Michael Barnes

yeah same boat as you were like a year ago, i just started uploading everything to lotw kind of randomly and then one day checked my DXCC account and i was already at 67 confirmed without really trying. the ones that dont confirm right away are usually smaller stations that dont use lotw, for those you kinda have to go the QSL card route through the bureau or direct mail which is its own whole thing. WAZ genuinely stumped me for a while, zone 2 up in northern canada and some of the pacific zones are a real pain. but honestly just work everything you hear and sort it out later, thats my strategy anyway

took me like 8 months to get solid at 20 but i wasnt practicing every day so your timeline might be better. one thing i dont see talked about enough is that fatigue is a real thing with CW copying, like if youre trying to practice for a full hour your brain just checks out after a while and youre not actually learning anything you're just going through the motions. shorter sessions more often seemed to work way better for me than marathon practice. 20-30 min sounds about right honestly.

so ive been doing POTA for about a year now and someone at our club mentioned WWFF and how it ties into nature references and flora/fauna stuff and honestly i went down a rabbit hole this weekend reading about it. seems like WWFF is kind of the older international version and has its own reference system separate from POTA even though sometimes the parks overlap? anyway i found a nature reserve about 40 minutes from me that has a WWFF reference, KFF something i think, and im planning to drive out there next saturday with my KX2 and a wire antenna and give it a go. the threshold to qualify an activation is 44 QSOs right? i read that somewhere but wasnt sure if thats still current or if different countries have different rules for their national programs. also do i log it on WWFF logger or can i use something like HAMRS and just upload the ADIF later. any advice welcome, this community has been really helpful every time ive posted before

WAS is probably the easiest entry point honestly especially since you've already knocked out 30 states without even trying. and yes — if the other operator uploaded their logs to LoTW you can absolutely get credit for those old contacts, the match just happens automatically when both sides are in the system. worth going back and uploading all your old logs right now if you havent already. for DXCC with an attic antenna it's definitely doable but you'll need to be patient and pick your spots, good propagation windows matter a lot more when you're running low power into a compromised antenna. i worked my first 100 on a dipole in a second floor apartment so it's not impossible. WAZ kind of fills in on its own as you chase the other two, some of those zones are easy some are a real pain to fill. and yeah DXCC confirmation is the most rigorous — ARRL takes it seriously and they have a whole review process for submitted cards if you go the paper QSL route. LoTW makes it much smoother though, most serious DX stations are on there.

Ha, we've all been there. Honestly for a casual net you pretty much did fine — there's no wrong answer when net control asks if you have traffic and you say no. That's the right answer if you don't have anything to pass along. The general flow for a simple check-in net is: net control opens up, asks for check-ins, you give your callsign phonetically or just plainly depending on what the net does, they log you and might come back to ask if you have traffic or comments, you say no traffic no announcements or whatever you've got, and then you just listen until the net closes. When net control closes the net you don't need to acknowledge it, you can just listen or move on. Some people do key up and say 73 or thanks for net control but it's not required at all. The over vs out thing trips a lot of people up. On a simplex or repeater net most folks just don't bother with either one honestly. You say what you need to say and unkey. "Out" technically means you're done and closing the conversation, "over" means you're done and expecting a reply — but in day to day repeater use almost nobody says either one and it's fine. Don't sweat it. Just check in next week and it'll feel way more natural.

couple things worth checking — first, what path are you running? if youre on WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 that should be fine for most areas but ive seen people accidentally knock their path settings back to something too aggressive or too conservative after a menu reset. the 710G has that annoying habit of acting like everything is saved when it isnt always. also check your audio levels if youre doing anything external, but since youre on the internal TNC that probably isnt it. more likely the antenna swap introduced an impedance mismatch that's affecting your deviation just enough to make packets decode poorly at the digi even though your radio thinks it's transmitting fine. you can pull up aprsdirect.com and filter to just your callsign with SSID and see what digis are actually hearing you and how often. that'll tell you pretty quick if its a path problem or a rf problem.

