Antenna Guy

QRZ is one that confused me for a while too because on qrz.com the website its kind of a different context but on the air when someone says QRZ? they mean whos calling me, like they heard someone call but didnt catch the callsign. took me an embarassingly long time to figure that out from context lol

yeah i just went through this last year and can confirm the slow it down advice is solid. i also found that just listening a ton helped way more than i expected, like just having cwcom or some practice audio on in the background while doing other stuff. your ear starts picking things up without you even trying. also look up lcwo.net if you havent already, thats what got me to actually passing characters consistently. good luck, its frustrating at first but it does click eventually

hamstudy.org is honestly the best thing out there for this, the app and the website both track which questions you keep getting wrong and kind of focuses on those. just use that and youll be fine. the pool is 426 questions but the actual test is only 35 so you dont need to be perfect on everything. for the math stuff like ohms law just learn the actual formula, its way easier to understand it than try to memorize like 6 different variations of the same question. V=IR and you can rearrange it however you need. took me maybe 3 weeks of casual studying before i felt ready and passed with a 32 out of 35 first try.

so anyway i think i finally landed on a setup that actually works for me for field comms and wanted to share and get some opinions because im sure people here have done this way longer than me been running a KX3 for a while now and i keep flip flopping on antennas. tried the end fed half wave with a 9:1 unun and it works okay but i always feel like im leaving signal on the table especially on 40 when the band is crowded. lately ive been messing with a linked dipole cut for 40/20/17 and honestly for portable stuff it seems way more predictable, easier to match, and the feedpoint on that thing stays happy even when i dont have a perfect inverted V setup going the power situation has been bugging me more though. i was using a 20ah lifepo4 pack and it was fine for a few hours of casual operating but if youre talking actual field comms where youre maybe running nets for 4-5 hours with some traffic, you start watching that percentage drop and get nervous. thinking about adding a small honda eu2200 for longer activations but man those things are heavy and i already have a lot of kit to haul curious what other people do for sustained field ops, not like a SOTA one-shot deal but like multi hour comms duty where you actually need to keep stuff running reliably. do people just bring multiple batteries? run a generator? i dunno, feels like theres no perfect answer here

90ms should honestly be fine for SSB and even CW if youre not doing high speed. ive worked DX through a remote with like 120ms and you just kinda adjust. the decoding issues youre hitting might not actually be the latency, might be more about clock drift or buffer settings on the audio side. RCForb has some audio buffer adjustments burried in the settings that are easy to miss, worth poking around in there if you havent already. dont have experience with the SDR side of things in that specific combo but the allstar linking idea is interesting, ive heard of guys doing EchoLink through remote setups which is a similar kind of double-duty concept. whether its worth the headache depends on how much time you wanna spend on it i guess

congrats on the first one, 4 QSOs is a valid activation so dont be too hard on yourself. the no-tree problem is super common and honestly most dedicated SOTA folks end up going with a vertical on a mast for exactly that reason — a 20 or 31 foot jackite or even just a cheap fiberglass pole from SOTAbeams gets you something you can set up anywhere. the linked dipole on a pole is another option a lot of people swear by. for the spotting and timing thing — try to self-spot about 10-15 minutes before you're ready to actually operate, not right when you're still catching your breath and fiddling with the antenna. there's also a summit-to-summit frequency tradition on certain bands, some folks monitor those. and honestly posting an alert on SOTAwatch the day before makes a huge difference, regular chasers set up reminders and they'll be listening for you. once you get a few under your belt it gets a lot smoother, the first one is always kind of a scramble.

i was confused about this same thing when i first started checking into nets lol. what helped me was just listening for a few weeks before i actually checked in. you kind of absorb the format naturally. the NCS on the tuesday night net i join is super patient and will just gently correct you on the air if you miss something, which honestly is how i learned more than anything. dont be afraid to mess up a little, everyone starts somewhere.

so this has been bugging me for about two weeks now. my ic-7300 was working totally fine and then one day i keyed up on the local 2m net (yeah i know, using the 7300 for 2m via the transverter) and dave k4something said my audio sounded completely muffled, like i was talking through a pillow. checked my mic gain, compression, all the usual stuff on the menu and nothing obvious jumped out at me. swapped the mic to my backup heil pr40 setup and same deal. so its not the mic. pulled up the scope on the radio to look at the waveform and it looks... off? like the highs are just gone. i dunno how to describe it better than that. almost like a low pass filter got engaged except i didnt enable anything like that. i did update the firmware maybe three days before this started but im not sure if thats related or just coincidence. anybody dealt with this on a 7300 or similar? wondering if a cap somewhere on the audio board is going soft or if this is something dumber that im overlooking

