Kevin Miller

so i was up late last night couldnt sleep and just threw on the headphones and tuned around 40 meters for like two hours just listening. didnt transmit at all. heard some guys ragchewing down in the carolinas, some CW i couldnt quite copy fast enough, and then this one dude running a net that sounded like it had been going on since maybe 1987 lol. the whole vibe of late night 40 was just really good idk. sometimes i think i get more out of just listening than actually getting on and talking. anybody else do this or am i just weird

ran almost the exact same setup at a red cross drill last spring, 7300 and a honda 2200. only issue we had was ground loops when we tied the laptop into the mix, got a nasty hum on transmit that took us forever to track down. ended up being the laptop charger sharing the same circuit as the radio. ran the laptop off its own battery after that and problem solved. worth thinking about ahead of time so you dont lose time troubleshooting during the actual exercise. also if you have any budget at all grab a small LiFePO4 battery as a backup, even a 20ah one. generators can be finicky cold morning starts and having 20 minutes of radio time while you sort out the genny is worth its weight. we use a bioenno 30ah and its saved us twice now.

so ive been using WSJT-X for a while now mostly doing FT8 and the built in logging is fine for casual stuff but im starting to get into contesting a bit more and everyone keeps saying N1MM is the way to go for that. problem is i also want something that handles my everyday QSOs and general logging without being a pain to set up every time i fire up the radio. someone on my local club net mentioned Log4OM and honestly it looks pretty feature-rich but i cant tell if its overkill or if its actually better than just keeping N1MM around all the time. like do people run both and just use whichever fits the situation or is there a way to make one of them do everything without a bunch of headaches my main thing is i want WSJT-X to feed into whatever i use automatically, i had it set up with UDP logging into Log4OM once and it mostly worked but sometimes dupes werent getting flagged right during a contest and that started to worry me. probably a config thing but i never fully sorted it out anyone run a setup thats actually stable for both casual logging and contest ops without constantly messing with settings

the 20 minute setup time thing is real and it honestly gets better just from practice. what helped me was doing timed drills in my own backyard, sounds silly but after doing it maybe 6 or 7 times you start to figure out where the friction points are. for me it was always coax management, i had a rats nest situation until i started using velcro straps and labeling everything. on the antenna question, i went through a few options and ended up keeping a super antenna MP1 in my kit for portable ops and then i have a 40m linked dipole in a stuff sack for when i have more time to set up. the buddistick and wolf river coil type verticals are convenient but honestly they can be a pain to tune in the field if conditions arent ideal. the MP1 has a built in counterpoise system which helps when youre on pavement or somewhere without good ground. and yeah throw the UV-5R in there, dont overthink it. having a backup HT is not overkill at all, its actually pretty standard in most go-kits ive seen at ARES exercises. at minimum you can monitor local repeaters while youre setting up HF. just make sure the battery is charged and stays charged, thats the thing people forget about backup gear.

yeah ive done something similar with a pi 3B and a nano working together for a WSPR beacon a while back. the split you're describing actually makes a lot of sense — arduino is way better for anything timing critical, like keying or PTT, because the pi's linux scheduler just isnt deterministic enough. you'll get random 10-50ms jitter from the OS doing whatever it wants and that kills you for CW or anything that needs tight timing. for the logging side the threading issue might just be that youre not using a queue properly. i had the same problem. what fixed it for me was putting a thread-safe queue between the serial reader and the database writer so they never block each other. the reader just stuffs things in the queue as fast as it can and the writer pulls from it at whatever pace it needs. dropped my duplicates to basically zero. look up the queue module in python if you havent, its pretty straigthforward once you see an example.

went through this myself earlier this year. the 18 day wait feels like forever lol but honestly it went fine. I used AE7Q like everyone says and just made a list of calls i liked, put them in order on the application and waited. got my second choice which im pretty happy with. just make sure the callsigns you pick are actually in the right format for your license class or the system will just reject em, learned that the hard way on my first attempt

