Ham Fan

dude i had almost the exact same experience last thursday. i'm still pretty new to HF (only been licensed about 8 months) and i had basically written off 10m as useless after checking it a few times and hearing nothing. but my buddy at the club told me to just leave it on in the background and wait and sure enough one afternoon it just kind of exploded with signals. worked my first ever DX on that band, a station in Portugal. still kinda cant believe a wire antenna did that

Running into issues with my LDG Z-11 Pro II and 130ft end-fed half-wave. Problem: Tuner finds a match on 40m-10m but completely fails on 80m - just cycles endlessly and gives up. Setup: FT-991A → Z-11 Pro II → 130ft EFHW with 9:1 unun, 25ft of RG-8X. Most tuners are less efficient at low impedances - could this be the issue? SWR analyzer shows 8+j45 ohms at 3.8MHz. Any suggestions before I try a different matching strategy?

W6/CT-096 is a nice one, did that one myself a couple years back. yeah 40m in the afternoon is kind of a crapshoot depending on conditions and time of year. i've started carrying a small linked dipole cut for 30m as well since that band tends to be a bit more reliable when 40 goes soft and its not as crowded as 20. anyway welcome to the addiction, SOTA is the reason i actually lost 15 pounds last year lol

Nice work getting out there! I did my first one a few weeks ago and had the same confusion about logging. Turns out you need to submit the log within 30 days of the activation to get credit. The WWFF logsearch thing is where it all goes but make sure your reference number matches exactly what's in their directory otherwise it won't validate properly. Found that out the hard way when half my contacts got rejected first time around lol

I'm setting up a TNC-X with my IC-2730 for APRS operation and running into path configuration problems. Currently using WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 as recommended but my packets seem to be getting dropped after first hop. Serial interface is at 9600 baud, 8N1 - confirmed working with terminal. Beacon text shows correct lat/long in degrees/minutes/decimal format. Has anyone experienced similar issues with path routing on newer TNCs? The digipeater about 15 miles out acknowledges receipt but packets don't propagate beyond that point.

so ive been putting off building my own antenna for like two years now because it always seemed more complicated than it probably is. finally just sat down last weekend with some 14 gauge stranded wire i had in the garage, a SO-239 chassis connector, and a piece of PVC pipe for the center insulator. cut it for 40m using the 468/f formula so each leg came out to around 33 feet 4 inches or so. my question is about the feed point. i just twisted the wire ends through the holes i drilled in the PVC and soldered them to the connector. its been raining since i finished so i havent raised it yet but im wondering if i should be putting some kind of sealant over the solder joints or if thats overkill. also using 50 ohm coax obviously but wondering how much of a mismatch im actually going to see in practice, i know dipoles are theoretically 73 ohms but everyone says just use the tuner anyway. the other thing is i originally wanted to do an inverted V because my only real support is a 30 foot mast in the middle of the yard. the ends would end up pretty close to the ground on 40m, maybe 8 or 10 feet. is that going to kill the takeoff angle too much or should i just go flat top and run the ends to fence posts at like 6 feet?

Currently running the FT-710 Field and love it. No regrets coming from a TS-590SG. The menu system takes some getting used to but the build quality feels very solid. Haven't had any reliability issues in 8 months of daily use.

yeah this confused me too when i first got my general. the ARRL band plan chart is actually pretty helpful once you stare at it for a while. just remember that below 7.175 is CW and digital only, above that is where you can use SSB. and dont forget about the DX window around 7.200-7.210 where you might hear some really cool stations but probably shouldnt call CQ there as a new general

I keep a small Pelican case with: spare fuses (various ratings), barrel connectors, adapters, electrical tape, zip ties, and a basic soldering kit. The key is knowing what commonly fails in YOUR specific setup through testing and practice deployments.

so ive been messing around with a raspberry pi zero W for the past few weeks trying to get it to handle some basic shack automation stuff. right now im just running a python script that polls my FT-991A over CAT and dumps the freq and mode into a sqlite database every few seconds. works fine mostly but occasionally the serial connection just drops and i have to go restart the script manually which is kind of defeating the purpose. what i actually want to do eventually is tie this into a bigger thing where the pi is watching for spotting cluster data and cross referencing with what band conditions look like on my sensor — i have one of those ADS-B style ionospheric noise floor loggers running on an rtlsdr that a guy on here pointed me to a while back. the idea being the whole thing would basically tell me hey this band looks good right now, you have a new spot on 17m or whatever. but before i get there i need to sort out this serial dropout issue. im using pyserial with a USB to ttl adapter, nothing fancy. anyone dealt with this? also curious if people think the zero is enough compute for this or if i should just throw a pi 4 at it

