Steve Martinez

dayton is absolutely worth going at least once, just be ready to walk a LOT and bring cash because the flea market out in the parking lot is where all the good deals are honestly. inside the arena is cool but its mostly vendors with new stuff. i picked up a barely used 706 for like 200 bucks out there a few years back from some old timer who was downsizing his shack. as for SARA i havent heard anything either, their website hasnt been updated since like november which is pretty typical lol

yeah i run pretty much exactly that setup, Log4OM for day to day and N1MM when a contest rolls around. the UDP stuff with WSJT-X works fine in Log4OM, took me maybe 20 minutes to configure and it just works. honestly the WSJT-X integration might actually be a little cleaner in Log4OM because of the way it handles the band/mode fields, N1MM sometimes does weird things with FT8 if you dont have the mode mapping set up exactly right. the merge thing is real though and you do have to be careful. what i do is just export from N1MM after every contest as ADIF and import into Log4OM the same day while i remember. as long as you check the duplicate handling settings in Log4OM before you import it doesnt double up. i think by default it checks callsign plus date plus band and that catches basically everything. only time i had a problem was after a 48 hour contest where i was too tired to do it right away and then forgot for like two weeks and had a mess. so just do it the same day and youll be fine.

yeah what he said, also just wanted to add — 180 flux is genuinely pretty good, we're heading into solar cycle 25 peak territory and some days have been absolutely wild. i worked like 40 countries on 10m in a single afternoon a few weeks back during a good opening, stuff i haven't seen since the last cycle peak maybe 2012 or so. the pskreporter thing you're doing is actually really useful, dont give up on that. if you pull it up and zoom out you can literally watch the propagation path light up in real time. i usually have it open on a second monitor when i'm chasing dx.

they really are different tools honestly. FT8 is optimized for making contacts — exchange callsigns and signal reports and move on, thats basically it. the decoder sensitivity is insane, something like -24dB SNR if i remember right, which is why it works so well when the band seems totally dead. JS8Call is more like... texting over radio. you can have actual conversations, relay messages through other stations, send position reports, all that. its based on FT8's encoding so it has similar weak signal capability but the tradeoff is each transmission is longer so you need the path to hold up for more time. for pure contact making FT8 wins pretty much every time but if you want to actually say something to someone or do mesh-type messaging JS8Call is the one. i use both depending on what im trying to do.

Not dumb questions at all, this stuff is genuinely confusing when you first get into it. So the short version is LoTW is the gold standard if you care about DXCC or a lot of the ARRL awards — yeah the certificate process is a pain but you really only do it once and then its smooth sailing. You upload a log, they upload a log, the system matches them and boom confirmed contact. No stamps, no waiting months for a card to show up from somewhere in eastern europe. eQSL is kind of its own thing, some people use it a lot, some barely touch it. Its easier to get going with but like you said most of the big awards dont accept it. That said some awards do and its nice for just... having a digital card i guess, some of them actually look really cool. Paper cards through the bureau — honestly i still do it for rare DX or special event stations just because i like having something physical to hold. its slow, sometimes takes a year or more to get a card back, but theres something satisfying about it. Most people just do LoTW these days and maybe paper for the ones that really matter to them. And yeah FT8 through WSJT-X can integrate with a couple of logging programs and push contacts to LoTW automatically, so a lot of that happens in the background without you thinking about it. Check out TQSL and whatever logging software you're using and see if theres an auto-upload option.

went through the exact same confusion when i got my general lol. one thing that helped me was just bookmarking the actual FCC part 97 rules rather than relying on charts because at least then your looking at the source. the arrl chart is fine but yeah sometimes the way they color code stuff makes it look more complicated than it is. also just as a practical thing — if you fire up on 40m phone just start somewhere around 7.200 and youll be fine while you get your bearings. plenty of activity there and youre well clear of any edges or mode boundaries

My SteppIR has similar element interactions and I've found that VSWR bandwidth suffers when the coupling isn't optimized. You might need different coupling distances for each pair of elements to maintain good match across all bands.

