Frank Williams

so i finally pulled the trigger and built one of those QRP Labs QCX mini kits for 40m and honestly i wasnt expecting much but the thing actually works. got it all assembled over a weekend, smoked one resistor because i was being impatient with the iron but otherwise pretty smooth build. fired it up and immediately heard a pile-up on some DX station which was a good sign i guess. anyway i managed to work a station about 340 miles away running 4 watts and i was completely hooked. my question is more about efficiency i suppose — im using a random wire in the attic right now with a tuner and im wondering if thats killing my effectiveness. i know QRP is already uphill, the last thing i want is to waste half my power in a mediocre antenna situation. also wondering if anyone has tips on operating strategy, like when to call, when to give up, that kind of thing. i feel like with 100 watts you can just throw RF at a problem but with 4 watts you have to actually think a little

so this has been bugging me for a few weeks now. my 857 was putting out fine, like 100w on HF, then one day i noticed it just felt... weak. checked it with my wattmeter and im getting maybe 15-20w on 40m, a bit more on 20m, and almost nothing on 10m. receive seems completely normal, SWR readings look right, dummy load checks out. i did the obvious stuff already — reseated all the connectors i could get to, checked the ALC wasn't going crazy (it wasnt), tried it on a different antenna just in case. same deal. no smoke, no smell, nothing dramatic happened that i can remember. just gradually got worse i think, or maybe it was sudden and i didnt notice for a while because im mostly listening lately. my gut says one of the driver transistors or maybe a bias issue in the PA stage. pulled the service manual and the PA board has those RD70HHF1s in the final. anyone cracked one of these open for a similar symptom? wondering if its worth me poking around with a scope before i just swap the finals and hope for the best.

yeah WWFF is great, i got into it because i chase a lot of the european activators on 17m and 20m. the spots show up on the regular pota map sometimes too depending on how the activator logs it so dont stress too much about it being a ghost town. some days its super quiet and other days you get a pileup from stations youve never heard from before which is fun. good luck next weekend

yeah the vanity system is a little confusing at first but once you get the hang of it its not too bad. so the application windows are basically tiered — if you're an immediate family member of the silent key who held the call you get first crack at it during an early window, then it opens up to everyone else after that period closes. if multiple people apply for the same call in the same window then yeah it goes to random selection, which is kind of a crapshoot but thats how it works. and yes unfortunately the FCC does charge a fee now, i want to say its $35 but you should double check that on their site because it may have changed. you can apply through the FCC's website directly or use a third party service like Ham Call or AE7Q's tools to check availability and track the status of calls. AE7Q in particular is really useful for seeing exactly when a call becomes available and what window it falls into. good luck with it, hope you get the one you're after

RG-58 is definitely not your friend on 440 — the loss on that stuff at UHF is pretty significant compared to something like LMR-400 or even RG-8X. But honestly a 2.5 SWR isn't going to kill you for local repeater work, it's just not ideal. Before you go pulling new coax though I'd check the connector end at the radio really carefully. Mag mount pigtails are notoriously hit or miss from the factory and sometimes the center pin isnt making solid contact or the braid is barely hanging on inside the PL-259. I've seen brand new antennas right out of the box with garbage terminations. Also try sliding the mag mount around to a few different spots on the roof — ground plane geometry can do weird things with the UHF readings especially on a truck with all the bodylines and curves. Dead center of the roof usually works best. If neither of those fixes it then yeah I'd just re-terminate or swap the pigtail with some better coax.

so ive been trying to get Winlink going for about three weeks now and i feel like im going in circles. Running Winlink Express on a windows 10 box, got a Signalink USB hooked up to my IC-7300, and im trying to connect to a nearby RMS gateway i can see listed in the frequency list. The session just times out every time, says no response from RMS. I can hear other people making connections on the frequency — i think thats what im hearing anyway — so the gateway is clearly up. My question is whether this is a soundcard level thing or something with how im configuring the AX.25 side. I've got Winlink Express set to Vara HF but honestly i dont fully understand the difference between Vara HF and Winlink's packet modes. should i even be on Vara HF for this or should i be running packet? The IC-7300 is set to DATA mode, USB-D i think. VOX is triggering but i have no idea if the audio levels are right. PTT seems to be keying because i can see the TX light go on. also is there any way to test if my outgoing signal is actually decodable before i burn more time troubleshooting the gateway side. feel like im missing something obvious here