so i joined our local ARES group about 8 months ago after getting my general, went to a few nets and the monthly meetings and figured id never actually get called out for a real event. well last weekend that changed. county emergency manager called an activation for the flooding situation we had and i got paged to go set up at the EOC. i have to say it was kind of overwhelming at first, not the radio stuff but just the whole environment. lots of people moving around, the EM staff doing their thing, and i wasnt totally sure where i was supposed to be or who to report to at first. our EC was great though and got me sorted out pretty quick. spent about 6 hours handling health and welfare traffic and some resource coordination messages between the EOC and a shelter about 12 miles away where we had another operator. the training nets we do every week honestly did prepare me more than i thought. message formatting, keeping a log, phonetic alphabet without having to think about it — all that repetitive stuff paid off. i did fumble one message because i wasnt sure about the proper ICS form they wanted attached to it but the served agency guy helped me figure it out. anyway just wanted to share because i know some folks in our group are nervous about activations and wondering if the training actually means anything. it does. still a lot to learn but it felt good to actually do something useful with the hobby for once.

The ARRL Laboratory staff is available to help amateurs make these determinations and perform necessary calculations, with their RF Exposure and You book containing valid charts for common antennas at different heights. I'd recommend downloading that free resource from ARRL first before diving into the calculations.

the hum is almost certainly your wall wart, those switching supplies are terrible for this kind of thing. i went through the exact same thing with a similar build and swapped to a proper linear regulated supply and it cleaned up like 90% of the noise. even just a 7812 or 7809 depending on your voltage requirements with some decent filter caps before it will make a huge difference. also check that your audio ground and your RF ground are tied together at one single point, if you have a ground loop anywhere in that audio chain it will hum like crazy no matter what supply you use. the muffled audio could just be the passband on your LPF, what values did you end up using for the cutoff? for SSB you want to think about rolling off around 3kHz or so but if you went too conservative it'll sound like everyone is talking through a pillow.

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the Amateur Extra. like i use most of the hf bands i want already and the sliver of extra spectrum you get doesnt seem like a huge deal honestly. but a few guys at my club keep telling me to just do it and the theory is what keeps most people from trying. i looked at the question pool and some of that stuff about RF amplifier design and the filter theory and whatever... its a lot. i was never great at math and some of the formulas in there look pretty intimidating. did anyone else feel like that going in and then find it was more manageable than expected? or is it actually as rough as it looks. i dont want to spend months studying and then fail it twice like my buddy did with his general back in the day also is the extra really worth it just for the privileges or is there something else im not thinking about

yeah ive been doing something like this for almost two years now. my setup is a bit different — im using a separate SDRplay RSPdx just for the panadapter view, feeding it through a splitter off the antenna, and running SDR-Console on the shack PC independently from the RemoteHams session. they dont talk to each other directly, i just have both running on the same remote desktop session over VNC. its clunky honestly but it works and the latency on the VNC side for the visual panadapter is totally acceptable since you dont need low latency for just looking at a waterfall. the audio path stays entirely through RemoteHams which keeps the compression and timing issues contained to one stream. splitting them out was the key thing for me. trying to do it all through one pipe was a nightmare, the SDR data would basically murder the audio quality every time there was any band activity worth looking at. hotel wifi is gonna be rough no matter what. i wouldnt even attempt the SDR side on anything below a consistent 10mbps with low jitter. the audio alone on RemoteHams is surprisingly resilient but once you start adding video or IQ data it gets ugly fast.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and people keep telling me i should try contesting but honestly every time i look it up i just get more confused. like theres CQ WW, ARRL sweepstakes, field day, all these different things and i dont really understand which ones are beginner friendly or what the point even is besides collecting contacts. i did try to listen in on CQ WW last october and it was just chaos, everyone talking really fast, exchanges flying around, i couldnt even figure out what people were sending half the time on SSB. i have a technician plus general now so i can get on HF which i just got set up a few months ago. running an IC-7300 into a simple end fed that my elmer helped me put up. is field day actually a good starting point or is that also overwhelming for a newer person? i saw theres also SOTA stuff but i think thats more like portable operating than a traditional contest? anyway just looking for any advice on where to start without feeling totally lost

Great question! Solar flux correlates well with the intensity of ionizing UV and X-ray radiation that creates the ionosphere we use for HF skip. Higher SFI = better ionization = higher bands staying open longer. K-index below 3 means quiet geomagnetic conditions so less disruption to our signals. Hope that helps!

