Michael Moore99

oh man welcome to the addiction, you're not getting out now haha. the ubitx is a solid first build, i did the v5 a few years back and it was a great learning experience even when i screwed up a couple solder joints and had to chase down a buzz on receive for like three weeks before figuring it out. for portable antennas honestly you cant go wrong with an end fed half wave. i made one for around 15 bucks in parts, just a 9:1 unun wound on a ft140-43 toroid, about 66 feet of wire and a short counterpoise. rolls up into almost nothing. i use it with a little 9:1 matchbox that i stuck in an altoids tin which feels appropriately ridiculous for QRP work. throw the wire up over a tree branch and youre basically set for 40 and 20m. the other thing i'd say is get yourself a decent set of cw paddles if you havent already, even if you're running phone right now. QRP and CW just kind of go together naturally, the efficiency argument alone is worth it since you effectively get like 4x the punch compared to ssb at the same power level. some people disagree but i've worked guys in europe from my backyard with 5w cw that i could barely hear on 100w phone.

yeah dont bother with the dots and dashes chart approach, that'll drive you crazy. the thing that actually works is learning by sound from the start, like your brain needs to hear the rhythm and just know the letter without translating it. look up the Koch method, thats what most people recommend and there are free programs built around it. LCWO dot net is the one i used, its free and you just work through letters one at a time at full speed instead of learning slow and trying to speed up later which almost never works. seriously the slow speed thing is a trap. for ragchewing youll want to get your copying speed up to at least 10-12 wpm before it stops being exhausting, but honestly even at 5 wpm you can find patient operators on 40m who will slow down for you. just takes time, like months not weeks, but its not as hard as people make it sound once you stop overthinking the chart stuff

yeah the conceptual part you described is basically right - radio to RMS to CMS, and CMS is where your messages actually live until you or whoever youre sending to picks them up. the gateway does need to be online and actively running to respond, and the map in Winlink Express can lag behind a bit on showing which ones are actually active. theres a last heard timestamp if you dig into the gateway properties, i usually look for anything that checked in within the last hour or two before i bother trying. the mode thing is important and you got that right to ask about it. you absolutely need to match the mode - if the gateway is advertising VARA HF you need to be in a VARA HF session in Express, not Winmor. VARA HF is what most people run now since Winmor got deprecated essentially. the calibration on the Signalink matters a lot for VARA, theres a built in calibration tool in the VARA software, run that first with the IC-718 in USB mode and get your drive level set so youre not overdriving. too much audio and youll just get garbage back or no decode at all. the FT8 levels might actually be close but VARA is a little more picky in my experience. one other thing - check your frequency offset. 14.110 is a common Winlink frequency but the gateway might be on 14.110.00 center and you need to make sure your dial frequency and the offset in VARA are lining up correctly. the software should handle this but worth double checking.

yeah the buddipole vs wire thing is real. i've had buddipoles flop over in wind at the worst possible moment during a drill and it just looks bad. for a semi-permanent field site even a simple inverted v on a 31ft jackite pole is going to outperform it and take like 10 minutes to set up. just my two cents on that part. on the generator question i honestly dont think you need to choose, run the lifepo4 as your primary and keep the honda staged. if you size the battery bank right youll probably never touch it but it's there. the eu2200i is quiet enough that if you do need to run it it wont kill everyone around you.

just chiming in because im basically in the same boat as you, been on CW about 5 months and still feel like a disaster most days. one thing that actually helped me recently was the G4FON koch trainer software — its free and you can set it up farnsworth style. i do a session every morning before work and i think im finally starting to hear letters instead of counting dots and dashes if that makes sense. also i switched to mode A on my keyer after reading that its a bit more forgiving for beginners even though everyone seems to prefer mode B eventually. might be worth trying if you havent already.

path looks fine for most areas, WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is what most people run. first thing id check is whether your audio levels are set right — the TM-D710G has a separate data band setting and if the deviation is off the packets might be transmitting but just getting rejected by igates or not decoded properly. there's a setting in the menu somewhere for the packet audio level, i forget the exact menu number but it's in the TNC section. also double check that you have the correct band selected as the TNC band. the 710 can do crossband stuff and sometimes people accidentally have the TNC bound to band A when they think its band B or whatever. had that exact problem myself when i first set mine up, drove around for an hour before i figured it out

