Steve Martinez

I switched to Log4OM about two years ago and havent really looked back for general logging. For contests I still fire up N1MM because honestly nothing touches it for that, the rate display and the bandmap during a pileup is just built different. Log4OM's contest mode exists but its not really in the same league if you're doing anything serious like a full CQWW weekend. The WSJT-X integration I can confirm works, I've had it running that way since version 2 of Log4OM. Just set WSJT-X to log to UDP and point it at Log4OM's port, theres a setting in the Log4OM config under interfaces or something like that. Only thing i noticed is sometimes the grid square doesnt populate automatically and i have to add it manually but thats a minor thing.

honestly i gave up on 20 like two weeks ago and have just been hanging out on 40 in the evenings. way more reliable for me even if its mostly ragchewing with the same guys lol. 20 always makes me feel like im doing something wrong when really its just the band being a jerk

the battery question is a big one. I see people show up with these massive marine batteries and then wonder why their back hurts. lifepo4 is lighter and holds up better in heat and cold, worth the money if you can swing it. bioenno makes decent ones and they're not crazy expensive. also just putting it out there — practice actually setting up your kit before you need it. like time yourself. if it takes you 45 minutes to get on the air that's a problem you want to discover in your driveway not during an actual event.

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth making the trip out to dayton again this year. last time i went was like 2019 and it was insane, spent way too much money on stuff i didnt even need but had a blast walking the flea market. thinking about going again but gas and hotels have gotten ridiculous since then. anyone else planning on heading out there or know of any smaller regional fests that might be worth hitting up instead? my club is doing a little swap meet in june but its pretty small, maybe 20 tables if were lucky

Oh man don't feel bad at all, literally everyone does something like this their first few times. I remember keying up right in the middle of net control's transmission on my first check-in and just hearing that horrible doubling sound. Mortifying at the time but nobody actually cares, they were all new once too. Most nets do follow a pretty similar pattern -- net control will call for check-ins, you wait for a pause, then key up and just say your callsign phonetically. Some nets want name and location too but usually net control will tell you what they want at the start if you listen to the preamble. The call-then-name thing is pretty standard just because net control is writing down calls and it helps to hear it first, but honestly if you flip it nobody is going to throw you off the air. The doubling thing where you cant tell who got through, that just takes time to figure out. Net control will usually acknowledge whoever they copied and if they didnt get you, just try again next round. Stick with it, after a few weeks it'll feel completely natural.

wait 10m was open?? i had the radio on 40 all day doing some casual rag chewing and completely missed it. that's always how it goes lol. i really need to set up some kind of alert for band openings, do people use DX cluster notifications for that or is there a better way? still pretty new to HF and figuring out the whole propagation thing, it still kind of feels like magic to me honestly.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from home. been putting it off forever because i kept convincing myself i needed more gear or a better antenna or whatever. finally just threw the KX2, a 40m EFHW, and some spare coax in a backpack and went for it. set up on a picnic table near the parking lot, got the wire up in a tree maybe 20 feet or so (not ideal i know), and just started calling CQ POTA on 40m. took about 4 minutes before my first reply came in and honestly i was shocked, i expected to sit there for an hour being ignored. ended up with 23 QSOs in about 90 minutes which i think is enough to count as a valid activation? i saw somewhere you need 10 minimum. couple things im still confused about — do i need to self-spot on the POTA website or can someone else spot me, and does it matter if i spot before i start calling or after i already have a frequency. also i had one guy ask me for my park reference number and i gave him the right one but then he said something about also activating and asked if we could do a park-to-park, im still not totally sure what happened there but i logged it. was that a P2P contact and does it count differently somehow for him or for me. overall it was just really fun and way less stressful than i thought. the whole portable operating thing kind of clicked for me out there in a way it hadnt sitting at the home shack.

yeah what he said about the T-CTCS menu, that got me too when I first started. also just a thought — some repeaters around here have a timeout timer so if you key up and nothing happens for a few seconds they just drop you. might not be that but worth knowing. once you get the tone sorted out you'll probably be fine, the people on our local machine are pretty welcoming to new hams checking in.

yeah the rearview mirror area works pretty well actually, my buddy has his Kenwood TM-D710G head unit up there in his 4Runner and its not bad at all to glance at. only thing is if you ever need to actually press buttons while moving its kind of a stretch depending on your arm length lol. for just watching APRS blips go by its totally fine though

so i heard the Burlington hamfest is back this year after they skipped it for like two years running. been a while since ive been to one and im thinking of finally dragging myself out there. anyone know if its still at the fairgrounds or did they move it? i remember parking being a nightmare last time but the swap tables were pretty decent, picked up a nice astron supply for almost nothing back in 2019 or whenever that was. also trying to figure out if its worth bringing stuff to sell or if the table fees have gotten crazy. my shack is basically a storage unit at this point and i really need to move some gear

