James Williams

yeah what he said about checking if the frequency is in use first - that part is important and a lot of people skip it. i made that mistake early on, just started calling CQ on what i thought was a clear freq and turns out there was a DX station in there i couldnt hear because of propagation. guy i was talking to later told me i'd been doubling with a ZL for like 10 minutes lol. so always listen for a bit and ask before transmitting

112 confirmed is solid for 3 years in, you're doing fine. Honestly the strategy question kind of answers itself once you think about band modes — a lot of the DX you need for DXCC you'll work incidentally while also filling in WAS and WAZ squares, especially on 20 and 17 meters. I wouldn't stress too much about chasing them separately. On the credits question — yes you can absolutely submit additional credits later. The way it works with LoTW is they keep a running tally and you just pay the incremental fee when you want to claim the next award level. So you might apply for the basic DXCC now and then later when you hit 150 or 200 confirmed you apply for the endorsement. Paper cards you'd send to an ARRL card checker, they log the credits and you're done, those get added to your account. You dont have to hold them and submit everything in a big batch, just do it whenever it makes sense. Some guys wait years before sending in a pile of cards though, which i get because the postage adds up.

yeah 10m has been doing exactly that, these burst openings that come and go real fast. what youre probably seeing is a mix of F2 propagation and maybe some sporadic-E thrown in, especially if the path to JA or VK seems unusually short on timing. F2 at this point in the solar cycle can be really good but it doesnt always mean a steady open band — it kind of moves around depending on where the solar zenith angle is and how the ionosphere is structured that day. the SFI being in the 170s is genuinely solid, we havent had consistent numbers like that in a while. i'd keep an eye on the geomagnetic stuff too though because even a moderate K index can knock out the higher bands fast. honestly just be ready to jump when you see a cluster of spots come through because like you said those windows can close quick

yeah i went through the same thing when i started, the jump from 12 to 15 felt like hitting a wall. what helped me was practicing with the Koch method using LCWO dot net, just doing receive drills at the speed i wanted to send at. weird as it sounds, getting your ear trained to the faster speed first made my sending loosen up. no idea why that worked but it did. also dont obsess too much over the keyer settings at first, get your hand comfortable and then tweak

eu2200 isnt that bad weight wise compared to older generators but i get what you mean, once you add the fuel can it adds up fast. we use them for SET exercises when we have a command post vehicle but for anything where your hiking in forget it honestly for the multi hour thing i just bring a second battery. boring answer but its reliable and theres no moving parts to break at the worst moment

honestly the memorization approach works fine for tech, a lot of people do it that way and pass no problem. the pool isnt that big and the questions repeat enough that if you grind ham study or qrz practice tests for like a week or two you'll probably be ready. that said the electrical stuff like ohms law is actually worth understanding because its dead simple once it clicks — voltage equals current times resistance, thats basically it, and like 4 or 5 questions on the test come from just knowing that. the harder part for most people is the rules and regulations stuff, frequencies you can use as a tech, what modes are allowed where, that kind of thing. i'd say if youre consistently hitting 80 percent or better on the practice exams youre probably good to go. find a local club doing a VE session, they're usually pretty relaxed and the volunteers genuinely want you to pass

matched diodes make a real difference in my experience. i built a similar ring mod a while back, just used whatever 1N4148s i grabbed from the bin and the suppression was mediocre at best. bought a bag, measured forward voltage on like 30 of them with a DMM in diode mode and sorted them into matched pairs and the improvement was noticeable. got up around 40dB pretty easily after that with just minor trimmer adjustment. its tedious but worth the hour you spend doing it.