yeah what he said, also dont stress about sounding perfect. net controls hear nervous new hams all the time and honestly most of them are pretty patient. i remember my first check-in i said my callsign wrong like i jumbled the letters and the net control just calmly asked me to repeat and moved on. nobody made a big deal of it one thing i'd add is if you can find the net's specific format beforehand sometimes they post it on a club website or the repeater's linked group. some nets are super formal with traffic passing and some are basically just a ragchew with structure so it really depends. just listen first like you've been doing and you'll figure out the vibe pretty quick

hamstudy.org is honestly all you need for passing the exam, just do the practice tests every day and youll get there in a month no problem. the site tracks which questions you keep getting wrong and drills you on those which is pretty smart. i did maybe 2 weeks of that before my tech exam and passed pretty comfortably. the memorization thing — yeah the pool is public and yeah some people just brute force memorize it, nothing wrong with that to get your foot in the door. that said i found that for the electrical formulas and stuff like ohms law it actually helps to understand whats going on because those questions have variations and if you just memorized one version you might get tripped up. the regulations stuff though, like privileges and band plans, thats pretty much just memorize and move on. dont overthink it, the tech exam really isnt that hard. the harder part is actually getting on the air and figuring stuff out once you have the license

yeah this trips up a lot of new generals, dont feel bad. the short version is the FCC allocations are the actual legal limits and the ARRL band plan is more of a gentlemans agreement about where different modes tend to hang out. you absolutely cannot transmit below 7.175 as a general on phone, thats not a suggestion thats part 97. extra class gets down to 7.125. the band edge thing is practical more than legal. if youre running SSB and your carrier is right at 7.300 your upper sideband is actually splashing above the allocation and thats a violation. most people say stay at least 3khz inside the edge to be safe, some say more depending on how wide your signal is. i usually just stay below 7.295 to be comfortable. the dead zone you're hearing in the middle of the day is pretty normal on 40, the skip is too long for locals and too short for dx so theres this weird dead region. it fills back up in the evenings when the band changes character. youll get used to it.

honestly the Extra pool gets a reputation that i think is a little overblown. yeah there's impedance matching questions and some LC circuit stuff and a few things about transmission lines that look scary at first but the question pool is published and if you spend a few weeks on hamstudy you'll start to recognize the patterns. i wont pretend i understood every single concept deeply when i took it, there were definitely a couple questions where i just memorized the answer and moved on. the parts i actually found useful to understand rather than just memorize were the filter questions and the amplifier stability stuff, because once you get the basic idea the related questions kind of answer themselves. the regulatory section is also bigger than people expect, lots of detailed part 97 stuff that general just doesnt get into. give yourself maybe 6 to 8 weeks if youre doing a little bit every day and you should be fine. the extra slices really do make a difference on a crowded band day btw, especially 20m phone.

nice one. i still havent worked them, been trying on 40m CW mostly but my antenna situation is not great right now. got the dipole at like 25ft which is fine for local stuff but when youre competing against kilowatt stations with stacked yagis its rough lol. might try 17m SSB like you did, maybe less competition there depending on the time. what time were you getting in when propagation was good to your location?

so ive had this 857 for probably 6 years now and it's been solid but the last few weeks i've noticed transmit power is way down. like showing maybe 5-8 watts on a good day when it should be doing 100 on HF. receive seems completely normal, SWR meter looks fine when i key up, no weird noises or smoke obviously, just... no power getting out. already swapped the coax thinking maybe a connector had corroded inside (we had a wet winter), no change. ran it on a dummy load same result. i did the standard menu checks, mic gain is set right, ALC looks like its barely moving when i speak which honestly might be the clue here but im not sure. i dont have a scope at home, just a basic multimeter and an antenna analyzer. anyone gone down this road with one of these rigs? im wondering if its a driver stage issue or something with the finals but i really dont want to crack it open if theres something obvious im overlooking first. its out of warranty obviously so im not worried about that, just dont want to make it worse poking around blind.

