James Williams

yeah we did almost exactly this for a simulated emergency exercise last spring. went the battery route with two 100ah lifepo4 packs and a 200w solar panel as a trickle keep-alive. the math works out better than you'd think — 7300 on receive is maybe 2 amps, tx on a typical net checkin cycle you're not keying up that often so average draw stays pretty reasonable. we ran about 14 hours without sweating it too bad and the panel was putting in maybe 6-8 amps during the day which helped a lot. the antenna situation though, that's where we had problems. we brought a linked dipole like you're describing and the trees at the actual site were not where we thought they'd be based on the satellite view. ended up having to reconfigure it as more of a flat top with one end lower than we wanted. works fine but took like 45 minutes to sort out when we were also trying to set up everything else at once. i'd strongly suggest doing a site survey ahead of time if you can get out there, even just to walk the ground and look at where you can actually throw rope. the genny vs battery thing really comes down to whether you need to run high power consistently. if you're mostly doing net check-ins and passing traffic at 100w or less, battery is totally doable and way less hassle. if someone wants to run digital modes or you end up needing to push power for marginal propagation, having the honda as a backup charging option isn't a bad idea even if you don't plan to run it much.

so i've been running APRS for a few months now, got my TM-D710G set up with a mag mount on the car and it's been working great for tracking, i can see myself on aprs.fi and everything. but i've been reading about paths and now im second guessing my setup because i have it set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-2 which i thought was the standard but someone in my local club said thats too aggressive and i might be causing issues on the network especially in urban areas. my commute takes me through a pretty dense metro area and then out into some rural stretches so i wasn't sure if i needed to cover both scenarios with one path setting or if theres a smarter way to do this. i dont want to be that guy hammering the digis every 30 seconds with a path that just creates redundant packets everywhere. anyone running a similar mixed urban/rural route and have advice on what path actually makes sense? also does the beacon rate matter as much as the path or is path the bigger concern

honestly this is one of those things where the answer is genuinely frustrating — it depends. a vertical with a bad radial system will likely lose to your dipole every time, no contest. ive seen guys put up a vertical with 4 radials and then wonder why its noisey and lossy, and yeah its gonna be worse than almost anything else. that said if you can manage even 16 quarter wave radials on 40m youre talking a meaningful improvement at low angles. i did a comparison a few years back with an A/B switch between my inverted-V and a homebrew vertical with about 20 radials and the vertical was noticeably better into europe during the evening greyline window. like signals that were 57 on the dipole were 59 on the vertical, not every time but consistently enough that it wasnt placebo. but my lot is bigger than yours sounds so the radial thing was more doable for me. if your yard is really that small you might look at a raised vertical with just 4 elevated radials — thats a totally different animal than a ground mounted one and you dont need nearly as many. some guys swear by that approach for small lots.

im in almost the exact same boat, been at it for about 3 months now using LCWO. im up to like 12 characters which doesnt sound like much but honestly it goes faster than i expected once the first few click. the hardest part for me was the first couple weeks where it felt completely hopeless lol. just stick with it even when its frustrating, 15 minutes a day is way better than one big session on the weekend from what ive read

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i'm starting to get into chasing awards and trying to figure out the whole confirmation thing. right now i have a LoTW account set up and ive been uploading logs but honestly i'm confused about whether i need to bother with eQSL too, and then physical cards on top of that. like i get that ARRL uses LoTW for DXCC and WAS and stuff, but then some guys on the air mention eQSL like its just as good? and i still get actual paper cards in the mail from some contacts which is honestly really cool but i have no idea if i should be sending cards back to everyone or just people who specifically request them. also the LoTW setup was kind of a pain, took me a while to get the certificate thing sorted out. is eQSL easier to set up at least? just trying to figure out what the minimum i need to do is without being rude to other operators who might want a card from me

yeah 20m has been pretty inconsistent lately, not just you. the SFI being in that range should be decent but the K-index has been spiking a fair bit too and that'll kill a path faster than a low flux will. a geomagnetic disturbance even a minor one can wipe out the higher latitude paths for hours. worth checking the A and K index alongside the SFI, the spaceweather.com site is pretty good for a quick snapshot and DXmaps.com will actually show you real time spots so you can see if anyone's actually completing contacts on a given path before you even get on. for NA to JA on 15m you're generally looking at a pretty specific window around their sunrise, so depending where you are in NA that might be late afternoon or early evening your time. greyline propagation is real and it's worth understanding, there's some good reading on it. the path sort of lights up as the terminator crosses both ends. when it works it really works.