at 30-35 feet on 40m youre both pretty much in the same boat pattern wise, neither of you is getting a low enough takeoff angle to really exploit any theoretical advantage. the EFHW with a good 49:1 unun is a fine antenna but its not magic, and a sloper is going to have a different pattern than a horizontal dipole anyway so comparing them directly is kind of apples and oranges. your ladder line fed dipole is probably more efficient overall just because youre not dealing with any matching network losses at the feedpoint. the 49:1 unun on cheap ferrite can get warm and lossy, especially on 40 where youre running more power. if you want to actually settle the argument put both antennas on the same band at the same time and have someone on the other end flip between them, anything else is too many variables

yeah i've done both and honestly they serve different purposes. RemoteHams is great if you want something that just works and you dont want to spend a weekend debugging port forwarding and firewall rules. The server dependency thing is real though, I think they had a pretty significant outage maybe 18 months ago and a bunch of people got burned. After that I set up a parallel path using hamlib over a VPN so I have a fallback if their broker goes down. The SDR panadapter in RemoteHams is actually pretty bandwidth efficient from what ive seen, I ran it on a connection that was maybe 10-12mbps down and it was fine, you can tune the FFT update rate and the span. Where you start running into trouble is if you're also pushing audio at the same time obviously but even then it's not as bad as youd think if you drop the audio codec quality a bit. The 7300's built in panadapter passthrough over the USB is what I use and that works fine as the remote SDR source.

so i finally sat down and did a proper contest run this past CQ WW SSB and wow i had no idea what i was missing. ive been licensed about 18 months and mostly just done ragchews and a little SOTA but something about the pileups and the rhythm of contest operating just clicked for me. ran about 6 hours on 20m and managed just over 200 QSOs which i know isnt anything impressive but for me it felt incredible. the part i wasnt expecting was how much it helped my operating skills. like i had to really learn to listen through QRM and my exchange got tighter just from repetition. also realized my antenna situation needs work badly - kept losing contacts to stations running beams while im sitting here with a dipole strung between two trees. anyway i got the bug now. already looking at ARRL Sweepstakes next month and trying to figure out if i should try CW Sweepstakes even though my code is still pretty rough. also been poking around the SOTA summits list thinking about doing an activation during a contest weekend to stack both at once. anyone done that? does it actually work out or is it more chaos than its worth? also genuinely curious what upcoming events people are looking forward to. feels like contest season is just ramping up and i want to plan better this time instead of just stumbling into CQ WW the night before

so ive been working on this 40m crystal controlled TX for the past few months, mostly following the EMRFD designs with a few modifications because i couldnt source the exact parts listed. got it to fire up finally last week and it puts out somewhere around 3-4 watts into a dummy load which honestly is better than i expected. the problem is there's this weird chirp on keying, like the frequency drifts for maybe half a second when i first hit the key and then settles. i thought it was a VFO stability thing but its crystal controlled so that shouldnt really be happening. also the sidetone is a bit off, sounds slightly different pitch than what im actually transmitting which is annoying but whatever, livable. anyone dealt with the chirp thing before? im wondering if its a keying voltage issue affecting the oscillator stage somehow, or maybe my buffer amp isnt isolating well enough. the crystal is a surplus 7.030 i pulled out of an old piece of gear so maybe that has something to do with it too.

basically the rule of thumb most people use is if theres any chance the other station might mishear or misread something, go phonetic. callsigns especially on HF where the band might be marginal, always phonetic. on a clear local repeater with someone you talk to every day, honestly nobody cares if you just say your call normally. the thing about mixing in wrong phonetics or non-standard ones -- its really not a big deal at all on amateur radio. youll hear people use all kinds of weird stuff. i knew a guy who used his own made up phonetics for years, like instead of Whiskey he always said Washington. drove some people nuts but it was perfectly understandable. the whole point is just clarity so the other person can write down what you said. if it works it works. once you do it enough the standard NATO ones just become automatic, especially the weird ones like November and Uniform. just takes reps.