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years now and after the storms last month kind of knocked out power in my neighborhood for three days i figured i really need to stop procrastinating on this. currently i have an ft-857d that i was planning to use as the main rig, a 40ah lifepo4 battery i picked up last year, and a basic j-pole i can throw up pretty quick. also have a little solar panel setup but honestly i havent tested it all together under any real load yet which is probably bad. my question is what do people actually find they forget or wish they had when they get activated or even just when theyve had to set up in a hurry. i feel like ive got the big stuff but its always the small stuff that bites you. i was thinking about putting it all in one of those harbor freight pelican knockoff cases but not sure if thats overkill for what i need. been a ham for about six years, general class, mostly do local repeater stuff and a little HF on weekends. any thoughts appreciated, trying to actually get this done before winter hits

so ive been licensed for about 6 years and done a fair bit of HF DX but EME has always been this thing in the back of my head that i never seriously looked into. a buddy of mine worked a few stations on 2m EME last year using JT65 and it kind of lit a fire under me again. the thing im struggling to wrap my head around is the antenna requirements. i know the path loss is absolutely brutal, something like 250-252 dB on 2m depending on where the moon is, and i keep reading about guys running 4x yagi arrays or even dish setups. but then i occasionally see posts about people making contacts with a single long yagi and a kilowatt and im not sure how realistic that is or if those are just exceptional circumstances. my current situation is i have a pretty open backyard, i could probably get away with a 2x2 array without too many complaints from the neighbors if i keep it reasonable looking. i have a solid state amp that does around 600w on 2m. is that even in the ballpark or am i kidding myself. and whats the deal with preamps, ive read that the receive side matters almost as much as transmit for this mode

the timing thing is real and it takes a while to develop. what helped me was really paying close attention to how the DX station is working the pile — some ops have a very consistent rhythm, they come back, they log, they send their callsign, and then there's like a half second gap before the pile erupts again. that gap is your window but most people transmit too early and just create QRM for the first exchange. you want to be right on the leading edge of when they're actually listening not when they finished sending. on the partial vs full call thing im firmly in the full call camp for most situations. if the band is marginal or propagation is sketchy you want your full call out there every time. partial calls only really work when the pile is so thick that you're just trying to get the op to catch a fragment and come back with a partial, but honestly most decent DXpedition ops running a real pileup will just move on if they cant pull a full call and that wastes everyones time. i do sometimes drop to a shorter call sequence if ive been calling for 20+ minutes and the band seems solid. your setup sounds fine honestly. 400w and a 4el should be competitive. the guys with stacked yagis will always have an edge but skill and timing account for a lot more than people admit when they blame their antenna for not breaking the pile.

so ive been a Tech for about 8 months now and mostly just been doing 2m/70cm stuff with my HT and a j-pole in the attic. its been fun but im starting to get curious about HF and everyone keeps telling me to just go get my General already. i looked at the question pool and honestly it looks pretty intimidating, like there's a lot of stuff in there about electrical theory and propagation that i dont really understand. i remember the Tech exam being pretty manageable but this feels like a bigger jump. is it actually as hard as it looks or am i overthinking it. i dont have any background in electronics, just kind of learned enough to pass Tech and figured it out as i went. also wondering if its even worth it before i have any HF gear, like should i get the license first and then figure out the radio situation or the other way around. kind of going back and forth on it

so ive been licensed about two years now and finally feel like im actually making real contacts instead of just fumbling around. a buddy at my local club mentioned i should start logging toward DXCC and honestly i had no idea what that even meant until i looked it up last week. ok so i get the basic idea, 100 confirmed entities, but im confused about how the confirmation side works. like do i need paper QSLs or is LoTW the main way people do it now? i have a bunch of contacts in my log going back about 18 months and i never really thought about confirming any of them. are those still usable if the other station uploaded to LoTW? also someone mentioned WAS and WAZ and i wasnt sure if those are totally separate awards or if contacts can count toward multiple things at once. seems like they should overlap but i honestly dont know how any of this is administered. is it all through ARRL or are some of these through different organizations