You dont have to post an alert but honestly it makes a huge difference in how fast you get your 4 contacts. Chasers watch SOTAwatch constantly and if they see your alert they'll be listening for you. Self spotting works fine once you're up there, lots of people use it, nothing wrong with it at all. Just get the SOTA Spotter app or use the SMS method if you dont have data on the summit. For 40 vs 20, i usually try 40 first in the morning especially if its a domestic activation, you'll pick up chasers pretty quick with a decent dipole. If the bands are weird or youre not getting hits after 5-10 minutes, jump to 20 and see if you can snag some DX. With a KX2 and a linked dipole you should be totally fine, that's a solid setup. The 4 contacts will come faster than you think once you're spotted. Have fun with it, first activation is really something special.

yeah the lottery thing trips everybody up the first time. so here's how it actually works — when you file a vanity application there's a 30 day window (used to be longer i think) where other people can also apply for that same call. if only you applied, you get it. if multiple people applied, the FCC does a random selection from the pool of qualified applicants. so it's not first come first served within that window, which is kind of counterintuitive but that's how it is. as for when calls become available — deceased hams their calls go into a holding period, i want to say it's around 2 years after the license expires but dont quote me on the exact timeframe, that may have changed. calls that just lapse because someone didnt renew become available after the license officially cancels. the AE7Q website is your best friend for this stuff, it tracks call availability and shows you the status of specific calls and even lists whats coming up. way better than trying to figure it out through ULS directly. 1x2 calls in popular districts go fast so good luck, you might have to be patient and keep checking back.

As General class, you have CW/RTTY/data privileges on 7.025-7.125 MHz, and phone privileges on 7.175-7.300 MHz. The gap between 7.125-7.175 is Extra class only for phone. Stay below 7.125 for digital modes and above 7.175 for SSB - that keeps you legal and following good band plan etiquette.

so we finally got enough people together to run a proper simulated emergency exercise, been trying to organize this for like 8 months and kept having to push it back. we had about 14 operators spread across three sites — the EOC, a shelter at the high school, and a mobile unit running around in a van. I was net control at the EOC side. honestly it went better than I expected in some ways and way worse in others. the radio stuff mostly worked fine, our nets were solid, people remembered their procedures. what completely fell apart was the message handling. like, we had operators who are great on the air but when it came to actually filling out ICS forms and passing traffic in a structured way it was a mess. half the messages came through with missing info or in the wrong format and we basically had to stop the sim twice to go over it again. the other thing that caught me off guard — we lost one of our key operators about 90 minutes in because he had a real family thing come up and just had to leave. and suddenly we realized we had no backup for his role at the shelter. in a real event that would have been a serious problem. we kind of improvised but it showed a real gap in how we think about redundancy for people not just equipment. anyway curious if others have done these kinds of exercises and what surprised you the most. also wondering if theres a good resource for simplified ICS message templates that are easier to use under pressure

hamstudy is the right answer but i'll add -- dont stress too much about fully understanding every single question on the first pass. there's some regulatory stuff in there like part 97 rules and band privileges that just kind of needs to be memorized and thats fine, you'll learn the why of it later when youre actually on the air. took me maybe 3 weeks studying like 20 minutes a night and passed with room to spare. the question pool is publicly available and the actual exam questions come straight from it so there really arent any surprises

