David Miller

so ive been trying to get winlink working for a couple weeks now and i keep hitting walls. my basic setup is a IC-7300 feeding into a signalink USB for the audio interface, running vara HF on the PC. i can see the waterfall moving when i key up and the audio levels look reasonable in vara, but i cant seem to actually complete a session with any of the RMS gateways i try. what happens is vara shows it connecting, sometimes it even shows a partial handshake i think, but then it just drops and winlink express gives me a timed out error. ive tried like 6 different gateway frequencies from the RMS list and same thing every time. the signal gets out, my buddy a few miles away can hear me on the frequency so its not a TX issue. wondering if its something with my vara registration or maybe the RMS stations themselves are just picky about signal quality. anybody been through this and figured it out?

yeah same boat here not too long ago. one thing nobody told me that actually helped a ton was just listening to a lot of CW, like actually a lot. i had W1AW practice sessions on in the background while doing other stuff and eventually the rhythm just kind of sinks in and you start to hear when your own sending is off. also koch method if you havent tried it — theres a free app called lcwo.net that i used and it genuinely works even though it feels impossible the first week or two

i was confused about the same thing when i upgraded honestly. what helped me was just downloading the ARRL band plan pdf and keeping it open while i was getting started. took me a while to realize the band plan and the actual regulations are two different documents lol. i still kind of just avoid anything that feels like it's near the edge tbh, easier than trying to do the math on SSB bandwidth in my head

so ive been a General for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the Amateur Extra. like i passed the General no problem but when i looked at the Extra question pool a while back some of that math made my head spin a bit. impedance matching, filter theory, all that stuff. i did okay in school with math but that was a long time ago and im a little rusty. mostly i want the Extra for the HF privileges, theres a few spots on 75 and 40 that i cant use right now and it bugs me when im trying to join a net and the frequency is just outside my range. also just feels like i should finish what i started you know? anyone been in this situation and actually gone through with it, was the extra theory as rough as it looks or does it kind of click once you study for a while?

yeah the northeast has some decent ones, depends on the state really. i've done a bunch in the Catskills and some of the New England ones and honestly the views make it worth it even if the activation itself is uneventful. the linked dipole is a solid choice, i keep telling people to skip the end-fed transformer nonsense when they're starting out but nobody listens lol the cold thing is real btw. i started keeping a pair of thin liner gloves specifically for operating, still awkward but way better. also get the sotawatch alerts set up ahead of time if you can, self spotting on the summit is always a crapshoot with the signal

im also pretty new to all this and just ordered a pixie kit which i know isnt quite the same thing but reading about your build is making me more excited to try. did you have any previous soldering experience or did you kind of just figure it out as you went

I went last year for the first time and honestly didnt know what to expect but it was pretty cool. felt a little overwhelmed at how much junk there was to look through but in a good way I guess. didnt buy anything but got my ticket signed off for a contact which counted toward something my club was doing. might go again if I can get the weekend off work

dont stress about it, the technician exam really isnt that bad. no morse code required anymore, hasnt been for years. the test is 35 questions and you need to get 26 right, and the best part is the entire question pool is public so you already know every possible question that could show up before you even sit down. honestly the easiest way to do it is just go to hamstudy.org and start running through practice questions every day. like 20-30 minutes a day for a couple weeks and most people pass no problem. there is some basic math, mostly ohms law stuff, but the site kind of walks you through it and after a few repetitions it clicks. i studied for maybe 10 days before my first exam session and got a 32 out of 35. the ARRL handbook is great but its way more than you need just to pass the tech exam, id save that for later once you actually have your ticket and want to go deeper. find a local club too if you can, they usually host exam sessions and sometimes do free study nights. your neighbor probably knows where the nearest club meets.

so ive been running a trapped vertical for a few years now and honestly it was fine but i always felt like i was leaving something on the table, especially on 40 where it just never seemed to perform as well as guys running dipoles. anyway i finally had a free weekend and put up a fan dipole — three separate dipoles all fed from the same feedpoint, cut for 40, 20, and 15 meters. ran about 60 feet of RG-8X down to the shack. the interaction between the elements is definitely a real thing you have to deal with. my 40m legs came in a bit long after i put the other elements up, which makes sense because of coupling, so if youre doing this expect to do some trimming after everything is in the air. i ended up with the elements spread out at maybe 20-25 degrees from each other which seems to help keep the interaction manageable. overall swr is well under 2:1 on all three bands without a tuner which is kind of amazing compared to the vertical. noise floor seems lower too which i wasnt really expecting. on 20 especially the difference is pretty noticeable, im hearing stations i would have completely missed before. havent done any serious A/B comparison but subjectively its a big improvement for basically the cost of some wire and a few hours of work. anyone else running a fan dipole and have tips on dealing with the element interaction thing? and has anyone tried adding a 10m pair to one of these without everything going sideways?