so ive been using the cluster on QRZ for a while now and it works fine i guess but a buddy at the club keeps telling me to switch to DXwatch and i honestly cant figure out what the big difference is supposed to be. like they both show spots, both have filters, both update pretty regularly from what i can tell. is there some feature on DXwatch im just not seeing or is it more about which underlying cluster network it pulls from? i know theres the whole telnet thing too and i do have HRD set up to pull from a telnet cluster directly but sometimes i just want to check whats active without firing up the whole shack PC so i end up on one of those web tools anyway. just wondering if experienced folks have a strong preference one way or the other or if it really doesnt matter much

congrats on the first one, those early activations are always memorable. 23 contacts is a solid debut, some people struggle to get to 10 on their first outing especially if the bands arent cooperating. one thing that helped me a lot when i was starting out was spotting yourself on the POTA website before you even start calling CQ. you can do it from your phone, just go to pota.app and add a spot for yourself with your callsign, frequency and park reference. the hunters watch that constantly and youll get a pile almost immediately instead of calling into the void for 20 minutes. once you get comfortable with that the whole process gets smoother. i usually spot myself, get set up, and by the time im actually ready to operate there are already people waiting. also dont stress about the wrong park reference thing, ive seen people activate the completely wrong park and not realize until they got home. the POTA folks are pretty understanding as long as you sort it out.

that warmup pattern is a pretty classic sign of a failing electrolytic cap somewhere in the power chain or the PA board. they drift out of spec as they heat up and cause all kinds of weird intermittent stuff. had basically the exact same symptom on an old 746 years ago, turned out to be a cap on the driver board that looked completely fine visually — no bulging or anything — but was way out of value when i pulled it and measured it. if you're comfortable with a scope you can sometimes catch it by probing around the supply rails while its acting up, look for ripple that shouldnt be there. otherwise it might be worth just reflowing the solder joints on the PA module connectors first since thats free and occasionally does fix intermittent power issues. icom's service manual for the 7300 is floating around and the PA section is pretty well documented. if it ends up being the finals themselves thats a different conversation but id rule out caps and connections first.

the vertical is probably better for low angle DX and the dipole at that height is gonna be better for closer in stuff, so they're kinda complementary honestly. if you can swing it, keep both and just pick whichever one is louder on receive for whatever you're trying to work. thats what i do, i have a vertical and an inverted V and i just switch depending on who im trying to talk to. the inverted V is only up maybe 40 feet at the apex and it still smokes the vertical for regional stuff on 40.

yeah you basically have it right. the filing windows are gone, its been a continuous filing system for a while now. you submit through the FCC ULS and there's a 18-day waiting period where other applicants can also apply for the same call. if youre the only one at the end of that window, you get it. if multiple people applied then the preference order kicks in like you described — and yeah general applicants are at the bottom so if a family member or former holder wants it too you're probably not getting it. for finding available calls, ae7q.com is pretty much the go-to. its updated pretty regularly and you can search by prefix, suffix length, all kinds of filters. i used it when i grabbed my current call a few years back and it was accurate. just double check anything you really want against the actual ULS before you get your heart set on it because sometimes theres a lag. one thing worth knowing — a 1x2 or 2x1 call is going to have a lot more competition than a 2x3. if you just want something shorter or easier to send, a 2x2 in your district is usually pretty attainable without much drama.

honestly the inverted-v version of the dipole is probably your easiest path here. if you have any kind of support in the middle — a tree, a mast, even a tall fence post — you can get the apex up at like 30-35 feet and let both legs slope down. the pattern opens up a bit more toward the horizon compared to a flat dipole which is actually decent for DX, and the angled ends arent nearly as bad as people make them out to be as long as theyre not too close to the ground. i ran an inverted v on 40 for three years before i had space for anything else and worked plenty of DX with it. nothing exotic, just a center insulator, some 14ga wire, and a 1:1 choke balun at the feedpoint. fed it with coax, done. the vertical with radials isnt bad but 32 radials is a real afternoon of work and if the ground conductivity around all those houses is sketchy you might be chasing your tail trying to figure out why the SWR is weird.