yeah the counting dots and dashes thing will absolutely kill you, dont do that. your brain just cant keep up past like 3-4 wpm if youre mentally going dit-dah-dit every time. the whole point is you want to hear the letter as a sound, like hearing a word in a foreign language without translating it in your head first. lcwo is legit, the koch method on there is what i used and it does work but you have to trust the process even when it feels like nothing is clicking. the frustrating part is it really does feel like youre going nowhere for weeks and then something kind of snaps into place. i set it to like 20wpm character speed with a slower effective speed, thats the farnsworth method, so the characters sound right but theres more space between them to think. that way when you speed up later your ear is already trained to the fast sounds. 5 wpm is enough to actually make a contact, people are out there doing qrs stuff and theyll slow down for you. 40 meters around 7.050 or so tends to have slower activity. dont wait until youre perfect to get on air, honestly making actual contacts is what made it stick for me more than any app.

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now, technician class, been mostly hanging around on local repeaters and just recently started poking around on HF a little bit with a borrowed radio. and everyone just throws these codes around like QSL, QRM, QSY, QTH and i kind of piece together what they mean from context but honestly im guessing half the time. like i figured QTH is probably location because people say it before they give their location but thats just me guessing. is there like a standard list somewhere or do people just kind of learn them over time? also are there other abbreviations that arent Q codes that i should know? people also say stuff like 73 and im pretty sure thats goodbye or something but again just guessing. sorry if this is a dumb question

honestly the 15m thing has been frustrating me too and i have a beam so its not a power or antenna issue on my end. i think were just in one of those weird phases even near solar max where you get these random quiet stretches. i did hear someone on a club net say that some of the recent solar activity has been producing proton events which can mess up polar paths specifically, might explain some of the inconsistency. anyway the JA openings on 17m late evening have been my best bet lately, worth trying if you havent already

so ive been using N1MM for probably 5 or 6 years now mostly for contesting and it does what i need but ive been hearing a lot about Log4OM lately and people seem to really like it for general logging day to day. my problem is N1MM feels overkill when im just doing casual QSOs on a tuesday night and the interface isnt exactly friendly for just sitting down and logging a few contacts without feeling like youre about to enter a contest whether you want to or not. i also run WSJT-X for FT8 and the integration with N1MM works okay but ive had some duplicate handling weirdness where it doesnt always catch dupes across modes properly, like if i worked someone on SSB and then they show up on FT8 it sometimes lets me log them again without a warning. might be a config thing on my end i honestly havent dug into it that much. so the question is does anyone actually use Log4OM for contesting or is it really more of a daily driver thing and you keep N1MM around just for when a contest rolls around. running two separate loggers sounds annoying but maybe thats just how people do it. also does Log4OM talk to WSJT-X cleanly because thats probably my biggest requirement at this point.

Currently testing RMS Packet with UZ7HO Soundmodem on FTM-400. The KISS driver timing issues are real - getting lots of collisions during message transfers with default RMS settings. Switching to AGWPE resolved most problems.

i did a POTA activation last spring at a state forest and it poured the whole time, had my radio under a trash bag basically. got like 22 contacts though so it worked out. the wet log thing is real tho, i just use my phone now with hamlog or whatever, way easier even if the battery is annoying to deal with

yeah the 10m opening has been real, i caught it tuesday afternoon and worked into Europe with my little vertical on the roof, which honestly almost never happens from my location. noise floor was down and everything just sounded clean. my neighbor who just got his ticket last spring was over and i let him make a few contacts and he was completely hooked after that, i think that one session did more for his enthusiasm than any elmering i could have done. on the Icom firmware thing i did actually install it a couple weeks ago when it dropped. the ALC behavior does seem more stable to me on the microwave bands but im not doing A/B comparisons or anything scientific so take that for what its worth. the menu navigation still drives me a little crazy on that radio but the RF side of things is hard to argue with once you get it dialed in.