so i've been messing with this for about three weeks now and im at the point where it works maybe 60% of the time which is better than zero but still frustrating. running Winlink Express on a windows 10 box, got a Signalink USB going into my IC-7300, using Vara HF for the modem side of things. i can connect to the RMS gateways just fine when conditions are decent, the handshake goes through, messages go out, but then randomly mid-session it just drops and logs something vague about a protocol timeout. i spent a lot of time going through the gateway list and sorting by distance, figured id try the closest ones first. theres a couple within maybe 300 miles that i can usually hit on 40m no problem. but the timeout thing happens with pretty much all of them so im thinking its not a gateway-specific issue. maybe something with my audio levels? i went through the VARA calibration thing and got it green across the board but who knows. also kinda confused about the message handling side of things. like once a message goes out through the RMS and into the winlink network, how long does it actually sit there before it expires? i sent a test message to my own callsign and it showed up like 4 days later when i finally connected again, so clearly theres some storage happening but i dont really understand the backend of it.

congrats on the first activation, 14 contacts is actually totally fine for WWFF — the minimum is 44 for a full activation but you can still submit the log and it counts as a partial, and the reference still gets credit toward chasers hunting it. some of the less-activated references only ever see partial logs so dont worry about it too much, just get out there again and you'll hit 44 easier than you think once you get the hang of pouncing chasers on parksnpeaks or the WWFF logger. for the log upload just head to wwff.co and create an account if you havent, then you can upload an ADIF directly. most logging programs spit out a standard ADIF that works fine, i use Log4OM and never had an issue. the signal report thing doesnt matter, just needs callsign, time, band and mode really. the website is a bit clunky but you get used to it

so ive been playing around with cluster spotting for a few months now and i think i finally have a decent workflow but wanted to see if anyone else does something similar or has tips to make it better basically i have DXwatch open on my second monitor and when something interesting pops up i tab over to QRZ to look up the callsign, check the country, see if its a new one for me, then sometimes i'll also check DX maps just to see propagation because if the band conditions are garbage i dont even bother running across the room to the rig the thing i cant quite figure out is the filtering on dxwatch — like i know you can filter by band and mode but sometimes spots come through that are clearly dupes or the dx station has already gone QRT and nobody updated the cluster. is there a way to know which spots are actually fresh? i feel like im chasing ghosts half the time also tried the QRZ logbook integration thing and its pretty handy for the DXCC tracking but it feels a little slow sometimes, not sure if thats my connection or the site itself. anyway curious what tools other people are using day to day for this stuff

the isolation thing is real and people underestimate it. i blew a preamp once because i didnt have the sequencing right and keyed up while the other radio was still receiving on a shared antenna. just something to keep in mind if you do go down that road, the interlock isnt optional its just the price of admission for running two radios simultaneously. for what its worth i run SO2R in the big contests but i built up to it over like three years. started exactly where you are, second radio just for S&P listening, then started transmitting on it for mults only, then eventually got comfortable enough to do real exchange SO2R on slow band conditions. your 130/hr on a good run will absolutely go up once you stop losing time waiting for the pile to clear and just flip over and work someone else. but yeah its not a weekend project.

Congrats on the first activation, getting that first one done is honestly the hardest part. 10 contacts in 45 minutes is totally respectable for a first go, dont be too hard on yourself. For time of day, i generally try to get on the air by 9 or 10am local if im doing 40m, the morning greyline can be really good and you get the east coast hunters before they wander off. Midday on 40 in summer is rough because the skip gets long and you kind of fall into a dead zone where you're too far for local contacts and not far enough for the big DX stations to bother. Some activators switch to 20m around midday and that can really open things up, especially if you want spots from hunters across the country. Also check out the POTA spotting page before you go out, you can self-spot from your phone once you're on frequency and that makes a huge difference. Seriously the pile up starts almost immediately once you're spotted. Just have your logging sorted before you key up or it gets chaotic fast, ask me how i know lol.

I went 7300 about 18 months ago coming from an older Kenwood and the waterfall alone made it worth it for me, but I do a lot of casual band-watching so that makes sense for my situation. For straight SSB ragchewing though? Probably not a huge deal. The 590SG receiver is no joke, Kenwood did that radio right.