I went last year for my first time and honestly wasnt sure what to expect but it was worth it. talked to a ton of people, got some coax connectors and a dummy load for cheap. only thing is parking was kind of a mess so get there early if you can

so i passed my general back in august and ive been sitting on my sequential callsign for a few months now. its not terrible but honestly its kind of a mouthful when im doing SSB and i keep having to repeat it. a buddy at the club mentioned i should look into getting a vanity call but i honestly have no idea how that process works or how long it takes. from what i understand you apply through the FCC ULS system and there's like a waiting period? i tried reading through some stuff online but some of it seems really outdated, people talking about fees and then other pages saying theres no fee anymore so im not sure what the current situation is. also do you just pick any callsign thats available or is there a whole system to it based on your license class any help appreciated, i dont want to mess this way up and end up in some weird limbo with my license

congrats on the first one, 34 contacts is a solid activation especially for a first outing. to answer your questions -- yeah multiple activators can be at the same park at the same time, no problem at all, you each get credit for your own activation independently. its actually kind of fun when that happens, sometimes hunters will work both of you and you can chat a bit on a calling frequency if youre not busy. for log submission i believe you have a year technically but dont wait that long, just do it when you get home while its fresh. the app makes it pretty painless. and for calling, most people do say CQ POTA or at least mention the park number in their exchange so the hunters can confirm which reference youre at. something like your callsign, 5-9, K-1234 is pretty standard. some guys get real brief about it when theyre running a pileup but when youre starting out mentioning the park reference is good habit. linked dipole in the trees is a great setup for this by the way, you'll have no trouble at other parks with that rig

yeah i was confused about the same stuff when i first got licensed and honestly i just decided to not overthink it. if you're just ragchewing and the conversation touches on work stuff it's probably fine. the FCC isn't listening to your 2m repeater convos waiting to bust you for mentioning your lawnmower. the rules really exist to stop people from running dispatch services or whatever over ham radio instead of paying for a proper business comms solution. just use common sense and you'll be ok. welcome to the hobby by the way

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i'm trying to figure out the whole QSL confirmation thing and honestly it's kind of overwhelming. like there's LoTW which i know is the ARRL thing and then theres eQSL which seems like a separate thing entirely, and then people still mail physical cards? i didnt realize there were so many different systems. right now i'm mostly doing FT8 on 20m and a little bit of SSB when i feel confident enough. my logging software is Log4OM and i think it can upload to LoTW but i haven't set it up yet because i got confused about the certificate process. i tried reading the ARRL instructions and got lost around the part where you request the certificate and they mail you a postcard with a code on it. do they actually still mail a physical postcard for that? seems old fashioned for a digital system lol anyway my main question is — for awards and stuff like DXCC, does LoTW count the same as a paper card? and is there any reason to bother with eQSL if im already doing LoTW? some guys at the club say eQSL doesnt count for anything official but others say it's fine. just trying to figure out where to put my energy here

oh nice W6/NS-177, ive chased that one before i think. yeah seconding what the other guy said about the spot vs alert thing, just put an alert up ahead of time and then spot yourself when youre actually on frequency and ready for pile. and honestly your first activation might be a little chaotic but thats fine, you only need 4 QSOs to qualify the summit so just get those in the bag and anything after that is gravy. i made like 7 contacts on my first one and felt amazing about it even tho i see people logging 40+ these days. CW will def get you more chasers if you can manage it but SSB is totally fine especially on 20m

the straight key vs paddle debate comes up a lot and honestly both camps have valid points but in my experience learning on a straight key first isnt going to ruin you. lots of great CW ops started that way. what WILL hurt you is practicing bad rhythm, like sending sloppy dashes or uneven spacing, so if youre being careful about that youre probably fine on the keyer side, you really dont need to spend big money to start. a lot of rigs have a built in keyer these days, does yours? if it does just grab a cheap set of paddles to start, something like the MFJ-564 or even one of the cheaper ones from China on ebay, plenty of people have learned on those before upgrading. the Begali stuff is gorgeous but yeah thats more of a "ive been doing this for 20 years and want something nice" purchase the 10wpm wall is pretty common, dont get discouraged. a lot of people say bumping your practice speed up a bit even when you cant copy everything forces your brain to recognize characters as sounds rather than counting dots and dashes. worth trying