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about LoTW and eQSL and i sort of get the general idea but i'm genuinely confused about what most people actually use day to day. like do you need all three or is one of them good enough for most purposes from what i understand LoTW is the ARRL thing and its more trusted for awards like DXCC but eQSL is free and easier to sign up for? and then paper cards are still a thing people actually do through the bureau or direct mail. i went ahead and made an account on eQSL already and uploaded a few logs but i havent touched LoTW yet because the whole certificate process looked kinda intimidating when i tried to read through it also i genuinely have no idea how the QSL bureau works, like is that through your regional club or through the ARRL or both. someone at my club mentioned outgoing bureau and i nodded like i knew what they were talking about but i really did not lol anyway just trying to figure out what a normal workflow looks like for confirming contacts. do most dx stations even bother with paper anymore or is it all digital now

That basement RF deck placement is smart for heat dissipation and noise reduction. This reduces interference from fan noise and ensures more efficient heat dissipation. The 7760's digital pre-distortion works flawlessly even with longer cable runs - no noticeable latency in my setup.

yeah the HF difference is real, thats probably the main reason to make the jump honestly. direct sampling on the RTL is kind of a hack and it shows — you get images all over the place and the noise floor is pretty rough. the RSP1A has actual frontend filtering and a proper ADC so HF just feels cleaner, less garbage to dig through. i noticed it immediately when i first fired it up on 40m, signals i was barely pulling out on the dongle were just sitting there clearly. that said if youre mostly doing airband and satellites the RTL is genuinely fine. i still have one dedicated just for ACARS decoding because why waste the RSP1A on that. SDRuno is okay but a lot of people still use SDR# with the SDRplay plugin anyway so you dont have to switch your whole workflow. the 12-bit ADC vs 8-bit is where the dynamic range improvement comes from, matters more if you live somewhere with strong broadcast AM stations stomping on everything.

yeah the activity thing is real, JS8Call never really hit the critical mass that FT8 did and i think part of that is because FT8 kind of ate everything. but there ARE people on there, you just have to know when to look. i find 40m in the evenings (local time) has some decent activity and 20m during the day can surprise you. the store-forward stuff you mentioned is called the heartbeat relay network and basically nodes can pass messages along even when youre not directly connected, its pretty clever for emcomm use cases. the ragchew aspect is genuinely better than FT8 once you find someone to talk to. its not PSK31 or anything but you can actually exchange more than a signal report and a grid square which is refreshing. i still run FT8 for DX chasing but JS8Call scratches a different itch. patience is kind of required though.

RAM mounts are absolutely worth it, I resisted buying one for like two years because the price seemed ridiculous for what it is and then finally caved and I kick myself for waiting. I've got my 7800R head on a B size arm coming off the dash vent and it doesn't block anything, stays put even on rough roads. The ball and socket makes it so easy to fine tune the angle too. On the alternator whine thing, glad you sorted it with the direct battery run, that fixes it 90% of the time. Sometimes if its still there after that you gotta look at the antenna feed line routing, if it runs parallel to any power wiring for too long you can pick stuff up that way. But sounds like you're good now. The Tram lip mounts are solid, been running one for years on my Tacoma. Only downside is taking the truck through a car wash is a little nerve wracking but it's held up fine.

so i've been putting this off for like two years but finally got around to doing the MARS/CAP mod on my IC-7300 last weekend. nothing scary, just the usual jumper thing on the board, takes maybe 20 minutes if you're not rushing. but i wanted to post about some stuff i noticed afterward that i dont see mentioned much. first the obvious — yeah you get the expanded TX coverage which is the whole point. but what i actually found more interesting is the radio just feels a little different on receive in the areas outside the normal ham bands. like i was poking around the 60m area outside the ITU allocations and the noise floor seemed slightly different, not sure if thats psychosomatic or what. probably psychosomatic. anyway the main reason i did it was for some ARES/EMCOMM stuff where we occasionally need to work on freqs outside the standard allocations under part 97 exceptions. figured i might as well have the capability ready. anyone else done this and messed around with it much? also curious if anyone has done any of the audio mods on the 7300 — ive been looking at the TX audio equalization stuff, supposedly you can get a lot more presence out of the mic chain with some tweaking in the menu but i havent gone down that rabbit hole yet.

so ive been putting off building my own antenna for probably two years now because it always seemed more complicated than just buying one, but i finally just did it last weekend. cut a simple half wave dipole for 40m using some 14 gauge stranded wire i had in the garage, fed it with about 50 feet of RG-8X i had laying around from a previous project, center insulator is just a piece of pvc i drilled holes through and ran the wire through, soldered everything and wrapped it in self-amalgamating tape. SWR is sitting around 1.4:1 at the bottom of the band which is honestly better than i expected for a first attempt. i used the standard 468/f formula and cut a little long on purpose so i could trim it. trimmed maybe 3 inches off each leg and its sitting right where i want it now for phone. my question is about height. right now its only about 20 feet up in a kind of inverted V config because thats the tallest support i have (a tree on one end and my chimney on the other). i know higher is generally better but is there some kind of practical sweet spot where the pattern starts to become actually useful for more than just local stuff, or is 20 feet more or less fine for regional contacts on 40? ive been reading conflicting things online and some of it gets really deep into the weeds with takeoff angles and i start to lose the thread.

It is common practice for operators to include "QRP" after their call sign when calling to indicate that they are running low power. This really helps - many ops will slow down and give you extra time when they know you're running QRP power levels.