James Wilson48

so ive been wanting to do this for probably two years and last weekend i finally just did it. built a little 40m CW transceiver from a kit — one of those pixie-style things, nothing fancy — and took it out to a picnic table at the state park about 20 minutes from my house. ran it off a 3s lipo i had from an old rc car project and just threw a wire up into a tree with a rock tied to some paracord.
honestly expected to just hear noise and maybe make a fool of myself but i ended up working a guy in ohio and another one down in tennessee, both solid copy, running maybe 500mw. i know thats not impressive to people who do this all the time but for me it was kind of a revelation. like i genuinely understood for the first time why people get so into this mode of operating.
the kit itself was pretty straightforward, only took me an afternoon to put together. i did have one solder bridge that took me forever to find but once i fixed that it fired right up. my only complaint is the frequency drift when it first warms up, takes maybe 5 minutes to settle down. is that normal for these little direct conversion jobs or is there something i can do about it? and also curious what people use for keyers when portable, i was just using my old straight key taped to a piece of wood which worked but felt ridiculous

Log4OM does have a contest module, its called Log4OM contest or something, but i tried it once for a small sprint and it felt kinda clunky compared to dedicated contest loggers. the WSJT-X integration in Log4OM actually works pretty well in my experience, it picks up the QSOs cleanly and the award tracking for DXCC and WAS is genuinely nice to have all in one place
if contesting isnt your main focus i'd probably go Log4OM and just fire up N1MM on those weekends when you want to actually run a contest properly. thats what a few guys at my club do, keep two loggers installed and just ADIF import after the contest into the main log. little bit of extra work but not a big deal

ok so ive been going back and forth on this for a few weeks now and figured id just ask because i keep reading conflicting stuff online. currently running a simple 40m dipole at about 25 feet, fed with RG-8X into an MFJ-949 tuner. works ok, gets me on the air, but my neighbor has a vertical (i think its a Hustler 6BTV or something similar) and he consistently seems to punch through pileups better than i do on 40 and 80.
now i know 25 feet isnt exactly ideal for a 40m dipole — youre supposed to be at like a half wavelength up for it to really sing, which would put me at 66 feet and thats just not happening with my HOA situation. so im wondering if a vertical with a decent radial field would actually outperform my low dipole for DX, or if im just seeing confirmation bias because my neighbor runs more power. he has an IC-7300 and im on a 100w Kenwood so that shouldnt be a huge difference.
has anyone actually done a side by side on this or is it just too situationally dependent to make a general call

so the short version is you dont really NEED all three but a lot of folks use at least two. LoTW is the gold standard for award chasing — DXCC, WAS, all the ARRL awards run through it so if thats something you care about down the road you definitely want LoTW working correctly. the certificate thing is annoying to set up the first time but once its done you kind of forget about it.
eQSL is totally separate and some people swear by it, some ignore it completely. it has its own awards and some operators only confirm there, so its worth having an account even if you dont check it constantly. the thing is LoTW and eQSL dont talk to each other at all so a confirmation on one doesnt count on the other.
paper cards — honestly still very much alive, especially for DX. when a rare station sends you a card its something you keep. i have a whole wall of them. but yeah you dont have to send one to everyone, most people just send back when they receive one, or some folks do bureau cards which is cheaper if you're sending a lot internationally. dont stress about it too much, you'll figure out your own system as you go

ARRL website has a decent list, also if you search for like a Q code reference chart you can print one out. i had the same problem when i started and what actually helped me was just doing a lot of listening before i talked much. after a while your brain just starts to recognize the patterns. also 59 not 5 by 9, the signal report thing is called an RS or RST report, readability and signal strength, so 59 means youre perfectly readable and very strong. on CW theres a third number for tone. most of the time on phone people just say 59 to everyone even when the signal is terrible which is kind of a running joke among hams honestly

okay so ive been trying to get Winlink working for about three weeks now and im at the point where i want to throw the whole thing out the window. quick rundown of what im doing: running Winlink Express on a windows 10 machine, IC-7300 connected via USB, using the built in VARA HF modem. i can see the RMS gateway list just fine and i pick one thats showing green, start the session, it handshakes, and then just... drops. sometimes i get as far as seeing the RMS banner before it disconnects. other times it drops right after the initial connect.
my SNR looks decent, usually sitting around 15-18dB on the IC-7300 display during the attempt. the gateway im usually trying is about 400 miles away which shouldnt be a problem on 40m in the evening. ive tried a few different gateways with similar results. tried bumping VARA down from 500 to 250 and it doesnt seem to make a huge difference.
one thing i noticed is my ALC is jumping around quite a bit. i backed off the power to about 50 watts thinking maybe the gateway doesnt like being hammered with 100 but still same issue. is there something obvious im missing here? also not sure if my PTT timing is off or something, i have it set to the default in Winlink Express. been reading the Winlink documentation and honestly its not super helpful for actual troubleshooting.

so ive been doing some hilltop activations lately mostly on 2m and 70cm and right now im just using a roll up jpole which works fine honestly but i keep wondering if im leaving signal on the table. the sites i go to usually have decent elevation, maybe 800-1100 feet above the surrounding terrain, so theoretically a yagi should do a lot better for working distant stations but then again i mostly just do local nets and occasional FM simplex so i dont know if its worth the extra setup time
the yagi i was looking at is a 5 element dual band from directive systems, seen a few people use those at contests and they seem solid. but the thing is im usually solo and setting up a mast, getting the feedline routed, making sure the thing isnt gonna blow over in the wind — it adds like 20 minutes easy vs just hanging the jpole in a tree
anyone actually done a comparison on the same hilltop with both? like real world not just theoretical gain numbers. curious what the difference actually feels like in terms of who you can reach

congrats on the ticket. okay so the baofeng thing is kind of nuanced -- they're not terrible radios for hitting repeaters and learning the hobby, the main issues are the wide deviation on transmit which can annoy people on certain repeaters, and the programming software is kind of a headache. but plenty of new hams start with them and they're fine.
that said if you can swing the extra money the yaesu ft-65r is a solid step up and honestly not that much more expensive. better audio, better build quality, and yaesu's had their act together for decades. i have one in my bag as a backup and its held up really well. the wouxun stuff is decent too, i had a kg-uvd1p years ago and it worked fine but i havent kept up with their newer stuff so i cant speak to the uv9g specifically.
honestly at your stage any of those will get you on the air and that's what matters. just get something and start talking to people, the gear obsession can wait until you know what you actually want to do in the hobby

lip mount guy here, dont regret it. i put a comet CP-5 on a trunk lip mount on my sedan a couple years back and for hitting local repeaters it does everything i need. yeah its not as clean as an NMO and the ground isnt perfect but it came in like a 7 or 8 db difference at most compared to my buddys NMO setup when we tested back to back on 2m, and that was on a bad day. honestly depends on what your goal is. if you're trying to hit distant repeaters or doing anything weak signal then yeah spring for the NMO. if youre just doing local stuff and dont want to drill into a truck you still owe money on, lip mount is totally reasonable.