Christine Lee

QRA64 is 1-3 dB more sensitive than JT65, which is important for EME but much less so at HF. JT65 was designed for EME on VHF and higher bands, while Q65 is particularly effective for fast-fading signals including EME. Has anyone done side-by-side comparisons of these modes on 2m EME? Looking at real-world performance differences beyond the theoretical sensitivity improvements.
QSOs are possible at signal levels 10 to 15 dB below those required for CW JT65 allows detection at around -28dB below the 2.5kHz noise level

rubbermaid tote guy here lol, dont let anyone tell you it has to be fancy. mine is a big blue tote from walmart and it works fine. i did put some foam in the bottom for the radio and taped a little pouch inside the lid for adapters and fuses and stuff.
the one thing i'd really say is whatever you build, actually deploy it in your backyard or driveway a few times before you need it for real. i thought my kit was solid until i set it up one afternoon just to practice and realized my power cable was too short to reach the battery with everything positioned the way i wanted, and i had the wrong connector for my antenna anyway. took like an hour to sort out all the little dumb stuff that seemed obvious when i was packing it at home.

yeah the ALC thing tripped me up for the longest time too. I had mine way too hot for probably the first six months and didnt even know it. what finally helped me was getting a friend on a nearby repeater to give me honest reports while I adjusted in real time, way better than trying to figure it out from the TX monitor alone because the monitor has a slight delay and you can't really trust your own ear on your own voice anyway.
one other thing I'll throw out there — if you're operating in the shack with any kind of fan noise or PC noise near the mic that can also contribute to sounding muddy or distant to people. I had a desk fan running and didnt realize how much it was bleeding in until someone finally pointed it out. switched to a boom mic with a cardioid pattern and most of that went away.

so i've been on the waitlist for the Icom IC-7760 since basically forever and my local dealer called yesterday saying they finally have one coming in next week. pretty excited but also kinda nervous spending that kind of money on something i havent actually put my hands on yet. ive watched every youtube video there is at this point and read the manual PDF three times which is maybe a little obsessive but whatever.
also side note — 10 meters has been absolutely bonkers this week, worked 14 countries yesterday afternoon just running 100 watts into a wire dipole. the cycle 25 peak might actually be living up to the hype for once. if youre not getting on 10 and 12 right now you are really missing out, at least here in the midwest the band opens almost every day around 1400 local.
anyway back to the 7760 — the separate receiver/controller design is what really got me interested, i like the idea of keeping the RF away from the desk. has anyone actually gotten their hands on one yet or am i going to be the guinea pig here

this is actually a pretty common gotcha with Xastir. check your SSID situation — APRS messaging is tied to specific SSIDs and if the destination station's SSID doesn't exactly match what you're addressing, the message just disappears into the void. like if the guy is on W1XYZ-9 and you're sending to W1XYZ without the -9, it technically goes out but nobody's home to ACK it.
also worth checking whether your TNC-Pi is actually in KISS mode properly. sometimes it looks like it's working for beacons because those are one-way but the two-way handshake for messaging exposes weird timing issues. I went through something similar last year, ended up being that my serial port settings were slightly off and Xastir was dropping the incoming ACK frames before they could register. try bumping up the logging verbosity in Xastir and watch what's actually coming back when you send a message.

so ive been chasing rare DX for about 6 years now and i feel like i finally had a breakthrough moment last week working the Kerguelen expedition. figured id write up what actually got me through because a lot of the advice you read online is either too vague or just doesnt hold up in a real pileup situation.
first thing — i stopped calling on top of everyone else in the traditional sense. the expedition was running split, 5 up, and i noticed most guys were clustering right at the announced offset. i went about 3 khz higher than the main cluster and just waited for a gap in the rhythm. took me maybe 20 minutes of listening to figure out the operators pattern. he was clearly doing a sweep from low to high, spending maybe 2-3 seconds at each spot before moving. once i clocked that i timed my single call to land when he'd be in my frequency neighborhood and kept it short — just my callsign once, maybe twice.
the other thing that made a huge difference was dropping power slightly. i know that sounds backwards but i was running 600w into my yagi and i think i was actually causing splatter that was burying me. dropped to around 400 and my signal cleaned up noticeably on the panadapter.
anyway got him on 17m SSB after maybe 40 minutes total which for Kerguelen felt like a miracle. curious what techniques other folks have settled on because i know everyone has their own approach to this stuff.