so i've been wanting to try this WWFF thing for months and finally made it out to a state park last weekend. managed to work about 15 stations on 20m with my little QRP rig which was pretty exciting. but now im looking at the logging requirements and honestly its a bit confusing. do i need to upload to their database or just submit the contacts somewhere? and what about QSL cards - are those still a thing for WWFF or is everyone doing eQSL now? also realized i might have messed up the reference number format in my log, used the wrong prefix i think

Which mount are you using? I had similar issues with a mag-mount until I realized the paint was preventing good ground contact. Verify that coax connectors are tight and corrosion-free. Always perform final tuning with doors and trunk closed to simulate real operating conditions.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for about 6 weeks now. what helped me was just listening to a lot of cw on the air even before i could copy anything, like just tuning around 40m in the evenings and letting it wash over me. felt pointless at first but i think it got my ear used to the rhythm somehow. also there's this youtube channel, i forget the name exactly but if you search morse code practice slow there are some videos with the character written on screen as its sent which helped me a lot early on when i was just learning individual letters

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and i think im close but not quite there. basically i have an old Yaesu G-450A rotator and the controller still works fine but i got tired of manually turning it every time i want to hit a new bearing for satellite passes. figured i could throw an arduino in there and have it handle the positioning automatically based on output from gpredict or whatever. what i did so far is tapped into the azimuth potentiometer on the controller, running that voltage into an analog pin on a mega 2560 and converting it to degrees. that part actually works pretty well, i can read the current heading within a few degrees which is good enough. the problem is the motor drive side. i was trying to use a relay module to switch the left/right motor lines but im getting these really ugly voltage spikes when the relay clicks and i think its causing the arduino to reset sometimes. put a snubber across the relay contacts and it helped a little but not fully. anyone dealt with this before? wondering if i should just ditch the relays and go with an optocoupler or maybe a solid state relay setup instead. also not sure if i should be doing the serial comms to gpredict over USB or if i should wire up a proper RS-232 level shifter, the rotctld interface kind of expects real serial ports i think.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into our local weekly 2m net last tuesday, been a ham for about 8 months now and just been listening for a while before jumping in. went fine overall but there was this one guy who kept coming in before net control even acknowledged the previous station, like just walking right over people mid-transmission. happened at least three or four times and the net control operator never said anything about it. i guess i was just surprised because everyone talks about how important operating etiquette is and i always assumed nets were kinda... more formal about that stuff? or am i just being naive. is this normal and i missed something, or is this actually bad practice and people just let it slide to avoid drama. genuinely not sure what the correct thing is here

so ive been chasing DX pretty seriously for about three years now and the pileup thing still drives me nuts sometimes. i finally worked a few of the big ones this past season — 3Y0J being the obvious one everyone was after — and i started noticing patterns in what actually gets you through versus what's just cargo cult stuff people repeat on forums. the biggest thing i keep seeing is guys just hammering their callsign over and over on top of everyone else and obviously that doesnt work, it just adds to the noise. what actually seemed to get me through more consistently was listening to where the DXpedition was actually coming back, not where everyone assumed they were listening. like on 17m during 3Y0J i noticed they were working split and drifting their listening frequency up a couple kHz, once i figured out where they were actually pulling calls from i got through on the second or third attempt instead of calling for an hour. also timing. if you transmit right when a pileup peaks you're basically dead. waiting for that half second lull where everyone pauses to listen — thats the window. my buddy W4 something runs 1500w into a stack and still gets outrun by guys with 100w who just listen better. anyway curious what techniques people here actually swear by. partial calls, tail-ending, working the edges of the split — whats your experience

so ive been lurking on this forum for like 6 months trying to figure out if ham radio was worth getting into and i finally just went and took the technician exam last saturday and passed. still cant believe it honestly. been a scanner guy for years so i already knew a lot of the lingo but the actual exam questions were a bit different than i expected, some of the electrical theory stuff had me guessing anyway got my callsign assigned tuesday and made my first actual QSO yesterday on the local 2m repeater. just said hello and gave my callsign a few times and one of the guys came back to me, we talked for maybe 10 minutes about nothing in particular. felt kind of surreal. hes been licensed since like 1987 and was super welcoming about it just wanted to say hi i guess. planning to get into HF eventually but for now im happy just getting comfortable on VHF. anyone else remember their first QSO?

