James Brown39

ran almost exactly this setup at a simulated emergency test two summers ago, two rigs going, IC-7300 on HF and a separate dedicated VHF station for served agency traffic. we did the battery route with a 100ah lifepo4 and a 200w panel and honestly on a good sun day it was fine but the second it got cloudy we were watching the state of charge drop way faster than expected. the HF rig alone at moderate power is one thing but when both stations are transmitting with any regularity you're pulling a lot more than most people plan for. for 8 hours of genuine dual-rig ops I'd just take the honda. yes its annoying and you gotta think about where the exhaust is going and keep it away from the operating position, but you know what you're getting. you can always supplement with a battery for the VHF side and keep the generator feeding the HF station and battery charger, best of both worlds kinda. the eu2200i is quiet enough that it doesn't cause problems at most sites ive worked.

ok so ive been going back and forth on this for like three weeks now and im just gonna ask. i have a decent sized backyard, maybe 120 feet across, and im trying to decide whether to put up a 40m dipole or just go with a vertical. currently running a 100w station, mostly interested in ragchewing and maybe some casual contesting down the road. the thing is my yard isnt totally flat and there's a row of pine trees along the back fence which i was thinking i could use to support one end of a dipole. other end would be on a pushup mast maybe 30 feet up. center would be around 25-30 feet. i know thats not ideal height for 40 but its what i've got. the vertical option is appealing because i could put it right in the middle of the yard away from the house and run some radials. but i've heard 40m verticals are pretty noisy on receive compared to a dipole especially in a suburban area. is that actually true or is it one of those things people just repeat without thinking about it

so ive been chasing summits for about 6 months now and finally decided to just do it and activate one myself. going up W4T/SU-017 tomorrow morning, its only a 2 pointer but its close to home and the trail isnt too brutal so figured it was a good one to start with. got my KX2 packed, a 40/20m linked dipole im gonna string up between some trees if i can find a good spot, and a 4ah lipo that should be more than enough for a couple hours. spotted myself ahead of time on SOTAwatch already, set for 10am local which should give me time to get up there and get set up. honestly the thing im most nervous about is the actual operating part — like what if i cant get 4 contacts and dont qualify the summit. i know 4 sounds easy but ive read posts where people said conditions were rough and they were up there for an hour calling CQ with nothing. also not totally sure on the proper way to do the summit-to-summit exchanges if another activator calls me, do i just do a normal QSO or is there specific info i need to log? anyway just wanted to see if anyone had any been-there-done-that advice before i head out

so ive been messing around with remote station control for a while now and i finally got a decent setup running at my parents place since i cant have antennas here at the apartment. been using RemoteHams for the client software and honestly its not bad, the audio latency is manageable on a decent connection but i keep wondering if theres a smarter way to handle the SDR side of things right now im running an IC-7300 over there and the RemoteHams RRC-1258 boxes handle the control link, which works fine for voice and basic digital but i started thinking — what if i added an SDRplay or something similar at the remote end and piped that back separately for a wideband panadapter view while the rig is doing its thing. has anyone tried running a parallel SDR stream alongside the RRC link without the two interfering with each other or eating up all the bandwidth the internet at that location is only like 15-20Mbps up so i have to be realistic about what i can pull back. also im vaguely interested in the internet linking angle, like could i tie this into an Allstar node somehow or is that a completely different rabbit hole. probably overthinking it but figured id ask before i go buying hardware i dont need

so we finally got our county ARES group to run a proper SET last Saturday and honestly it was way more eye-opening than I expected. been doing this hobby for about 12 years and thought I had a pretty good handle on how emergency comms would go but wow, we had some real gaps show up fast. the scenario was a prolonged power outage across three counties, EOC activations, the whole deal. we had maybe 14 operators show up which was actually better turnout than I expected but here's where it got interesting — about a third of them hadnt actually tested their go-kits in over a year. one guy's battery was completely dead, another had a radio that had been dropped at some point and the display was glitchy. nothing catastrophic but exactly the kind of stuff you dont find out about until you need the gear. the other thing that really stood out was net control. we had two people sort of trying to be net control at the same time for the first hour because nobody had clearly been assigned that role ahead of time. message traffic was a mess. we use Winlink for our digital side and that went pretty smoothly actually, the VHF nets had more confusion than anything. anyway curious if other groups do these regularly and what kind of scenarios you've found most useful. we're thinking about doing one that simulates a communications blackout where we have to fall back to HF only and work around it.

so ive been messing with APRS for a few months now and finally got a TNC-Pi running on a Pi 4 with Direwolf and everything seems fine on the RF side — my Baofeng hits the local digi no problem, i can see my packets getting repeated on the RF channel when i monitor with a second radio. but they never show up on aprs.fi or findu or anywhere online. the digipeater is definitely active because other stations are showing up fine on the map. im using WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 path which should be right for my area, and my SSID is set to -9 since im mostly mobile. Direwolf is configured as a TNC passthrough basically, not running its own igate. is that the problem? do i need a separate igate in the area picking me up directly? i thought the digi would handle forwarding to the internet but maybe i have that wrong. the digi owner hasnt responded to my emails so im kind of just guessing at this point.

so this has been driving me nuts for about three weeks now. my 7300 will be running fine, maybe 30 or 40 watts into a dummy load, then suddenly it just drops — like sometimes it goes down to 5 watts for no reason, sometimes it comes back on its own after a few seconds, sometimes i have to cycle power to get it back to normal. no ALC weirdness on the display that i can see, SWR looks fine the whole time. ive swapped the coax between the rig and the dummy load, tried a different power supply (same issue), checked all the connections on the rear panel. i even ran it with the fan off to see if maybe it was a thermal thing triggering something but that didnt seem to change anything. happened both on 40m and 20m so it doesnt appear to be band specific. im thinking maybe a bad solder joint somewhere on the PA board but honestly im a little nervous to start poking around inside a radio i paid this much for. has anyone seen this on a 7300 or something similar? wondering if its worth pulling the board or if i should just send it to icom service first.

