and once youre up there and the radio is working it just clicks. 4 contacts is almost never the problem — usually once you get spotted the pile kind of takes care of itself, especially on a weekend morning when the chasers are all watching SOTAwatch. for S2S contacts just treat it like a normal QSO but make sure you log their summit reference — they'll usually give it to you if they know youre activating too, just say something like 'thanks for the S2S, your reference?' and they'll give it. then you log it and they log it and you both get the points. pretty straightforward once you do it once. one thing i'd add — if 40m feels dead dont just sit there, try 20m or even 30 if you have it, conditions shift fast up on a summit. also self-spotting again if you QSY really helps the chasers find you. good luck tomorrow, report back

this is making me want to actually participate in one of these, ive been putting it off because i always figure my general class ticket and a couple handhelds probably wont be that useful but reading stuff like this makes me think even just showing up and learning the process would be worth it. do most ARES groups welcome people who are still pretty new or is it more of a experienced operators only situation

honestly your club guy isnt wrong but i wouldnt overthink it — just work whatever sounds interesting and let the awards sort themselves out. that said LoTW really does make it easier than it used to be. you upload your ADIF log to LoTW, and when the other station has also uploaded their log and your QSO data matches, it confirms automatically. ARRL handles the credit counting on their end. for the basic DXCC Mixed award it doesnt matter what band, any band counts toward the same total until you start going for the per-band endorsements later. WAS through LoTW works basically the same way. you can also submit paper QSLs for either award if you have cards but most people just do LoTW now. i will say that chasing states can be weirdly satisfying because you can actually see progress pretty fast on 20m, you'll knock out a bunch of common ones quickly and then start hunting for the hard ones like Delaware or Rhode Island which take forever for some reason. the DX will come too dont worry about it, even with a dipole at 30 feet youll be surprised what you can work on a good day

so we have a county ARES drill coming up in about 3 weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation for our portable station. we're setting up at a fairgrounds with no shore power and need to run probably 6-8 hours continuous, maybe longer if things go sideways like they always seem to during these exercises. current plan is an IC-7300 on HF and a couple VX-6Rs for local coordination, plus a raspberry pi running js8call for digital fallback. been running off a 100ah lifepo4 with a 30a dc-dc charger off a truck but last time we had issues with the alternator load when the truck was idling for that long. not a great solution. someone in our group wants to bring a honda eu2200i which honestly seems like overkill to me but i havent done the math. my concern is the noise — we're going to be in a field with like 4 other stations and a 2200 watt generator running is going to bleed into everything. even with the inverter-type generators the rf hash can be a problem depending on grounding. also still debating antennas. was thinking a linked dipole up maybe 25 feet on a mast but the site coordinator says we might be limited on space so a vertical might make more sense. any of you run endfeds for this kind of thing? the setup time vs performance tradeoff is real when you're trying to get on air fast. anyway just curious what setups have worked for people doing similar stuff, especially the power side.

so ive been trying to work some DX on 20m and 17m the past few weeks and its been really hit or miss. like some days i hear almost nothing from Europe and then randomly thursday evening i worked 4 stations in the UK and a guy in Portugal back to back no problem. then the next day absolute silence again. i checked pskreporter and there were signals getting through so its not my antenna (probably). i know solar flux has been kinda all over the place but i dont really have a good feel for how to read the numbers and actually predict when a band is gonna open up. like what SFI number should i even be looking for before i bother trying for transatlantic stuff? and does the K index actually matter as much as people say or is that more for VHF aurora stuff sorry if this is a dumb question, been licensed about 8 months and still figuring out when to even bother turning the rig on

Field Day is definitely the right starting point, you nailed it. its less about raw score and more about getting comfortable operating under a little pressure with other people around to help. your club probably does one, just show up and they'll hand you a mic at some point. you wont break anything i promise. for CQ WW, N1MM+ is what basically everyone uses and its free. there's a learning curve but nothing crazy. the zones thing clicks pretty fast once you're actually in it and watching the map fill up. honestly just jump in for an hour, work whatever you can hear, and dont worry about the score. nobody cares if youre a newcomer calling in. SOTA is its own whole rabbit hole. technically its an awards program not a contest but activators and chasers definitely get competitive about it. if youre a hiker its an amazing combo. check out sotawatch3 for the alert system, activators post when theyre heading up and you can be ready to chase them.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been working through LCWO for a couple months now. its slow going honestly but i can hear maybe 15 characters pretty reliably now which feels like progress i guess. the Koch method thing does work if you're patient with it but i'll warn you there were times i just wanted to quit because it feels like nothing is happening for a while and then suddenly something clicks one thing that helped me was just tuning around 40 meters in the evenings and listening even when i couldnt copy anything. after a while you start recognizing the rhythm of it even if you cant decode it yet. also the Just Learn Morse Code software is another free option if you want something on a desktop

yeah the ICS thing tripped me up too when i first joined. i remember sitting in a meeting nodding like i understood and then going home and googling half of what they said lol. one thing that helped me was actually volunteering to help with a local marathon or public service event first before worrying about real emergency stuff — those are way more low stakes and you get to practice actually being on a net, handling traffic, checking in and out properly. most ARES groups around here do a few of those a year and thats where a lot of the real learning happens honestly. the meetings are good but actually doing it on the air is different