im in kind of the same boat actually, running a gp-9 and it definately helped over my old rubber duck situation but i dont have hilly terrain so cant say if thatd be your problem. one thing i did notice is my feedline was limiting me more than i thought, had like 40 feet of rg-8x and swapping to lmr-400 made a noticeable difference on receive at least. might be worth checking what youre running before spending money on a new antenna

ive had mine for about three weeks now and honestly the remote head is even better than i expected. ran the cable through the wall into the next room and it works great, very clean setup. coming from a 7300 the jump in receive performance is noticeable especially on crowded bands, 40 meters at night is a lot more manageable. the learning curve on the menus is real though, took me a good weekend to feel comfortable with everything. totally worth it if you can swing it financially but yeah its not a casual purchase and yes 10 meters has been crazy good, worked into europe almost every morning last week just running 50 watts. its been a long time since the band felt like this and i keep telling people at our club to just try it, half of them got licensed in the solar minimum years and have never really seen 10 open up like this

so i've been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about CQ WW like its this massive deal and honestly i had no idea what i was getting into until i turned on the radio last october during the SSB weekend just to see what the bands sounded like. absolutely insane. wall to wall signals on 20 and 15, stations calling CQ contest every few seconds, pile-ups everywhere. i just listened for like an hour with my jaw on the floor. anyway i want to actually participate this year instead of just watching. i have a pretty modest setup, just a dipole up about 25 feet and a 100 watt HF rig, nothing special. is it even worth trying to make contacts or will i just get stomped by the big gun stations running kilowatts with yagis? i also noticed there's both a SSB and CW weekend, i cant do CW at all yet so i'd be doing SSB. any advice on what to do first time around, like when to operate or how to work the exchange and stuff? also while im at it -- is ARRL Field Day kind of similar in feel? i saw a local club is doing a setup in a park next june and they invited new hams to come participate which seems fun. wondering if these events are totally different vibes or more or less the same energy.

so i just passed my general last month and got my sequential call which is fine but its kind of a mouthful and i was looking into the vanity call process and honestly the FCC website doesnt make it super clear to me how it all works. like i keep reading that there's a filing window and if multiple people apply for the same call during that window it goes to some kind of lottery? or is it whoever files first wins? also i noticed some calls that show as available on the AE7Q lookup site but when i try to apply through the ULS it acts weird. not sure if im doing something wrong or if those calls arent actually available even though the site says they are. my buddy who's been licensed since the 80s told me to just wait and be patient but i kind of want to understand how the system actually works before i do anything any help appreciated, this stuff feels more complicated than the actual license exam lol

okay so SOTA and contesting are definitely two different animals even though there's some overlap. SOTA is Summits on the Air, you either hike up a summit and activate it or you chase people who are doing that from home. there are points involved and a whole log system but its more of a program than a contest in the traditional sense. still a blast though and worth getting into separately. for actual contesting with your setup i'd honestly say start with something like the ARRL Sweepstakes or even one of the state QSO parties before you dive into CQ WW. CQ WW in october/november is massive, like the biggest hf contest of the year, and while you absolutely can participate as a newcomer it can feel overwhelming when you first tune across 20 meters and every single frequency has someone on it. a state QSO party is way more relaxed and you can actually have little conversations sometimes. that said dont let me talk you out of CQ WW either, sometimes just throwing yourself in is the best way to learn your IC-7300 and dipole will do fine, i've seen guys work a hundred countries in CQ WW with way less than that

yeah what he said about the inverted-V impedance thing is real, i built basically the same antenna last spring and spent two weekends trimming wire before someone told me that. ended up around 50 ohm when i got the angle right on the legs, somewhere around 120 degrees between them i think. your height is also gonna affect it more than people admit, ground reflections and all that. one random thing — what kind of center insulator did you make exactly? i tried the PVC thing and had some issues with water getting into the drilled holes and causing weird losses in damp weather. eventually just bought one of those cheap egg insulators for the ends and used a SO-239 chassis mount for the feedpoint. way less headache.

i'd double check the PA bias adjustment before pulling anything apart, sometimes these drift over time especially if the rig has been running warm. there's a trimmer on the PA board and icom has a procedure in the service manual for resetting it. the service manual for the 7300 is floating around online if you dont have it. wouldnt take more than 20 minutes to check and might save you from a bigger teardown. also worth making sure your supply voltage is solid under load on 40m, a marginal supply can do weird stuff like this where one band hits the protection circuit threshold before others do just because of how the matching works.