I was in the exact same spot about a year ago and ended up going with the FT-65 after way too much research lol. Honestly really happy with it. Battery lasts forever and I've knocked it off my desk a few times with no issues. The menus are a little quirky but you get used to it. Only thing I'll say is if APRS is a real priority for you from the start, you might want to look at something with that built in because adding it externally is kind of a whole extra thing.

so ive been using N1MM pretty much exclusively for the past few years mostly because thats what everyone at the club uses and it made sense to just go with what people could help me with. works fine for contests obviously, its basically the gold standard for that, but outside of contest weekends its kind of clunky for just day to day logging. like i'll work a station on 40m CW and i have to do all this extra stuff to get it logging properly outside of a contest context, or maybe im just not setting it up right. anyway someone mentioned Log4OM at the last club meeting and i downloaded it and messed around with it for a few hours. the interface is way more friendly for general logging, clublog integration seems solid, and the QRZ lookups work great. but i'm worried about giving up N1MM for contests because i dont want to lose all that functionality. does anyone run both? like use Log4OM day to day and then fire up N1MM just for contest weekends? does that get messy with the ADIF imports or do dupes become a problem going back and forth also i run WSJT-X for FT8 and right now its logging directly to N1MM via the UDP port thing which works fine. not sure how Log4OM handles that or if it even does. would appreciate any thoughts from people who actually run this kind of hybrid setup

Welcome to the net world, its actually a lot of fun once you get into it. The ARRL has a net directory on their website that lets you search by band and mode and time zone, thats probably the easiest starting point. For someone on a tech license with a HT or basic VHF setup, look for 2 meter or 70cm FM nets in your region. A lot of them are super friendly to newcomers, you literally just wait for net control to call for check-ins and then give your callsign. Thats really it. Some nets have a specific topic each week and others are just a round table where everyone gets a turn to talk briefly. The special event station thing is a bit different, those aren't usually nets, they're just stations set up to commemorate something and you call them to get a contact in your log and sometimes you can get a certificate or a QSL card. You'd just tune around and listen for them calling CQ or look up their frequency ahead of time on qrz or the special event station calendar. Both are worth doing honestly.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from me (K-4856 if anyone's curious) and honestly it went way smoother than i thought it would. got my 10 contacts in about 35 minutes which felt pretty good for a first timer running 100 watts on 40m with a random wire thrown up in a tree. couple things i ran into that im still not sure about — when i was logging i had a few people come back to me who i couldn't quite copy, like they were there but buried in the noise. do i count those if i got their callsign but not the signal report? i just kinda moved on in the moment but now im second guessing myself. also i noticed some hunters were sending 5nn which obviously wasnt real but i guess thats just the shorthand people use? also wondering if anyone has tips for picking frequencies. i just kind of landed on 7.245 and announced myself and it seemed to work but i saw some people talking about 7.200 being a common spot. is there like an unofficial watering hole for POTA or do you just spin the dial and find a clear spot

yeah the ARRL has a band plan chart that lays it out way better than trying to parse the actual FCC document. just google ARRL band plan and you'll find the pdf. for 40m as a general you got 7.025 to 7.125 for CW and digital stuff and then 7.175 to 7.300 for phone, but extras have a slightly wider chunk on both ends which is why sometimes you hear activity below 7.175 that you cant join in on yet. the main thing people mess up early on is forgetting that even within your allowed frequencies, there are gentlemens agreements about where to operate certain modes. like you wouldnt want to fire up SSB right in the middle of where everyone does digital. its not a rule exactly but you'll hear about it pretty quick if you do it. just stick to the ARRL chart for now and youll be fine, the actual part 97 text is really more for edge cases and enforcement stuff

Traffic nets are definitely a bit more structured and yeah they can feel intimidating at first. Totally fine to check in even if you dont have traffic to pass — most NCS folks will just acknowledge you and move on, you might hear something like "no traffic" listed next to your call. The NTS system has been around forever and the regulars are generally pretty patient with newer folks as long as you follow the format. For something more relaxed, look for a local club net or a ragchew net in your area. A lot of those are just people catching up and they actively want newer hams to check in. The ARRL has a net directory you can search by band and time, thats probably the easiest place to start hunting. Once you find a couple that fit your schedule just lurk for a session or two before checking in, you'll get the rhythm pretty quick. Special event stations are a different animal — those are usually just worked as a contact, you call them, exchange info, sometimes get a QSL or a certificate. Not really net-based most of the time, more like a DX-style operation but usually on easier frequencies.

You'll need to go into LoTW and prepare the application yourself - select the QSOs you want and make payment there. I'd suggest starting with LoTW since it's faster and cheaper. The online fee is about half of the traditional paper application, plus you'll get your certificate sooner!