so ive been a general for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother studying for the extra. like i mostly do HF casual stuff, some 40m and 20m ragchewing, occasionally try to work some dx when conditions are decent. i dont really feel limited by my general privileges honestly but everyone keeps telling me i should just go for it. the thing that gets me is the theory on that exam looks pretty intense. like the math for some of the filter stuff and the impedance matching questions... i passed my general without too much trouble but i looked at some extra practice questions and some of them had me lost. is it really necessary to actually understand all that stuff or do people just memorize the pool and move on? and does having extra actually change how you operate day to day or is it mostly just the extra band segments that most people dont even use

so I've been putting this off for way too long, always figured I'd just buy a commercial antenna but after pricing out some of the decent ones I figured why not just build one. ended up cutting a 40m dipole from some 14 gauge stranded copper wire I had laying around in the garage, fed it with some RG-8X I had from an old project. center insulator is just a chunk of PVC I drilled through and sealed with some silicone. got it up in an inverted V config about 28 feet at the apex which I know isnt ideal but thats what my tallest tree will give me. SWR is sitting around 1.4:1 at 7.150 which honestly surprised me, I was expecting worse for a first build. I did trim it a few times to get there. my question is about the feedline length — ive been reading about the whole thing where certain feedline lengths can cause issues depending on the impedance and I'm not sure if my 35 feet of coax is going to cause any weirdness. also wondering if I should bother with a 1:1 choke balun at the feedpoint or if that's overkill for casual HF use. I have a tuner on the rig but haven't needed it yet at 7.150.

so ive been licensed about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF DX but for some reason EME has always been in the back of my mind as like the ultimate challenge. started reading up on it more seriously the last few months and honestly the more I read the more confused I get about what the minimum viable setup actually looks like. I know the old school guys were running massive antenna arrays and kilowatt amps but ive been seeing stuff about JT65 and Q65 making it more accessible now? like is a single yagi on 2m actually realistic or am I setting myself up to be disappointed. my lot isnt huge, probably could swing a 9 or 11 element yagi on an az-el mount without too much drama with the neighbors. also the moon tracking software side of it, is there one program people actually use or is it a whole rabbit hole of different tools chained together. dont want to spend a year building something and then find out Im pointed at the wrong part of sky half the time lol

yeah the traffic thing confused me too when i started. basically they're asking if you have a formal radiogram or message to pass through the net, most casual local nets nobody actually has traffic so saying no is completely normal. some nets are more formal about it than others, like the NTS stuff gets pretty procedural but a typical club net is pretty relaxed. you'll get the hang of it fast.

so ive been doing contests pretty seriously for the past couple years, mostly single op single radio, and im consistently pulling decent rates on CW but i keep hitting this wall where i feel like im just sitting there waiting during the slow periods and watching the clock. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to get into SO2R and honestly ive been curious for a while but every time i start looking into it the rabbit hole gets deep fast. right now running a k3 into a pair of tribanders stacked at 45 and 75 feet, so the antenna situation isnt terrible, but adding a whole second radio setup with the keying and audio switching and all that seems like a lot of pain for maybe a few hundred extra qsos. or maybe im underselling it. does the rate difference actually show up that much if youre not already in the top 10 percent of operators skill wise? feels like my rate problems are more about operating technique than radio count also wondering if anyone has opinions on the SO2R vs just really optimizing the single radio strategy, like aggressive S&P mixed with running, knowing when to give up a frequency and go hunt instead. i feel like theres still a lot of room there i havent exploited yet

I ran into the same issue with my first EFHW build! The 0.05 wavelength counterpoise length is what works best empirically. For 20m that's about 3.3 feet, so your 3-foot wire is spot on. Don't feel bad - this catches a lot of builders.

honestly i tried SO2R for the first time in last years CQWW and pretty much fumbled through the whole thing, ended up turning the second radio off after about 6 hours because i was making too many mistakes on my run freq. so take this with that grain of salt but — i dont regret trying it. i think i'll be better at it this year just from having done it once even badly. one thing nobody told me was to make sure your logging software is actually set up for SO2R before you start, not during the contest. i was messing with N1MM config like two hours in and that was a disaster. get that sorted way ahead of time.