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now and honestly been putting off doing this properly for way too long. we had a pretty bad storm roll through last month and the power was out for almost 4 days and I realized my 'emergency setup' was basically just hoping my HT had a charge on it. not great. anyway I picked up a used FT-857D a while back and thats going to be the centerpiece of the kit. got a pelican case that barely fits everything if I pack it just right. right now I have the radio, a 20ah lifepo4 battery with a cheap PWM solar charge controller, some coax, an end fed half wave antenna, and a handful of adapters. threw in a notepad and some pens too because apparently I still write things down like its 1987. what am I forgetting though? I feel like every time I think I have it figured out I read someone elses list and realize I missed something obvious. my main use case would probably be served or ares type activations, maybe some backup comms for our local repeater group if the infrastructure goes down. not trying to do HF DX from a backpack or anything crazy, just solid reliable local and regional coverage. also not sure whether to bother with a separate 2m/70cm mobile or just use the 857 for everything. opinions?

so i've been on HF for about 12 years now and always kind of dismissed EME as something only guys with huge yagi arrays in their backyard could do, but my buddy K7RXT convinced me to try it with my existing 2m setup and honestly it was more accessible than i expected, at least the digital side of it i was running JT65B through WSJT-X with a single 9 element yagi pointed at the moon and about 150 watts from my TS-2000, i managed to decode a few stations including what looked like a EA8 but couldnt complete the QSO before the moon went below my horizon. close though my question is really about where the ceiling is with minimal setups like mine. ive been reading about guys running 4x4 arrays and kilowatts and i get that thats the gold standard but is there a realistic middle ground? like would going to a pair of yagis and a higher efficiency preamp make a meaningful difference or am i still just going to be marginal on completeing contacts? also my current preamp is an older SSB Electronics unit, probably 15 years old, is there a significant jump in performance going to something like an Airspy-era LNA or one of the modern masthead units? the latency of waiting for the moon window is kind of addicting honestly, didnt expect that

yeah im planning on going, my buddy W4RKT usually does a table and i help him out in the morning then wander around after noon when it slows down. thats usually when you get the better deals honestly because guys dont want to pack stuff back up. what are you looking to sell? i might be interested depending on what it is

the cutting board method works really well, ive been using a piece of white hdpe from the kitchen section at walmart for years on my portable dipoles. drill two holes for the wire legs, one in the middle for the feedline, put a drip loop on the coax and some self amalgamating tape over the connector and you're sorted. the SO-239 approach is cleaner but honestly either works fine if you keep water out of the connector. one thing i'd suggest — if you're leaving it up permanently, swap that choc block out sooner rather than later. water gets in those things and you'll have intermittent issues that drive you crazy trying to diagnose. had that happen on a 20m dipole i built years ago and spent a whole afternoon thinking my radio was acting up before i figured out it was a corroded connector at the center.

the listening thing is so underrated and most people just dont do it. ive watched guys at my club literally start calling before they even know where the DX is listening. like they just find the transmit freq and start blasting away. complete waste of time and also just bad operating. one thing that helped me a lot was learning to tail end properly — not just calling right after the QSO ends but actually overlapping with the very last dit or dah of the other stations final exchange. on CW especially that timing is everything. on SSB its a little different and honestly more chaotic, i find CW pileups way easier to crack because theres more structure to them. the split placement thing you mentioned is real. a lot of guys just tune to 5 up because thats what the cluster says and then everyone is stacked on top of each other. moving outside that by even 500 hz can make a huge difference. i also find that on 17 and 15m conditions sometimes do the work for you — if you happen to have a better path at that moment you'll just punch through regardless of technique.

yeah the connector thing is real, i had an N to PL adapter that was just barely finger tight and i was convinced my radio was dying lol. anyway the X50A is a decent antenna but its not magic, the gain numbers on those dual bands are always kind of optimistic in my experience especially on the UHF side. if both your repeaters are in basically the same direction i honestly would just put up a yagi and not overthink it. fixed yagis are so simple and there's basically nothing to go wrong with them. ive got a cheap homemade 4 element on 2m pointed at a hilltop repeater like 60 miles away and it works way better than anything omni ive ever tried for that path.

