James Brown39

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

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.

yeah the digital modes thing really did change everything for EME, ive been doing it for a couple years now on 2m and occasionally dipping into 70cm. your station sounds like it's in the right ballpark honestly. i started with a single long yagi and made my first contact inside the first weekend of trying, granted it was with a well equipped station on the other end but still it counted. one thing nobody told me that i wish i'd known — the Doppler shift on EME is not trivial, especially on 2m and higher. you need software that handles that automatically or you'll spend half your time confused about why you cant decode anything. most of the JT65 setups handle it but double check your workflow before youre out there at 2am wondering whats wrong.

dont bother with the chart thing, seriously, that was my first mistake too. you end up just counting which slows everything down and then you have to basically unlearn it later which is annoying. i use an app called Morse-It and just do a few minutes here and there, like on my lunch break or whatever. im still not great honestly, maybe 10wpm on a good day copying, but its way more than i could do six months ago so something is working i guess oh also there are some youtube videos where guys just send code at various speeds and you can try to copy along, some of them are specifically for beginners. i forget the channel names but if you search something like 'CW practice slow morse' you'll find a few. one thing nobody told me is that sending is actually kind of easier to start with than receiving, so getting a straight key and just playing around with sending letters helps your brain connect the sound to the letter faster for some reason. at least it did for me

i have the ftm-400xdr and the audio is actually pretty decent, louder than i expected. that said i do have an external speaker running off it which helps a ton in the car — like even a cheap five dollar speaker from a hamfest made a noticeable difference. if audio is a concern just factor in a ext speaker and youre probably fine with either radio. the touchscreen on mine takes some getting used to while driving, not gonna lie. gloves are basically impossible with it in winter. just something to keep in mind if you live somewhere cold

so anyway after probably three weekends of messing around with this i finally got my FTM-400 installed in the truck the way i want it and figured id share what i ran into since i saw a few other threads asking similar stuff. biggest thing was the power cable routing. i ran it directly to the battery like everyone says to do and that alone fixed the noise issues i was getting through the speaker when the engine was running. had it hooked to the fuse box under the dash before and man it was awful, could hear the alternator whine clear as day every time i revved it up. direct to battery with the 40amp fuse close to the terminal and all that went away. the other thing that took me forever was the antenna. i went with a NMO mount through the roof which i was honestly terrified to do but its so much cleaner than the mag mount i was using before. signal reports are noticeably better and the mag mount was scratching the roof anyway so im glad i just committed and did it. used a Tram 1185 for now, might upgrade later but its doing fine for hitting the local repeaters. control head is mounted up near the rearview with the RAM mount system. takes a little getting used to having the head separate from the main body but once you get used to it its really nice. anyway if anyone is thinking about doing a similar install and has questions feel free to ask, still learning myself but i went through enough headaches that i might save someone some time.

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

honest take — SO2R is genuinely transformative for rates but the learning curve is steep and the setup cost is real. i ran single radio for years and made the jump about 4 years ago and it took me probably 6 months of regular contesting before i stopped making dumb mistakes like transmitting on the wrong radio or losing my run frequency because i wasnt managing the second VFO right. the biggest thing nobody talks about is the station engineering side. you need serious isolation between your two transmit paths or youll either blow up a front end or just have so much desense that radio 2 is useless. i run a pair of K3s with the YCCC SO2R box and an Acom 1010 on one side and a Juma PA on the other, plus SteppIR and a wire for low bands. the bandpass filters are absolutely not optional, i tried running without them once during a test and it was a disaster. that said if youre at 80-100/hr and not trying to top the board, honestly just focus on rate optimization on a single radio first. learn to tail-end, work your S&P more efficiently, know when to run vs. search and pounce based on band conditions, all that stuff will get you another 15-20% before you ever need to think about a second radio.

I'm having trouble getting my TNC-X clone to work properly with Direwolf on a Raspberry Pi 4. When I power cycle the TNC, I see several lines of initialization text, but after doing an alt-SETUP-TNC command to initialize the TNC parameters, packets aren't decoding correctly. The TNC seems to receive data (DCD light flashes), but Direwolf isn't seeing valid KISS frames. I've verified the serial connection at 9600 baud and tried both hardware and software flow control settings. I've checked that no other monitoring features are inserting extra data into packets, and added custom parameters to the InitTAPR.TNC file. Has anyone successfully configured this combination? I'm wondering if there's a specific KISS parameter I'm missing or if the TNC-X firmware needs updating for proper Direwolf compatibility.

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.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually so following this thread. one thing i added to mine that seemed obvious after the fact was a proper power distribution strip -- like a West Mountain RIGrunner or similar -- instead of just daisy chaining stuff off the battery terminals. keeps things cleaner and you can see whats drawing what. probably not the most exciting advice but yeah. also dont forget a way to charge your phone. sounds dumb but in an actual emergency your phone is still going to be how you communicate with family and get situational awareness and it'll be dead if you havent thought about it. i just have a small USB charger wired into the power bus.

yeah this trips up a lot of new generals, dont feel bad. so the short version is the FCC part 97 rules are what you legally have to follow, the ARRL band plan is more like a gentlemens agreement on top of that to keep things organized. you cant get your ticket pulled for violating the band plan but you'll definitely get yelled at on the air lol. for 40m SSB as a general your FCC allocation starts at 7.175 MHz and goes up to 7.300. the band edge thing is a real concern because your signal has a certain bandwidth and if you're transmitting on say 7.299 your upper sideband signal is actually spreading above 7.300 which is outside your allocation. most people say stay at least 3 kHz inside the edge to be safe, so like dont go above 7.297 or so. some rigs also drift a little especially when theyre warming up so that's another reason to give yourself some margin. the 7.175 lower edge matters too, below that is extra class only so you dont want to be transmitting there either. hope that clears it up a bit

I've been using the QRV Ham Radio Multitool and love it! You can specify bands and DXCC entities of interest, then get notified when they appear in your spots with customizable sensitivity thresholds. Perfect for rare DX hunting.

Finally bit the bullet and ordered the HYS TC-YG08UV dual-band Yagi after reading good things about 9.5/11.5dBi gain figures. Got it mounted on a 20ft mast, but I'm seeing some strange behavior. SWR shows acceptable at 1.8:1 on 2m but jumps to 2.3:1 on 70cm when the boom is pointed north-south. When rotated 90 degrees east-west, both bands drop to under 1.5:1. Has anyone experienced directional SWR variation with these Chinese Yagis? The element mounting screws were indeed tough to tighten as advertised - took considerable effort but everything seems mechanically solid.

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