haha yeah CQ WW is a whole different animal compared to Field Day, fair warning. but dont let that scare you off because running barefoot with a dipole is totally fine, especially if your dipole is up reasonably well and you have decent band conditions. the 30 foot height isnt ideal for DX but honestly ive heard guys with similar setups work 80-90 countries in a weekend so its absolutely doable.
the zone thing clicks once you just pull up a zone map and stare at it for like ten minutes. CQ zones, not ITU, people mix those up all the time. north america is mostly zones 3 4 and 5, europe is 14 through 18 roughly, you get the idea. every unique zone you work is a multiplier per band so thats why people get excited about working something weird like zone 23 or whatever. N1MM is solid but yeah save your log constantly and maybe do a test run before the contest weekend, make sure your callsign and exchange are set up right in the config or youll lose points for dumb reasons

Rate isn't everything man. I've seen guys with fancy SO2R setups get beat by simple SO1R stations because they spent too much time fiddling with the switching instead of just making contacts. That said, are you using the band map effectively? Most of my rate comes from working the pile that builds up on radio 2 while I'm CQing on radio 1. Also check your interlock settings - if there's any delay when you switch radios it kills the flow completely.

so ive been messing with this for probably three weekends now and figured id write up what i found since there wasnt a ton of practical info when i was searching around
started with the standard approach, cut three dipoles for each band and hung them all from the same center insulator fanned out at maybe 30 degrees or so between each element. the 40m one is about 66 feet total, 20m around 33, and i cut the 15m one a bit long intentionally to tune it down
first issue was the feedpoint — i was using a really cheap SO-239 chassis mount and the solder joint let go after the first rainstorm. switched to a proper weatherproofed center insulator i got from a local club member and that fixed the mechanical side of things
SWR on 40 came in nice, around 1.4:1 at the bottom of the band where i mostly operate. 20m was trickier because the elements from 40 were interacting and i ended up having to spread the fan angle a bit more to get it below 2:1 across the whole band. 15m honestly just kinda worked, maybe got lucky with the cut length
feeding it all with RG-8X through a 1:1 choke balun wound on a FT-240-43 toroid, about 10 turns. common mode noise dropped noticeably after adding that, which honestly surprised me a bit even though i knew it should help
overall pretty happy with it. not a beam obviously but for a wire antenna its been solid on 20m into europe in the evenings. anyone else run a fan dipole and have tips on reducing the inter-element interaction on the middle bands

Thanks for asking this! I was wondering the same thing as a new Tech. The bandwidth rules apply to specific band segments - not all amateur frequencies have the same restrictions.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now. currently running an inverted-V dipole for 40m, center at about 35 feet with the ends drooping down to maybe 8 feet off the ground. works okay but i feel like im missing stuff, especially to the east and west since the pattern obviously favors north/south broadside.
a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just put up a vertical with a decent radial field and call it a day. says his 40m vertical with like 16 radials walks all over his old dipole for DX. but i dont know, ive read a lot of conflicting stuff about ground losses eating up vertical efficiency unless you really go nuts with the radials, like 60+ to get it close to ideal.
my yard situation is not great — suburban lot, maybe 60x100 feet, so a full size 40m vertical would need the radials crammed in pretty tight. wondering if anyone has actually done a real comparison on the same band with similar conditions, not just theoretical stuff from the antenna handbook

ok so ive been licensed about 3 months now (tech) and i finally got my first HT, a Baofeng UV-5R, and i've been trying to get into the local 2m repeater. i programmed in the frequency and offset no problem but nobody seems to hear me when i key up. looked it up in the repeater directory and it says the input tone is 100.0 Hz so i put that in but still nothing.
talked to a guy at the club meeting and he said something about making sure the tone is set on transmit not receive but honestly i wasnt sure what he meant and didnt want to seem dumb asking again. is there a difference? and do i need to set a tone to hear the repeater too or just to get through to it? also is there like... a proper way to call on a repeater or do you just start talking? i dont want to step on anyone