David Miller

the udp thing the other guy mentioned is definitely the way to go with wsjt-x, once you get that set up you stop thinking about it. pretty sure log4om has a guide on their site for it, or there was a youtube walkthrough i found a while back that was pretty clear. i dont do a ton of contesting so cant really comment on that part but for general use log4om has been really good to me. the award tracking alone is worth it if you're chasing anything seriously

so ive been a licensed ham for about 6 years now and mostly do HF stuff, some 2m SSB when conditions are good, but ive always been kind of obsessed with the idea of EME. bouncing signals off the moon just sounds insane to me and i want to try it before i get too old to climb towers lol the thing is i dont really know where to start in terms of gear. ive seen people say you need a massive yagi array and a kilowatt and a really low noise preamp and all this stuff, but then i also see people talking about JT65 and working EME with like a single yagi? which is it, is there a realistic minimum setup or are those single yagi guys just super lucky right now i have an IC-9700 which i know is decent for weak signal work, and i have a 9 element M2 yagi thats mostly used for satellite. feedline is about 40 feet of LMR-400. is any of that usable as a starting point or am i basically starting from scratch for EME any input from people actually doing this would be great, im not in a hurry just trying to understand the scope of what im looking at

I had QRZ XML errors too but the developer responded within hours with a simple fix - don't use special characters in your QRZ password. Excellent support on that app!

1.4:1 is totally fine, dont stress about that. i built a very similar setup for 40 and 20 last spring and mine came in around 1.6 and its been working great. the inverted V does detune slightly compared to a flat top because the legs arent horizontal so your effective electrical length changes a bit, but at 1.4 youre well within what any modern rig will handle without complaining. the feedpoint connector thing — i did the same lazy tape job on my first one and it lasted about one winter before i had to redo it. so yeah probably worth doing it properly with the SO-239 plate. i used a bit of HDPE cutting board from the dollar store and it cost basically nothing and looks way more legit

So ive been hunting parks for about three months now and finally decided to stop being a wimp and do my first activation at a state park about 20 minutes from my house, K-2945 for anyone curious. Planning to run my KX2 with a 40m EFHW thrown up in a tree, should have decent elevation based on what I remember from hiking there last fall. My main worry is just not making enough contacts — I know you only need 10 for a valid activation but what if nobody hears me or I cant figure out where to spot myself. I set up an account on pota.app last week and did a test spot from home just to make sure it worked. Also not sure whether to start on 40 or try 20 first, ill probably get there around 10am local time so propagation should be decent on both I think. Any tips from folks whove done a bunch of these would be great. Not nervous exactly just... you know how it is before you do something new.

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the last storm knocked out power for three days in our area i finally got off my butt and actually assembled something resembling a go-kit. i want to share what i did but also genuinely want feedback because im not sure i thought through all of it. started with an old Pelican case i had sitting in the garage, threw in my Yaesu FT-891 which i know is maybe overkill for a lot of people but i already owned it and it covers HF so i figured why not. got a LiFePO4 battery from bioenno, the 20ah one, with a PWRcheck so i can monitor voltage. added some coax, a roll of wire for a field expedient antenna, my logging notebook, a few pens, a laminated copy of the ARES net frequencies for our county, and some velcro to keep things from rattling around. what i did NOT think about until literally yesterday is that i have no way to actually charge the battery if im deployed for more than a day. i dont have a solar panel set up with it and i just kind of assumed i'd... figure it out i guess. also realized my coax connectors are all PL-259 but i dont have an adapter for the SO-239 on the radio and the BNC stuff i sometimes use. so thats a mess waiting to happen. anyway if anyone has done this longer than me and wants to tell me what i missed or what turned out to be useless in practice that would be great. i feel like i overthought some stuff and completely spaced on other obvious things.

