Frank Williams

that sidetone pitch shift on longer dashes is almost certainly a power supply sag issue — your battery voltage is probably drooping slightly under the TX load and since the sidetone oscillator is probably sharing that rail it follows the voltage down. easy fix is either a small cap across the supply at the board or a separate regulated rail for the audio section if you have room. either way nothing to worry about operationally, it's not affecting your RF output.
11 contacts in 90 minutes with a homebrew rig at 5 watts is a solid afternoon. colorado and ontario on 40m in the afternoon is decent propagation work too, not a gimme. once you get that spurious sorted out you'll be in good shape. have you thought about adding a low pass filter if you dont already have one? even a simple 5 element chebyshev will clean things up considerably and takes maybe 30 minutes to wind.

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.

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

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

yeah what he said about the bureau timing is right, i think my record wait was like 14 months for a card from somewhere in eastern europe lol. some people skip the bureau entirely and just go direct but you gotta include a green stamp or an IRC for return postage which gets annoying.
i use all three honestly — LoTW for the awards stuff, eQSL because some guys i work regularly only use that one, and paper cards because i just like them. some of the cards you get back are really cool looking, especially from dx stations. its kind of a nice physical reminder of the contact in a way thats hard to explain to non hams

so ive been trying to learn CW for about 3 months now and i finally got myself a decent set of paddles, nothing fancy just a cheap Bencher clone i found on ebay but it seems well built enough. the problem im running into is my characters come out kind of mushy, like the dits and dahs run together or i get extra dits where i dont want them. im using a Winkeyer USB for the keyer and i honestly dont even know if ive got the settings dialed in right. i watched some youtube videos on squeeze keying vs single lever but i think maybe i just dont have the muscle memory yet.
is there a good way to practice getting cleaner timing? i try to just send random words but maybe im doing it wrong. also wondering if the paddle tension matters a lot because mine feels pretty light, like the contacts close really easily. been copying at about 12 wpm and sending is probably worse than my receive at this point which i guess is normal.

im working up to joining our local ARES group and this is actually really helpful to read. i keep putting it off because i feel like i dont know enough yet but maybe thats just an excuse. what HF or VHF gear do you typically run during something like that, just whatever portable stuff you bring or does the EOC have its own equipment?

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

so ive been chasing this for a few weeks now and i can hear the downlink fine on my FT-817 with a handheld yagi but i cannot for the life of me get my uplink to actually hit the bird. im using AO-7 in mode B mostly because the pass times work out better for me and ive got it set up in SO-239 split mode or whatever its called.
the thing thats killing me is the doppler. i know i need to apply doppler correction on both uplink and downlink but every time i try to do it manually i feel like im chasing my own tail — i tune the downlink, then my uplink drifts, then i cant find my own signal anymore. ive been using Gpredict for tracking and it seems accurate enough, at least the pass predictions match what im actually hearing.
someone told me i should just let the downlink sit and only correct the uplink but that doesnt feel right either? also not sure if my uplink power is even making it through, like how do you actually know if youre hitting the transponder or just shouting into the void. running maybe 3-4 watts out of the 817 to a 3el yagi on 70cm, downlink on a 5el on 2m. any thoughts appreciated, been lurking here for a while and finally just had to ask