so ive been messing around with QRP stuff for about a year now and finally built up a kit that actually works well enough to take out to the field without wanting to throw it into a lake. figured id share since i know theres a few others here that have been asking about portable low power setups. started with a Xiegu G90 which isnt technically QRP but i keep it at 5 watts when im out portable, then moved to building an actual QRP rig from a kit — ended up going with a 40m monoband thing i got from QRP Labs, the QCX+ if anyone knows it. the build took me a weekend and a half mostly because i kept second guessing my solder joints and reflowing stuff that was probably fine. anyway the thing that surprised me most is how far you can actually get with 5 watts if you have a halfway decent antenna. i was running a linked dipole up about 25 feet in some trees at a state forest and worked a station in germany on 20m which still kind of blows my mind honestly. conditions were good that day but still. battery situation took me a while to figure out. i tried a little lipo pack first and it worked but the voltage sag was annoying, switched to a 3ah lifepo4 and it's been way more consistent. i can usually get a solid 4-5 hours of operating before i need to think about charging. anyone else doing a lot of portable QRP? curious what antennas people are using out in the field, still feel like thats my weakest link

yeah 4 contacts is 4 contacts, activation counts. honestly my first one was worse, i forgot to log two of them properly and had to go back through my memory to submit. the wind thing is real, i use one of those cheap foam windscreens now and it helps a lot. linked dipole is worth it if you want to hit multiple bands without retuning, i bring mine on almost every trip now.

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for probably two years now, always felt a bit nervous about opening it up even though i know its literally just moving a diode. finally got around to it last weekend and honestly it went fine, took maybe 20 minutes including the time i spent second-guessing myself and reading the service manual three times. the main reason i wanted it was just for some EMCOMM stuff where we occasionally need to go slightly outside the normal ham bands, nothing crazy. but while i had the thing open i also noticed the fan mod people talk about where you jumper the fan to run at lower speed constantly instead of kicking on hard when it gets hot. did that too. the fan noise on these radios always bugged me during rag chews, the sudden blast of air is pretty distracting. anyway my question is whether anyone has done the internal ATU mod or added an aftermarket one to these, i know the 857 doesnt come with a built in tuner and ive been running an LDG externally forever but its kind of a pain in the field. wondering if theres a cleaner solution that others have figured out.

this is basically exactly where i was maybe 6 months ago lol. what helped me the most was using the MRP40 software to decode my own sending and watching where the errors showed up. it's kind of humbling but you can see right away if your spacing is off or if you're mashing dits together. also i read somewhere that 15 wpm is actually easier to copy than 10 because the character spacing is more natural, might be worth experimenting with bumping the speed up a little even if it feels scary at first

yeah the cell phone thing is almost universal, we had the exact same problem at our last drill. one of our guys actually had his phone out looking up the ICS form number while we were mid-exercise and didn't even realize he was doing it. we started doing this thing where everyone puts phones face down on the table at the start and it helped a little but not totally. for inject schedules honestly the best advice I got was to start slow and then pile on faster than feels comfortable. real disasters dont give you time to catch your breath between problems so your second or third inject should come before people have fully resolved the first one. creates that pressure that shows you where the gaps are. FEMA has some tabletop facilitation guides on their site that are actually decent if you dig around, they're written for general emergency management but translate pretty well to the ham side of things. the one thing i'd add is make sure someone is designated as the observer who isn't playing, just watching and writing down everything that goes wrong. debriefing is where you actually learn stuff

okay so i passed my technician exam like three weeks ago and ive been trying to figure out what i'm actually allowed to do on HF. i read through part 97 but honestly it kind of goes in circles and i cant tell if im reading it right. like i know techs get some HF privileges but every time i look it up i get a different answer depending on the website. from what i can tell i get 10 meters phone and some other stuff? but someone at the club meeting said techs can also do some CW on lower bands and i had no idea about that. is there like a simple breakdown somewhere or does anyone just know off the top of their head what the actual limits are. also does it matter what mode you're using, like is digital treated differently than voice for the band privileges

the chasing your own signal thing is classic and it trips up almost everyone starting out on linear birds. what you want to do is tune the downlink to find yourself, then leave the downlink VFO alone and only adjust the uplink. gpredict or whatever you're using should be doing the doppler math on both ends but the key is your reference is always the downlink — if your signal drifts on the downlink you move the uplink to bring it back, not the other way around. sounds backwards but it clicks pretty fast once you internalize it. the AGC thing is real too, AO-73's transponder is not super high power and if someone is hammering the uplink with too much power it does compress everything. 5 watts is usually plenty, some people work it with less. you were probably fine with the 817 honestly. the footprint being busy is kind of geography dependent, europeans absolutely pile onto that bird when it comes over them.