i was in the same boat as you last year - mostly 2m fm stuff. took my general in march and honestly haven't used it much yet because i dont have an hf rig. but now that i have the privileges i'm saving up for a used ic-7300 or something. the exam really wasnt that hard, just memorize the question pool like you did for tech. good to have the license even if you don't use it right away

ok so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out where i can actually operate on 40 meters. i looked up the band plan online but now im more confused than before because theres the FCC allocation, then theres the ARRL band plan, and they dont seem to match up exactly? like the FCC says i can go down to 7.175 for phone but some people are saying dont get too close to the band edges and i dont really understand why also whats the deal with 7.125 to 7.175, i saw something about that being shared or something. sorry if this is a dumb question im still figuring all this out

So i've been running a Yaesu FTM-400 in my truck for about 3 months now and the TX side of things is great, people say the audio sounds clean and i'm getting into all the local repeaters no problem. But man the receive is driving me nuts. There's this kind of buzzy hash noise that follows the engine RPM — like it goes up and down with the throttle. It's worse on UHF than VHF for some reason. I ran the power leads direct to the battery with an inline fuse and everything, the antenna is a NMO mount on the roof. The coax is RG-58 that came with the antenna kit. I dunno if thats the issue or if its something with the alternator. Truck is a 2019 F150 if that matters. Anyone dealt with this before?

Just got my General license and want to try the linear transponder satellites like OSCAR satellites that carry a linear transponder for two-way communications in real time. LEO satellites often have FM cross-band repeaters or linear transponders. FM satellites are great for beginners, while linear transponders allow several people to make contacts at once. I have an IC-9700 and basic VHF/UHF yagis. What's the best tracking software for a beginner? Linear birds utilize a transponder, which provides anywhere from 20-50 KHz of bandwidth to use. This means multiple people can make contacts through a linear satellite simultaneously.

Don't let SOTA scare you - even a 150m hill satisfies the minimum requirements. Since you're operating from high locations, VHF/UHF handhelds work great, making it perfect for Techs. Both have their merits - try POTA first, then graduate to SOTA when you're ready for more adventure.

so ive been putting off building my own dipole for like two years now because i kept telling myself id just buy something eventually but yeah that never happened so last weekend i finally just did it. cut two legs of 14 gauge solid copper wire for 40m, roughly 33.5 feet each, used a choc block connector as a cheap center insulator (i know i know) and hung it inverted-v style off my chimney about 25 feet at the apex. fed it with about 40 feet of RG-8X i had lying around. hooked up the analyzer and im getting like 1.8:1 SWR at around 7.150 which honestly isnt terrible but the resonant dip is sitting around 7.080 and i wanted it closer to 7.2 for SSB. so do i just trim both legs equally? or is there a smarter way to do this. also the feedpoint connection is just the wires twisted and shoved into the choc block with the coax center and shield — should i be worried about that long term or is it fine for now also the inverted-v configuration, does the angle of the legs affect resonant frequency much? mine are at maybe 120 degrees included angle roughly

welcome to the hobby, first off. okay so the baofeng thing — its a perfectly fine radio to learn on, nobody is going to judge you for it, but the programming can be a real headache if youre not comfortable with computers and chirp software. the build quality is what it is. for $150 though you could stretch to something like a Yaesu FT-65 or maybe a used FT-60 which is basically a tank and has been around forever for good reason. the audio is noticeably better and the receiver is way more selective so you wont get weird interference from pagers and stuff walking by a hardware store. honestly for local repeater use and hamfests the feature list doesnt need to be complicated at all. dual band VHF/UHF covers 99% of what youll encounter. CTCSS/DCS tones for accessing repeaters, decent battery life, thats really it. dont get sucked into buying something with APRS or DMR capability right away unless you already know you want that — those modes add cost and complexity and a lot of new folks buy them and never touch those features for years.