yeah same thing happened to me when i started. what helped me was just memorizing the standard list so it became automatic and then i could decide when to use it instead of fumbling around. also worth knowing some people get weirdly particular about this lol, had an old timer correct me once for saying november foxtrot instead of going full call. just feel it out for the repeater or net youre on tbh

ha the pelican case the size of a car thing is so real, ive seen those setups and its like okay yes that looks cool but you are not hauling that anywhere in an actual emergency for what its worth i went through the same thing a couple years back. ended up with a mid-size rolling toolbox from harbor freight — not glamorous but it holds everything and has wheels. for the 857 i keep it mounted in a small rack tray so i can pull it out and set it up without having to dig through cables. power-wise im running a 20ah lifepo4 battery from bioenno, which for vhf/uhf work will last me a couple days easy, but if youre doing a lot of hf with the 857 at higher power you might want something bigger or just keep the power down. the wire antenna thing — honestly just throw a linked dipole kit in there, takes up almost no space and you can work almost any band you need. i also keep a j-pole rolled up in there for vhf. the antenna situation is really where people overthink it i think. simple works. one thing i'd actually say is more important than any of the gear is making sure you have a checklist laminated inside the bag. when things get chaotic you dont want to be trying to remember if you packed the coax connectors.

so i finally got activated for a real event last weekend, it was a county-level flood response and our ARES group got called in to support the EOC when their primary comms went down. ive been doing the monthly nets and training exercises for about 8 months now but honestly nothing really prepares you for the real thing. the EC had us set up a packet station on the second floor of the county building and we were passing traffic between the EOC and a couple of the Red Cross shelters that had no cell service. went pretty smooth overall but i had some moments where i wasnt totally sure of proper procedure, like when i got a priority message that needed to go to a shelter that was already signed off for the night. do you just hold it til morning or try to raise them again? i ended up trying again and got through but wasnt sure if that was right. also curious how other ARES groups handle ICS integration. our EC is real good about it but i noticed some of the county emergency management folks still kind of treat us like volunteers who just showed up with walkie talkies rather than trained operators working within the incident command structure. is that a common thing or is our county just behind on that?

so ive been working on this install for like three weekends now and i thought i finally had everything sorted out but when i key up on 2m i get this really annoying buzzing noise that seems to change pitch with the engine RPM. its not terrible but its definitely there and its driving me crazy because everything else about the install came out really clean. the radio is mounted under the passenger seat, antenna is a Comet CA-2x4SR on a mag mount for now until i drill the roof hole which im still working up the courage to do. feedline is LMR-400 running along the passenger side door sill. i grounded the radio chassis to the seat bolt and ran a separate ground to the battery. on UHF its way less noticeable but on 2m SSB it really shows up. i didnt bond the hood or anything yet, is that probably the issue? or could it be the alternator? ive read so much conflicting stuff online i dont even know where to start troubleshooting at this point.

the CSCE thing is real, its called a Certificate of Successful Completion of Examination and yeah you can technically operate with the privileges of whatever exam you just passed even before the FCC updates the database, as long as you have that cert from the VE team. you just have to identify with your current callsign and say youre operating under a CSCE or something to that effect. your VE session coordinator should have given you one after you passed. as for the tech privileges on HF, youve got CW on parts of 80, 40, and 15 meters, and then voice on 10m in the 28.3 to 28.5 range. digital modes generally follow the same subband rules depending on the mode. honestly the easiest thing is just to look at the ARRL band plan chart, its way more readable than the actual CFR text. Part 97 is the law but the band chart translates it into something human. dont stress too much about accidentally going somewhere wrong, just do a little research before you key up and youll be fine. everyone was new once.

chirpy TX is such a classic gotcha on those simple VFO designs, good catch on the decoupling cap though. i spent a weekend once chasing a similar problem and it turned out i'd used a ceramic cap where i needed something more stable for the oscillator circuit, temperature drift was making it wander all over the place every time my soldering iron got near it during testing which obviously made diagnosis a nightmare. the efficiency thing you mentioned is real and its kind of underrated in the QRP world. i run a homebrew 20m rig i finished about three years ago and i've taken it up a few summits now, the weight savings vs. a commercial rig plus a big battery is huge when you're actually carrying it. mine's probably not as clean as a commercial kit but it works and i know every part of it which means i can actually fix it in the field if something goes sideways. congrats on getting it working, first homebrew contact is a feeling you don't really forget

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general class) and everyone keeps telling me i need to try a contest. CQ WW is apparently coming up and my elmer wont stop talking about it. i barely know what im doing on a normal day on 20m so the idea of jumping into something with like a million stations calling CQ all at once sounds... intimidating honestly. i also keep seeing people mention ARRL Field Day but i thought that already happened this year? is there another one coming or do people just talk about it year round. and SOTA i kind of understand conceptually but i dont know if thats really a contest or more of a program thing. anyway i guess my main question is — for someone who is still kinda fumbling around with logging and exchange formats and all that, which of these would be the least overwhelming to just dip my toes in. i have a modest setup, ic-7300 into a dipole at about 30 feet. nothing fancy but it works.