yeah that's almost definitely alternator whine, classic symptom when the pitch changes with engine RPM. the ground to the dash bolt is probably your culprit honestly. those points under the dash are usually not great for RF ground and you can get all kinds of noise coupling in from the vehicle electronics. what i'd try first is running a dedicated ground wire from the radio chassis directly to the battery negative, same as you did with the positive. keep both runs together and as short as practical. if that doesnt fully fix it you might need a ferrite choke on the power leads or even an inline noise filter, but try the ground first because that's usually 90% of the problem. also worth checking that your coax shield has a solid ground path too — mag mounts can be iffy on that depending on the truck's paint and contact surface.

so i've been wanting to get into ham radio for a while now and finally decided to just go for it and take the technician exam. i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website i think, or maybe it was hamstudy.org, i forget. anyway there's like 400 something questions and i dont even know where to start. a friend told me to just memorize the answers without worrying about understanding them and another person said thats a terrible idea and you should actually learn the material. im kind of leaning toward just drilling the questions because i work a lot and dont have a ton of time but i also dont want to feel completely lost once i actually get on the air. does anyone have advice on what actually worked for them? i have like 3 weeks before the exam date

for the antenna side, linked dipole is solid for 40/80 but make sure you actually have the height to make 80 work at that site, a low 80m dipole is gonna be mostly NVIS which might actually be fine for in-state contacts but if the state net is 300+ miles out youll want it as high as you can get it. also whatever masts you bring, practice setting them up alone or with one person before the exercise because it always takes longer than you think and exercieses have a way of starting before youre ready lol

yeah i had almost the exact same thing happen with mine last spring. ended up being that my coax had a nick in the outer jacket right near the connector and it was throwing the readings off a little. probably not your issue but worth looking at the feedline too and not just the antenna itself. also 30 feet apex on 40m inverted-v is kinda low, the antenna wants to be higher, radiation angle is gonna be pretty steep which isnt ideal for DX but for local and regional stuff it works fine

yeah the baofeng thing is a non issue just bring it and do the job, ive seen people get way too hung up on gear when the real skill is just being reliable and showing up. one thing though -- make sure your ICS paperwork is at least somewhat familiar to you, like the 214 activity log especially. some activations they want you filling those out and its a bit awkward if you've never seen one before. your EC probably has templates, worth asking before tomorrow if you get a chance

yeah it takes a while honestly. the ones you'll actually hear all the time on HF are pretty manageable once you get used to them. QRM is man-made interference, like someone else's signal stepping on yours, and QSB is when your signal is fading in and out — so fading basically. QRN is natural static, like from thunderstorms. QRP means low power operation, you'll hear that one constantly. QSY means changing frequency. QRZ is asking who's calling, you'll hear that after a CQ a lot. and yeah 73 just means best regards, its been around forever. OM is old man which sounds rude but its just how guys refer to each other, YL is young lady. dont overthink it, after a few weeks on the air the common ones just click into place.

yeah im going, already got my table reserved actually. bringing a bunch of old coax, some connectors, and a MFJ antenna tuner i never use. prices are always weird at these things — guys either want top dollar for junk or practically give away good stuff. never know what youre gonna find

yeah im planning on going, my buddy Dave from the repeater group said the club that runs it is trying to get more tables this year. apparently they had a waiting list for vendor spots so hopefully more stuff to dig through. I always end up spending way more than i planned at these things lol. bring cash, the guys at the back tables never take cards

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i mostly do 2m FM around my area, pretty casual stuff. one thing that kind of confuses me is when people use phonetics and when they just say the letter. like sometimes ill hear someone just say their callsign straight out like W4AB or whatever and other times people go full november foxtrot and everything. is there a rule for this or is it just like a feel thing based on conditions also i noticed on some of the more crowded repeaters nobody really does phonetics at all during normal conversation but then during nets they go full NATO. is that just a net thing or am i missing something about when youre supposed to use them

so ive been doing CW for about 4 months now and i passed my extra so the license isnt the issue, its my actual sending that sounds terrible. im using an old Bencher BY-1 that i picked up at a hamfest and i think maybe the tension or the gap isnt set right? i dont even really know what the gap is supposed to feel like honestly. when i listen back to recordings of myself on the radio i sound like im sending through mud, letters kind of bleed together and my dits especially sound short or clipped sometimes. im running it through a Winkeyer USB into the computer and also directly into my 590sg. same problem both ways so i dont think its the keyer settings although i havent really dug into the weight setting much. been running about 18 wpm which i thought was reasonable but maybe thats too fast for where im at. anyone been through this and figured it out?