Welcome to the dark side, once you start activating you wont stop trust me. To answer your questions -- yes 2m FM contacts absolutely count, all 4 can be VHF no problem. The trick though is that you really need people to know youre up there or you might just be calling CQ into the void for an hour. Thats where the spotting piece matters a lot. For spotting without cell service there are a couple options. APRS spotting is a real thing and works great if your radio supports sending APRS packets, you basically send a formatted message and the APRS network relays it to SOTAwatch. Look up the format, its something like SOTA followed by your callsign and summit ref in a specific order. If your HT doesnt do APRS natively it gets more complicated. The other option honestly is just to pre-announce your activation on SOTAwatch the night before or morning of. Most chasers watch the alerts and will be listening around the time you said youd be up there. On 2m you might try 146.52 first and then put out a spot if you get any response. Some activators also text a friend at home who can self-spot for them if they have cell and you dont, works fine. Have a great hike, post back and let us know how it went.

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people mention LoTW and eQSL and also some guys still sending paper cards through the bureau and im honestly not sure which one i should be focusing on. like do i need all three? or is one of them basically the standard everyone uses now? the reason i ask is i made contact with a station in Japan last week on 20m which was super exciting for me, first ever DX contact, and afterward i wasnt sure what to do. i uploaded my log to LoTW because someone told me thats what you need for DXCC credit but then i also heard eQSL is popular in Europe and some guys wont do anything except paper cards. the Japanese station hasnt confirmed yet on anything so maybe he hasnt uploaded either, i dont know how long to wait also the whole LoTW setup with the certificate thing was kind of a pain honestly, took me like an hour to figure out but i got it working. anyway just looking for some perspective from people who actually chase DX or do awards, what do you guys actually rely on

so ive been messing with this for about three weeks now and cant quite nail down what's happening. running a remote station through RemoteHams with an RTL-SDR feeding the panadapter view to clients, and everything looks fine until i switch bands — like if im on 40 and jump to 20, the audio just cuts out on the remote end. the radio itself (IC-7300) seems fine locally, no issues, but the client side just goes silent and they have to disconnect and reconnect the session to get it back. i thought at first it was a latency thing because the upload on my end is only about 12 Mbps which i know isnt great for this, but even with one client connected it does it. tried adjusting the audio buffer settings in the RCForb client and that didnt seem to help either. someone mentioned it might be a VSPE conflict with the virtual COM port but i havent gone down that rabbit hole yet. also tangentially — has anyone done internet linking through this same setup? like running an Allstar node or IRLP alongside the RemoteHams instance? wondering if sharing the audio device is whats causing some of this weirdness actually.

yeah same thing happened to me when i was new, blanked completely on what X was and just said... X. the other op was real patient about it thankfully. i still sometimes forget zulu vs zebra and which one is actually nato but apparently zebra isnt even the right one, its zulu. took me way longer than id like to admit to stop second guessing that one

yeah same boat here kind of, i started tracking DXCC about a year ago and wish someone had told me earlier to just log everything carefully from day one. i lost credit for a few contacts early on because i wasnt uploading to LoTW consistently and then lost touch with some of the operators who could have confirmed via paper. one thing i'll add — look into Club Log too, lots of expeditions these days upload directly there and you can match your log against expedition logs which is super handy when the pileup was chaos and you're not sure if the contact actually made it in. heard island is a great one to have in the log by the way, congrats on that

yeah the flux has been all over the place, you're not imagining it. we're well into solar cycle 25 now and it's actually performing better than the predictions said it would which is pretty cool to watch unfold in real time. i keep pskreporter open in a tab most of the day and some mornings i see my beacon getting heard in VK and ZL before i even finish my coffee, then by afternoon 10m sounds completely dead. the geomagnetic stuff plays a big role too, even a moderate K index can kill a promising opening fast especially on the higher bands. i'd suggest bookmarking spaceweather.com and also checking the solar terrestrial dispatch reports if you want to get a bit deeper into what's actually driving the flux numbers. it becomes kind of addictive honestly, trying to predict when a good opening is coming.