So I finally got off my butt and did a proper WWFF activation at a local state park near me, been meaning to do one for about a year now after I kept seeing people post their logs on the WWFF website. Figured it couldnt be that hard right? Threw my KX2 in a backpack with a 40m end fed and just headed out Saturday morning. Honestly it went pretty well overall, managed to get 44 QSOs in about 2.5 hours which I know barely counts as a proper activation but for a first attempt I was happy. Mostly 40m SSB with a few 20m contacts near the end when the band shifted. My question is around logging the reference — I was operating in what I believe is KFF-2847 but I honestly just grabbed that number off the WWFF finder map the night before and Im not 100% sure I verified it properly against the park boundaries. Does anyone know how strict they are about that? Like do they cross check coordinates or is it mostly on the honor system? Also noticed a couple hunters calling me who seemed really eager for the contact, didnt realize there was that level of activity around WWFF. Kind of reminded me of POTA in that regard but the vibe felt a little different, maybe more relaxed? anyway would love to hear from folks who do this regularly

oh man i did my first one a few months ago and had the exact same confusion about the log submission lol. took me like 3 tries to get the ADIF formatted right because i had some fields wrong from HAMRS. just double check that your ADIF has the WWFF reference in the right field before you upload, think its SIG and SIG_INFO or something like that, i had to edit mine manually in a text editor which was kind of a pain but not too bad once you see the structure. there are some example logs on the WWFF website that helped me figure it out.

went last year, it was alright. got there around 7 and the swap meet was already pretty busy. picked up a old MFJ tuner for like 12 bucks that needed a new cap, worked fine after that. the club had a breakfast thing going inside which was actually pretty good. if youre close i'd say go, worst case you spend a few hours talking radio with people which is never a bad thing

did the same mod on mine about 8 months ago, no issues at all and i honestly cant tell any difference in normal operation. one thing i did while i had it open was clean out some dust and re-seat the display connector because mine had a very occasional flicker that i figured might be a loose connection. turned out it was, so that was a nice bonus fix. the heat thing — my shack gets pretty warm in the summer and i did eventually add a small 5v fan blowing across the bottom vents, just powered off a USB port on the back. its barely audible and the idle temp dropped like 10-12 degrees according to the internal temp readout. probably unnecessary but it makes me feel better during long digital mode sessions so whatever.

i was confused about this same stuff when i started. one thing that helped me was just watching the spots for a few days without even trying to work anything, just to get a feel for how fast things move and what the format means. the spotter callsign, the DX station, frequency, that little comment field — once it clicks it clicks. took me a bit though. dont sleep on the web version of DX Summit either, some guys swear by it over DXwatch, i think it just comes down to personal preference for the interface honestly.

yeah mag mount on fiberglass is basically just asking for grief, ive seen guys running them on plastic toolbox lids on truck beds wondering why nothing works lol. good call on drilling it, always better long term anyway since the mag mount will eventually scratch the paint no matter how careful you are.

you're not wrong about RTTY honestly, outside of the big contests like CQWW RTTY or the ARRL one its pretty quiet. i'll occasionally hear some traffic on 20m but its sparse. that said when a RTTY contest is running its actually a blast if you haven't tried it, very different feel from FT8 contesting because you're actually decoding readable text flying by on screen. on the JS8Call thing — normal speed is what most people seem to use for casual stuff, slow mode is more for really weak signal situations where you're willing to wait. the userbase is definitely smaller than FT8 but the JS8Call HQ frequencies are worth hanging around, 7.078 on 40m gets some activity especially evenings. your 30w and dipole is probably fine, i work people with similar setups. i think the mode rewards patience more than power honestly. PSK31 i agree with you completely, theres still a small but dedicated crowd on it. 14.070 area on 20m and yeah 40m when the bands cooperate. fldigi handles it well and once you get the AFC locked in its a pretty solid mode. the narrow bandwidth is nice too when you're running low power.

honestly the general exam is not that bad, i was in the same boat as you, thought the math would kill me but the actual calculations they test you on are pretty straightforward once you just memorize the formulas. like you dont need to deeply understand why the formula works you just need to know it and plug numbers in. i used hamstudy.org for like 3 weeks maybe 30 minutes a day and passed with only a handful wrong. the pool of questions is finite so if you just drill the question pool you'll be fine. as for the IC-718 dude turn that thing on. that radio is a solid HF rig and you're sitting on it doing nothing lol. once you get your upgrade just start with 40 meters in the evening, there's always people on SSB and if you find yourself on the general portion of 40m you'll hear plenty of activity. 14.225 on 20 meters is kind of a classic spot too. just listen for a while before you transmit, get a feel for how people do it. you'll figure it out fast.