the 857 will cover VHF/UHF fine for most stuff but honestly i still throw an HT in my kit anyway. mainly because if the main radio goes down for whatever reason you still have comms, and also an HT is just way easier to hand to somebody else if you need help. i use a cheap Baofeng for that role and i dont feel bad if it gets dropped or rained on. for antennas my go-to is a linked dipole on a fiberglass mast, takes me maybe 10 minutes to get up and works really well on 40 and 20 which is usually what i need for regional stuff. i also keep a mag mount dual band antenna for the VHF side of things. one thing a lot of people forget is coax — have more than you think you need and make sure your connectors are solid because loose PL-259 at 2am during an activation is not fun. other stuff that sounds boring but really matters: a notebook and pens (multiple pens, they always disappear), headlamp with extra batteries, a printed copy of local repeater info and any nets you might need to check into, and some kind of waterproofing for the whole kit. i used to skip that stuff and then got caught in the rain at a public service event and learned my lesson pretty fast.

not sure if this helps but there's a guy on github who wrote a whole band decoder specifically for icom radios with CI-V, think the project is called something like ic-band-decoder or similar. i used chunks of his code for my station and it saved me a ton of headaches. handles the debounce and has support for a bunch of different relay configurations. might be worth a search before you go too deep into rolling your own.

im pretty new to all this, just got my general a few months ago and I've been thinking about getting involved with ARES but wasnt sure if I was experienced enough yet. reading this actually makes me feel like maybe jumping in sooner is better even if I dont know everything? I always assumed you had to be some kind of expert operator first before they'd want you involved in emergency comms stuff

yeah i had almost the exact same situation when i put up a 7el yagi for 432. ran LMR240UF because i could fish it easier and the loss wasnt terrible, maybe middle ground between your two options. but 55 feet of RG8X i dunno, i'd probably just try it. 22 miles to a repeater you're not exactly doing EME here haha

i just did this literally last month so maybe my experience is fresh enough to help. i went with a VPN back to the home router (just wireguard, took like an hour to set up) and then run the IC-7300 through its built in USB audio and serial over the network using a couple of small utilities. its not glamorous but im telling you it just works. chased a ZL on 17m last tuesday from my kitchen table so yeah. the SDR remote stuff is cool for monitoring and finding whats open but for actually making contacts i wanted real control of my real radio, not a SDR frontend. your mileage may vary depending on what youre trying to do i guess.

linked dipole on a fiberglass mast is solid, what bands are you cutting it for? i run a similar thing but i've been experimenting with a EFHW lately and honestly the feedline situation is a lot simpler in field conditions. less stuff to fiddle with when you're setting up in the dark or whatever. cant really help much on the generator debate since i mostly do QRP stuff and a 20ah battery lasts me all day but sounds like you got good advice above. one thing i will say is bring more fuel than you think you need if you do bring the honda, altitude and load can really mess with runtime estimates.

honestly i went with a trunk lip mount on my accord and its been fine for two meter FM which is mostly what i use it for. cant really speak to 70cm performance specifically but i havent noticed anything weird. the cable does sometimes creak a little in cold weather where it goes over the lip but thats about it. that said i keep telling myself ill eventually just drill and do it properly. the mag mount is probably still your cleanest option if you move cars a lot or dont want to commit — the scratching thing is real though, had a friend put foam tape under his and it helped but then he had a slightly worse ground and his swr went up a bit. kind of a tradeoff no matter what you do

i was in the same boat not that long ago. the one that tripped me up was QRO, someone told me to go QRO and i thought it was a place lol. it just means increase power, opposite of QRP. also worth knowing QRT which means im shutting down or stop transmitting depending on context. you'll hear that at the end of nets a lot when the net control signs off.

so i finally decided to stop putting it off and just build a simple half wave dipole for 40m. cut both legs to around 33.3 feet each based on the 468/f formula, fed it with some RG-8X i had laying around and a SO-239 connector i pulled off an old radio. hung it up in an inverted V config from a tree in my backyard, apex probably at around 30 feet. the problem is my SWR at 7.1 MHz is reading like 2.8:1 which isnt terrible i guess but i expected to get closer to 1.5 or better. tried trimming a couple inches off each leg and it barely moved. the resonant point seems to be way up around 7.4 or 7.5 which is weird because i feel like i cut it long enough. im using a MFJ-259 to sweep it and the dip is definitely up higher than i want. also not sure if the inverted V configuration is affecting things — i read somewhere that it changes the effective electrical length? anyway just wondering if anyone has dealt with this and whether i should be adding length back on or what

this is making me want to look up what references are near me, ive been wanting to do more field operating but SOTA isnt really an option where i live, everything is pretty flat. didnt realize WWFF had so many categories of references like wildlife refuges and state parks and all that. does it matter what band you focus on or do most people just work whatever they can?

oh man im jealous, i tried getting on 10m last weekend and just couldnt find the right window i guess. caught maybe 20 minutes of it being open to Europe on Saturday morning then it just kind of faded out. i'm still pretty new to all this so i'm learning when to even look for these openings, do you just check the solar flux number every day or is there a better way to know when to tune in