Jessica Williams53

the old timestamp thing threw me off too when i started. sometimes a spot will get re-propagated through the network and show up again even if the original was from like 20 minutes ago. drove me crazy at first thinking i was missing openings constantly. you get used to checking the actual spot time vs when it appeared in your feed.

im kind of in the same boat, just started working on CW a few weeks ago. one thing that helped me was just slowing way down and sending individual letters over and over until they sounded right before worrying about actual words. also i read somewhere that you should be able to hear a clean crisp tone on each element — if it sounds smushed the gap between the contacts is probably too small or your sidetone monitor speed doesnt match the keyer speed setting. not sure if thats your issue but worth checking that the speed on the keyer itself matches whatever youre practicing to.

oh man i did my first one about 6 months ago and made the exact same SOTA vs WWFF confusion haha. yeah its 44 for WWFF, i wrote it on a sticky note and put it on my go-bag until i remembered. your 34 still counts for the hunters though which is cool, those park chasers are dedicated and they appreciate every contact. what linked dipole are you running if you dont mind me asking? im still trying to figure out a good portable antenna setup for hiking stuff

so the 10 minute rule is kind of a thing people interpret loosely on nets honestly. technically each station is responsible for IDing, but when net control acknowledges you by call sign that's generally considered sufficient for most practical purposes — though i've seen people debate this endlessly on the forums lol. the real answer is as long as you're IDing when you first transmit and at the end, you're almost certainly fine. the 15-20 minute thing without an ID is probably not great practice but nobody's going to get a notice from the FCC over a local 2m net. just model good behavior yourself, ID clearly when you check in and when you sign off, and don't stress too much about what others are doing. if you ever take a turn as net control you'll start to appreciate how much is going on at once and why sometimes things slip.

nice work man, the first one is always the one where you figure out everything you forgot to bring lol. i always bring way too much paracord now after my second activation where the only thing around was like knee-high brush. also if your fingers are getting cold look into those thin liner gloves, i can still work the paddle with them on no problem

congrats on the general first of all. ok so the vanity system is not quite a lottery but i can see why it looks that way. the FCC runs application windows and the length of the window depends on what class of call you're going after. 1x2 and 2x1 calls have a longer window, something like 30 days i think, and if more than one person applies for the exact same call during that window then yeah it basically becomes a random selection among those applicants. but if you're the only one who applied for that particular callsign you get it pretty much automatically after the window closes. as for the 1x2 question — those are available to extra class only i believe, at least in most call districts. general class can get a 1x3 call which is still pretty clean looking. you'd want to double check the current rules on the arrl vanity call page, they keep a pretty good breakdown of whats available at each license class. the fcc uls site is rough to navigate i agree, a lot of people use a third party site like ae7q dot com which makes it way easier to search available calls and see whats in the queue.

yeah what he said about decoding it yourself first is the right move. i wasted a week once thinking my igate setup was broken and it turned out my callsign had a typo in the config lol. literally one wrong character and aprs.fi just had no idea what to do with it. worth a sanity check on the most obvious stuff before going deep into audio levels and path configs.

Wire gauge shouldnt matter much for receive but for transmit yeah heavier is usually better especially on 80m where you're pushing some current. I use 12awg for anything 40m and below. But honestly sounds more like your trees are the culprit - leaves falling, branches moving, moisture content changing in the wood. I have an inverted V that does the same thing every fall when the oak trees start dropping leaves. Just retune it and dont worry about it too much unless the swr gets really bad

I've been monitoring my own signal with an SDR and notice my SSB transmission extends well beyond the expected 3 kHz bandwidth. An ideal SSB signal shows spectrum of about 70 Hz to 2700 Hz that's rather flat in strength throughout the passband, with no energy outside the passband. At more than 6 kHz separation the distortion energy level should be at least -40 dB compared to the pass band signal. My signal appears to have significant energy at -30 dB up to 8 kHz from center frequency. Running a TS-590SG with built-in processor on level 3, external Behringer compressor, and Shure SM58. This type of spectrum usage is not considerate regarding fellow contesters and could be subject to disqualification. What's the most effective approach to identify and eliminate the source of these spurious emissions? Should I start by bypassing the external processor entirely?

Sounds like your battery wasn't fully charged to begin with, or it's getting old. My 30Ah LiFePO4 usually runs my rig for hours, and most hams report good performance with quality brands like Bioenno that output 13-13.5V in use. What brand battery are you using?