not a dumb question at all, this stuff genuinely is confusing when you first start out. so the short version is: LoTW is what the ARRL uses for their awards like DXCC and WAS, so if those are on your radar eventually you'll want to get that sorted. the certificate thing does take a little while, mine took almost two weeks if i remember right, and then you have to install the TQSL software and do some setup. bit of a pain but once its running it's pretty seamless. eQSL is kind of its own thing — some awards accept it and some dont, and honestly a lot of DX stations use it too so it's not useless by any means. i personally upload to both just because why not, takes like two extra minutes. as for paper cards — yeah people still do it, especially for more serious DX contacts or if you work a rare entity. some DX stations only confirm via bureau or direct mail. i still send cards for anything that feels special to me, there's something nice about having a physical card from like a polar expedition or whatever. but day to day contacts? most people just do LoTW now.

so ive been trying to get Winlink Express set up for the past few weekends and im losing my mind a little. background - im running a IC-7300 into a SignaLink USB, been using VARA HF for the modem software. i can see gateways in the session list, i can even see them beaconing on my waterfall sometimes, but when i try to actually initiate a connection i either get nothing back or it starts the handshake and then just drops. ive gone through the Winlink wiki like three times and i feel like im missing something obvious. my audio levels seem ok, PTT is definitely keying the radio (i can see the TX light and i can hear the tone going out), but no joy. is there some firewall thing i need to deal with for the Winlink servers? or is this more likely an audio level issue on the receive side? the gateway im trying to hit is maybe 60 miles out which shouldnt be a problem on 40m i would think. also not sure if this matters but im running the radio through a tuner into a trapped vertical, SWR is around 1.5:1 on 40m. any help appreciated

I'm trying to decide between RemoteHams RCForb and wfview for remote operation of my IC-7300. RemoteHams server provides capability to easily remotely control a ham radio station including amplifier, antenna rotator, and switches, with RCForb client software that integrates with popular logging programs and includes a keyboard keyer and DX cluster. However, wfview works with Icom radios and allows control via computer and can expose a standard hamlib interface that many pieces of ham software use to control radios. For those who've used both systems - what are the practical differences in setup complexity, audio latency, and overall reliability? Particularly interested in experiences with digital modes integration.

so ive been running a mag mount on the trunk lid of my 4runner for about two years now, diamond SG7500A dualbander, and honestly its been fine for local stuff but i keep reading that a proper NMO through the roof is noticeably better and i'm starting to wonder if im leaving performance on the table. the mag mount does okay but i notice on the 70cm side especially things feel a little mediocre compared to what guys on my local repeater are describing with their setups. the thing is im kind of hesitant to drill a hole in a vehicle i still owe payments on, even though i know intellectually that a good NMO mount with a grommet is basically weatherproof if done right. has anyone actually done a side by side comparison or is this more of a theoretical thing where yes the NMO is better but in practice day to day you wouldnt really tell the difference for simplex and repeater work around town. also slightly related - does the trunk lid location actually hurt the pattern much compared to center of roof? i've seen arguments both ways

yeah the zero w wifi is honestly not great for anything where timing matters, ive had similar headaches using one as a remote audio bridge and it would just randomly hiccup. if you can swing a pi 3A+ you get the same small-ish form factor but actual ethernet and a proper processor so the serial parsing doesnt fall behind. that said if you want to stick with the zero, look into using a hardware UART instead of relying on the USB CDC serial — the zero has two UARTs and if you disable bluetooth you can get a clean dedicated serial port that doesnt have the same latency weirdness. for the threading thing, are you using a queue between your serial listener and the DAC write function? if youre just calling the DAC write directly from inside the serial read loop that could absolutely cause you to drop commands under load. stick the incoming commands in a queue.Queue and have a separate thread drain it, its like 10 extra lines and it fixes that whole class of problem.