Oh man the double-kerchunk of stepping on someone is kind of a rite of passage honestly, don't beat yourself up about that. Happens to everybody at least a few times and most experienced ops on a net have done it plenty. For the roundtable part — yeah it can get loose and it really depends on the net. Some nets the NCS will explicitly pass it around, like "back to you W5whatever, go ahead" and you wait for your callsign. Others it's more freeform and people just listen for a pause and then key up. The trick is to wait just a beat longer than you think you need to. Some guys have slow release on their PTT or there's a little hang time on a repeater, so what sounds like dead air might not be. If you wait like a full second after you think someone's done talking you'll step on people way less. And checking in without saying much is totally fine. Net control counts check-ins for a reason and just having bodies on frequency matters, especially for emergency preparedness nets. Nobody's going to think less of you for a short check-in. Some of the most reliable guys on our local net literally just say their call and say "no traffic, no comments" every single week and that's completely normal.

dont overlook the gateway itself honestly. some of the RMS nodes you see in the list havent been maintained great and they'll accept a connection then flake out. i had something similar and eventually just signed up for a VARA-FM session through a local node on 2m instead and it worked first try. not saying thats your permanent fix but it helped me figure out if the problem was on my end or the gateway end. also check your Windows audio settings - theres a known thing where Windows will decide to "enhance" the USB audio device and it completely wrecks the VARA tones. go into sound settings for the Signalink device and make sure all the enhancements are turned off and the sample rate is 48000hz not whatever Windows defaults to.

yeah i did the fan mod on mine probably 3 years ago. its just a resistor swap on the main board, R1005 i think but dont hold me to that, been a while. dropped it from like a 47 ohm to something much lower so the fan runs basically all the time at a low speed. makes a difference when doing JS8Call for a couple hours, the heatsink stays noticeably cooler. the fan itself is pretty quiet at that speed so it doesnt bother me. only thing id say is just be careful pulling the board out, those ribbon cables are not very forgiving and i nicked one slightly and had a minor panic. all good but just take your time.

CQ WW is definitely a step up from Field Day in terms of raw intensity, especially if you're operating from home solo versus being at a club site with people around helping out. but honestly the best thing you can do is just jump in and not worry about your score the first time. seriously nobody expects a new general to be running stations at 150 QSOs per hour or whatever. for logging just grab N1MM+ and watch a youtube walkthrough before the contest weekend, its free and pretty much the standard. the zone exchange trips people up at first but after like 20 contacts it clicks. CQ Zone 4 or 5 for most of us in the US and you just kinda learn the others as you hear them. and yeah SOTA is a totally different vibe — more about the activation itself than contest operating speed — but it does build confidence for sure, especially working pile-ups from the summit side. i'd say do both, they scratched completely different itches for me

same boat as you like 8 months ago. honestly dont stress too much about memorizing all of them before getting on air, you pick it up way faster by just doing it. the ones that tripped me up the most were QRP (low power operation) vs QRO (high power) because people use those a lot and i had them backwards for like a month. also QRX means standby or wait a minute which is handy to know so you dont think the other person dropped the contact

so ive been a ham for about three years now and honestly i keep telling myself im going to get a proper go-kit together and then just... dont. after the last big storm that came through here i got a message from my county ARES coordinator asking if anyone could set up at the EOC and i had to basically admit i wasnt really ready to just grab and go. kind of embarrassing honestly. so im starting from scratch. i have an IC-7300 which i know isnt the most portable thing in the world but i also have a Yaesu FT-891 which seems more go-kit friendly. my question is really about power — do most people run off a big lithium battery pack or are you still doing the old school group 31 lead acid thing. i see a lot of guys with the bioenno stuff but those arent cheap. also how do you handle antennas, like do you just throw a bunch of different things in the bag or do you have one go-to antenna that handles most situations. any advice welcome, especially from people who have actually deployed and not just planned to deploy (i know the feeling lol)

the generator noise thing is real, especially if you're inside a building and everyone's trying to talk. we switched to a 100ah lithium battery with a 30 amp anderson powerpole feed going to a distribution block and honestly for most of a day it handles everything fine as long as your rig isnt sitting at 100w continuous. the math your doing sounds about right — 10 amps average draw times 12 hours is 120ah but you dont want to drain lithium all the way so call it a 150-160ah pack minimum if you're not recharging at all. if you're doing the hybrid thing a 100ah is probably workable, just run the genny every 3-4 hours for a top-up. for the antenna base problem — we use a canvas sandbag base like the ones made for photography light stands, you can get them at any camera shop. stack two or three of them around the base of the spiderbeam pole and it holds up fine in anything less than really serious wind. you still need guys for the pole obviously but the base stays put without touching the pavement.