the rx extension is pretty handy, i use mine to listen to NOAA weather on 162 and some of the utility stuff around 136 when im bored on a long portable ops day. one thing to watch though is the sensitivity drops off quite a bit outside the ham bands, its not like using a dedicated wideband receiver obviously. for anything critical id still use a separate scanner but for casual monitoring its fine. did you mess with the squelch pot at all while you were in there? mine has always had kind of a touchy squelch on 2m where it either totally open or cutting a little too aggressivley, never quite right. been wondering if thats a pot issue or just how these are.

the RFI from generators is almost always a combination of things — the generator itself radiating, the power leads acting as an antenna, and if the genny isnt properly bonded to your station ground it gets way worse. i put a bunch of mix 31 clamp-on ferrites on both the AC power cord going into my inverter and on the feedline near the radio end and it dropped my noise floor by like 3-4 S units with a cheap chinese generator. still not perfect but workable. also try to get the generator as far away as the extension cord will allow, like 50-60 feet if you can, and run the cord away from the antenna direction. for field antennas, ive been using a 49:1 end fed for a couple years now and i wont go back to a dipole for portable stuff honestly. yeah they have tradeoffs but being able to throw one end up a tree and have something resonant-ish on 40 through 10 in like 10 minutes is hard to argue with when youre doing it solo. you might need to mess with the length to get it where you want it and an antenna analyzer helps a lot. the linked dipole is technically cleaner but its just more work to deploy.

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep hearing people talk about DXCC and WAS and WAZ and honestly im starting to get a bit lost on what the differences are and how you actually go about chasing these things. like i understand DXCC is countries (entities i guess?) and WAS is all 50 states but WAZ i still dont really get — zones? what zones? anyway i worked my first few DX stations last week, got a KH6 and a VE7 which i know arent exactly rare but still felt good, and someone in my local club said i should start logging carefully now if i ever want to apply for any of these. so i downloaded LoTW and set it up but honestly the whole QSL process still feels really confusing to me. do you have to confirm every single contact through LoTW or can you mix and match with paper QSLs or bureau cards or whatever? also is it worth even thinking about awards this early or should i just focus on getting better at operating first. i dunno, maybe chasing awards gives you a goal to work toward which seems kind of motivating actually

im kind of new to all this but ive been obsessing over DXMaps and the cluster lately trying to understand propagation better and i noticed the same thing you described, spots would show a path open and then nothing. someone on another forum told me to look at the NOAA space weather page and the estimated Ap index not just the K index since it gives a slightly longer view. still trying to figure out what numbers actually mean good conditions vs bad ones though, its a lot to absorb haha

22 degrees is honestly pretty rough for a first pass especially if your eggbeaters are ground mounted and you have any obstructions. i'd really try to hold out for a pass that gets up to at least 35-40 degrees before you beat yourself up too much about not hearing anything. the eggbeaters will work but they're a bit mediocre at low elevations compared to something steerable. on the doppler thing — yeah it's a handful at first. gpredict can actually do CAT control to the 847 and handle the doppler correction for you automatically if you set it up right. there's a rig control dialog in gpredict, you connect it via hamlib and tell it your uplink and downlink VFOs, and it'll keep both corrected through the pass. took me an afternoon to figure out the settings but once it works you can actually focus on operating instead of knob twisting. look up the gpredict hamlib rig control tutorial, theres a few decent write-ups out there. FT-847 is well supported. also just to double check — you do have the uplink and downlink freqs right for AO-73? it's an inverting transponder so SSB on the uplink comes out flipped on the downlink. some people trip over that the first few times.