i dont know whats gotten into me lately but ive had zero motivation to even turn the rig on. its been sitting there for like three weeks just collecting dust. i got on for about 10 minutes last tuesday to check into the local net and then just... turned it off. not sure if its the weather or what. spring usually gets me excited to do some portable ops but this year nothing is clicking. anybody else go through phases like this with the hobby

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and finally worked up the nerve to check into a few nets. been doing the local 2m repeater net on monday evenings which is pretty chill, the net control there is super patient with new folks. but i also heard about a regional 40m net on tuesday nights around 7.245 and i tried checking in last week and honestly wasnt sure if i did it right. i gave my call, my name, and location but then wasnt sure if i was supposed to wait for net control to come back to me or just kinda hang out. ended up doubling with someone else which was embarrassing. also someone mentioned there's a special event station operating this weekend for some kind of historical anniversary thing, W1-something, and i want to try to work them but no idea how those work differently than a regular QSO. do they send you a certificate or something? or do you have to apply for it somewhere? basically just trying to figure out the whole net world before i make too much of a fool of myself ha

yeah im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for a couple months now. i use the morse code ninja youtube channel and also an app called morse mania on my phone. the youtube guy does a ton of drills, like he has videos that are just common words over and over, two letter words three letter words etc, and it helps a lot more than i expected. the app is good for when im just sitting around waiting for something. still pretty slow, maybe copying 8-10wpm on a good day but i can tell its starting to click more. the hardest part for me was the letters that sound kinda similar like b d and 6, i keep mixing those up

When troubleshooting a radio receiver, it's essential to follow a systematic approach to diagnose and identify the underlying issues. Here are some diagnostic techniques to consider: Visual Inspection: Inspect the exterior and interior of the receiver for signs of damage, loose connections, or component failures. I've been repairing radios for 30+ years and want to share some hard-learned lessons about failure diagnosis. Remember that problems common to both channels are often power supply related, protection circuit related or control circuit related. The key is understanding failure patterns - One of the most common problems in the case of spontaneous failure is counterfeit power transistors. See the article Counterfeit Transistors for more information on this topic. Here's my systematic approach: Power supply voltages under loadSignal tracing with known-good test signalComponent-level DC analysisRF path verification

thermal problems that dont show up on the case temp are usually a dry joint or a component thats marginal and doesnt like heat expansion. on radios like that i usually start with a good look at the PA board connections and any surface mount caps near the driver stage, but honestly getting inside a 7300 without voiding stuff is a bit of a pain depending on warrenty situation. one thing worth trying before you crack it open — run it with the top cover off and point a small fan at the internals. if the dropout frequency changes dramatically thats a pretty strong indicator youre chasing a thermal thing on a specific board rather than something like the protection circuit being flaky. also have you checked what the radio itself is reporting for temp? think you can see it somewhere in the menus, cant remember exactly where off the top of my head but it logs internal temp. might give you a baseline to compare against when it acts up vs when it doesnt.

so we finally got our county ARES group to do a proper SET last Saturday and honestly it was a real eye opener. we've been talking about doing one for like two years and kept putting it off because people were busy or whatever, but the EC finally just picked a date and said we're doing it. the scenario was a major flooding event cutting off the main EOC from three of the outlying shelters - we had to establish net control, pass ICS-213 traffic, and keep a resource net running simultaneously. on paper it sounds straightforward but man when you're actually doing it with real people on real radios everything just kind of falls apart in interesting ways. biggest thing i noticed was how fast people forget proper net discipline when there's any kind of simulated stress. we had stations just jumping in mid-traffic, people using their call signs backwards, one guy was transmitting on the wrong frequency for like 20 minutes and didn't realize it because he had a split set up from something else. nothing catastrophic but the kind of stuff that in a real event could really slow things down. also our backup power situation was kind of embarrassing, two of our key nodes had batteries that hadn't been tested in over a year and one of them died about 45 minutes in. lesson very much learned on that one. anybody else done a SET recently? curious what scenarios other groups are running because i feel like flooding is kind of the default and it might be good to mix it up.