okay so ive been trying to get Winlink Express working for a few weeks now and i think im close but something isnt clicking. running it on HF, got a Signalink USB hooked up to my 7300, and i can see the waterfall and everything looks fine. when i try to connect to an RMS gateway it just times out or i get a partial handshake and then nothing. i watched like four different youtube videos and they all say slightly different things about the dial frequency vs the center frequency offset and honestly now im more confused than when i started. the gateways i'm trying to hit are showing green on the RMS status page so they should be active. im using Vara HF which i paid for the registered version thinking that would help. my question i guess is — is there some checklist or something for getting the first successful connection? like what are the most common things people screw up when first setting this up? also does it matter much which gateway i pick, like should i be targeting the closest one geographically or just whatever has the best signal on the waterfall?

so ive been running a 40m dipole at about 25 feet for the last year or so and its been decent, working europe occasionally from the midwest when conditions cooperate. but my neighbor keeps telling me i should put up a vertical instead because of the low angle radiation and dx and all that. he's got a big fancy ground mounted vertical with like 60 radials under it. thing is, 25 feet isnt great for a dipole on 40, i know that, you really want it closer to a half wave up which would be like 66 feet or something ridiculous i cant do in my yard. but i also dont really want to bury 60 radials. is the vertical actually going to outperform what i have for dx or is he kind of overselling it. i feel like my dipole even at that height does okay and im not sure the radial work is worth the payoff unless im totally wrong about this

New to linear satellites here - does this mean I need to constantly retune during a pass? I've been using my IC-9700 in satellite mode but haven't figured out how to compensate for thermal drift on top of Doppler shift.

I use tent stakes and paracord to guy my fishing pole mast. LEAN the pole in the direction of the slant wire which should be down wind - learned that the hard way when mine snapped!

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a local nature reserve near me (KFF-2847 i think, had to double check the reference number like three times before i went out lol). been meaning to try this for ages after seeing people post about it on here and on the WWFF facebook groups. set up my KX3 with a linked dipole strung between two trees, pretty much the same kit i use for SOTA except i didnt have to hike up anything steep which my knees appreciated. conditions werent amazing but i still managed to get 44 contacts in about 2 hours, mostly 40m with a few on 20m. got the 44 needed for a valid activation which i was relieved about cause at one point the rate really died off. my question is about logging - i used HAMRS in the field and then uploaded to ADIF to the WWFF logbook when i got home but im not sure if i did the reference tagging right. does anyone know if the sig and sig_info fields in the ADIF are what matter most or is there something else i might have missed? also is there a way to see if your activation has been validated yet or do you just wait for an email? the whole submission process felt a bit clunky compared to SOTA honestly

congrats on the first one mate, 44 QSOs for a first activation is really solid especially if you werent spotted for a chunk of it. the spotting thing trips up almost everyone the first time, ive seen people pack up thinking nobody was around when they just hadnt been spotted yet. for logging i actually just use a paper log in the field and then manually enter into the WWFF logging tool when i get home. its a bit old fashioned but it means i dont have to stress about apps or file formats out in the bush. ADIF export from most logging software should work fine with the WWFF submission system though if you want to keep it digital. and yes absolutely go for an unactivated reference if you have them nearby, thats one of the best things you can do for the program. some of those spots havent ever had a radio signal come out of them and its kind of cool to be the first. just make sure the reference boundaries are correct before you drive out there because ive definitely had a moment where i thought i was inside the boundary and wasnt quite