so we ran a simulated disaster exercise saturday, coordinated with the county emergency manager and a couple of the local hospitals. i've been doing ARES stuff for maybe four years now and honestly thought i had a pretty good handle on things but this drill really humbled me a bit. the scenario was a major flooding event cutting off the eastern part of the county — roads out, cell towers down, that kind of thing. we had operators at the EOC, two shelter locations, and a couple of us doing mobile work trying to relay between nets. sounded solid on paper. what actually happened was kind of a mess in the best possible way. first thing that fell apart was message traffic handling. we're all decent at voice but the minute the EC asked us to start passing formal written traffic the whole thing slowed way down. people fumbling with ICS-213 forms, not sure who holds net control when the primary goes quiet, one guy at the shelter had the wrong simplex frequency written down entirely. nothing catastrophic but in a real event some of that could actually matter. the thing that stuck with me most was how much we all assumed everyone else knew the plan. like we had a written plan but clearly not everyone had actually read it. anyway curious if others have run into similar stuff in their drills or activations and what you did about it. did you change how you train or just keep drilling until it sticks?

i had almost the exact same situation with my first 40m wire, except i had mine going from the house to a tree in kind of a slopewire setup and SWR was all over the place. turned out one of my connections at the feedpoint had a strand or two not making contact. anyway what helped me was just rebuilding the center insulator with a proper SO-239 and some ring terminals so i could actually torque the connections down instead of relying on solder alone. also if you havent tried it yet, run the numbers through an antenna modeling program — even the free ones like MMANA or 4nec2 will show you how much the end height is affecting impedance. kind of eye opening honestly, i spent a whole evening messing with that instead of actually operating but it was worth it.

Check out the NPOTA anniversary coming up! Also, many clubs now do smaller regional special events rather than the big national ones. Our state QSO party includes several special event callsigns each year, and they're quite popular with the local crowd.

hey welcome to the hobby, dont stress too much about stepping on people — everybody was new once and most folks on repeaters are pretty patient with new hams figuring things out. so the CTCSS tone — you only need to set it as your transmit tone, not receive. basically you're sending that 100hz subaudible tone along with your voice so the repeater knows to open up and rebroadcast you. if you set it on the receive side too your radio just won't open its squelch unless it hears that tone from the repeater, which some people do but its not necessary and can actually make you miss calls. so just set the T-CTCS on the baofeng to 100.0 and leave the R-CTCS alone or set it to OFF. also yes the beep thing is real — most repeaters have a courtesy tone that beeps after someone finishes talking, and its good practice to wait for that before you start transmitting. just key up, say your callsign and maybe something like "listening" or whatever, then unkey and wait. someone will probably come back to you pretty quick once they hear a new call on there.

Oh man shelter positions are actually pretty great for newer folks to start with. Basically you're the comms link between the shelter and the EOC or served agency net, so yeah you'll be on your radio a lot but its not like youre just sitting there twiddling your thumbs. Youll probably be logging message traffic, maybe handling welfare messages if the shelter manager asks, and just keeping the net control updated on headcounts and conditions at your location. Your gear sounds fine for a starting point honestly. The mag mount on whatever surface you can find works, though sometimes shelters are weird buildings with metal roofs that kill signal so be ready to improvise. I'd bring extra food and water for yourself because shelter assignments can run way longer than the exercise schedule says they will. And bring something to write with — actual paper and pen, old school, because digital stuff fails and net control will want written logs from you. Biggest thing I'd say is just introduce yourself to the shelter manager when you arrive, ask them what they need from you, and don't be invisible. Non-ham shelter staff sometimes don't even know why you're there so a little explaining goes a long way. You'll do fine, first activations feel intimidating but usually end up being pretty calm.