this is making me want to join our local ARES group finally. ive been putting it off because i only got my general like 8 months ago and figured i wasnt ready but maybe thats the wrong way to think about it. do most groups welcome newer hams for drills or is it mostly the experienced guys running everything

ha yeah my first one was a total mess too, i showed up without enough coax to get the antenna away from my body and spent half the time wondering why my SWR was so weird. 18 contacts on your first activation is actually really solid, some people struggle to get the 4 minimum when bands arent cooperating. the granola bar wrapper logging is honestly peak SOTA tradition, ive seen people use everything from napkins to their arm. one thing that helped me a ton after my first few activations was switching to a paper log sheet i print out at home and laminate, fits in the top pocket of the pack and doesnt blow away. also if you havent already, look into the SOTA goat app or sotawatch alerts for pre-spotting yourself before you leave the trailhead if you have cell service, saves a lot of fumbling around at the summit when youre already tired. welcome to the addiction by the way, it only gets worse from here

honestly the apache cases are great, i have two of them. just make sure you pre-cut foam or get the pick-n-pluck foam because everything sliding around during transport is annoying real fast. one thing people forget is documentation. like printed frequency lists for your local ARES nets, ICS forms, your own call sign card with phonetics if you get stressed (dont laugh it happens), all that stuff. digital is great until your phone dies and your charger is in the other bag. i keep a laminated sheet with the most important freqs and a basic ops checklist zip-tied inside the lid of the case. seems overkill until it isn't.

yeah parking lots are rough, did a similar thing last spring for a simulated emergency test and the RF noise floor from the building HVAC alone was like S5 on 40. you might want to bring a noise canceler or at least be mentally prepared to fight it. the linked dipole should help since you can actually null some of that junk with orientation but it takes some fiddling to figure out once you're on site. one thing i'd add — bring more coax than you think you need. every single time i think i've got enough feedline i end up 10 feet short because the anchor points arent where i assumed. just throw another 50ft section in the truck.

yeah what he said about the spotter location is correct. caught me off guard too when i first started. one thing i also do is cross reference with the DX cluster on pskreporter when im doing digital modes, that site is incredible for seeing real time propagation, like you can literally watch your signal reports come in on a map as you transmit. not exactly the same as cluster spotting but it kind of complements it if you do FT8 or JS8. also there are some Android apps like DX Cluster or PileUp! that pull from the same networks and you can glance at your phone while youre at the rig without switching tabs on the computer. nothing groundbreaking but convenient.

Congrats on the ticket. Okay so the Baofeng suspicion is not entirely unfounded - the cheap ones do work but the transmit audio and receiver front end aren't great, you'll get intermod in busy RF environments and a few of them have been tested and shown to be a bit spurious on transmit. That said plenty of people start with them and they're fine for basic repeater use. If budget is your main concern a UV-5R will get you on the air. That said if you can stretch to around the $100-120 range the Yaesu FT-65 or even the older FT-60 if you find one used are noticeably better radios. Receiver is cleaner, audio is louder, and they feel like they'll survive being dropped which matters when you're still figuring out how to clip everything to your belt. The FT-65 doesnt do APRS natively but at your budget nothing really will unless you pair it with a phone app and a cable. For APRS down the road, honestly just get yourself going on voice first and worry about that later. One thing at a time or you'll burn out before you even make your first contact.

had something similar on mine a while back and it turned out to be the PA bias drifting with temperature. the 7300 uses a thermistor to compensate the PA bias but if that thermistor isnt making good contact with the heatsink anymore the circuit sees the wrong temp and pulls back drive to protect itself even when the finals arent actually that hot. its kind of a known-ish issue, not super common but not unheard of either. before you go deep into it, worth doing a firmware check if you havent already, icom pushed a couple updates that touched the power management stuff. also id look at the PA board connectors, the one that feeds the bias circuit in particular. i had a connector that looked fine visually but had a pin that wasnt seating right and reflowing it fixed a similar intermittent issue on a different rig. the 7300 isnt too bad to work on once you get the covers off honestly, just take photos before you disconnect anything.