oh man i remember feeling exactly the same way when i first got my ticket. okay so the short version is: LoTW is the one that actually counts for ARRL awards like DXCC, so if you ever want to chase any of that stuff you really do need to get it set up. the certificate process is annoying but you only have to do it once and then its pretty painless after that. just follow the tqsl instructions step by step and dont rush it eQSL is fine and some people love it but a lot of the serious DX stations dont bother with it so your match rate can be lower depending on who you're working. its still nice to have though physical cards are absolutely still a thing, probably more so than you'd think. there are stations out there that will only confirm via paper, especially some of the older ops and a lot of the rare DX entities. i still get cards in the mail a few times a month and it honestly never gets old. the bureau is slow like sometimes years slow but its free basically. if you want something quicker you can go direct with an SASE or sometimes green stamps for DX stations

so ive had my TS-590SG for about four years and honestly it was a great radio but i kept seeing everyone and their brother talking about the 7300 and the waterfall display and i finally just ordered one last month. been running it for about three weeks now. first thing — the waterfall is genuinely as useful as people say, i was skeptical because i thought it was just a gimmick but being able to actually see propagation changing in real time and spot signals before you even tune to them is kind of a game changer for me, especially on 40m where things get crowded fast. second thing i wasnt expecting — the audio out of the box is kind of harsh on receive compared to the Kenwood. maybe im just used to the 590 but i spent like two days tweaking the DSP settings before it started sounding right to me. treble rolloff helped a lot. the touch screen is mostly fine but i keep accidentally hitting things when i reach for the VFO knob, probably just muscle memory from the old layout. also the built in ATU is way more limited than i expected, it really doesnt like my 80m dipole when im trying to work the low end of the band. overall though really happy with it. anyone else gone from a Kenwood to the 7300 and noticed the audio thing or am i just crazy

i just passed mine like six weeks ago so maybe i can help. the math questions freaked me out too but a lot of them you can just work backwards from the answer choices if you kind of know the formula. like resonant frequency stuff and the db gain questions, once you see the pattern youre fine. the filter theory was the part that took me the longest to wrap my head around, highpass lowpass bandpass all running together in my brain for a while there lol. as for whether the privileges matter... depends what you do i guess. if youre a casual rag chewer the extra chunk of spectrum is nice but youre not gonna feel like your life changed. but if you do any cw contesting the extra class cw sub-bands are noticeably cleaner

yeah the message handling thing is SO real, we had almost the exact same problem in our drill two years ago. people who sound totally confident on a regular net just kind of freeze up when theres actual simulated pressure and a backlog of traffic. what helped us a lot was doing smaller tabletop exercises more frequently instead of waiting for the big annual drill — like just getting together and running through message passing scenarios verbally without even going on the air, so the format becomes more automatic the interoperability gap is a tough one. we started maintaining a laminated card at our EOC position with the simplex frequencies pre-agreed with fire and EMS, and every operator who deploys gets a copy. sounds basic but it took us an actual failed drill to figure that out. also worth checking whether your served agencies even have a current copy of your frequencies — ours didnt for a while and nobody noticed until someone thought to ask for after action reviews, the thing that made the biggest difference for us was having someone who wasnt operating during the exercise take notes in real time. if everybody was in the thick of it they tend to remember their own experience and forget the systemic stuff. even just one person with a notepad walking around observing makes the debrief way more useful

so i finally got around to putting a proper dual band antenna on the truck, been running a mag mount for like two years and decided to do a real NMO mount through the roof. went with a Diamond NR770HNMO which ive heard good things about. the radio is a Yaesu FT-7900R and everything looked fine when i wired it up but when i checked SWR on 2m it was sitting around 1.8:1 on most of the band and kind of spikes near the edges. on 70cm it seemed okay, maybe 1.4:1 or so. i dont think ive done anything obviously wrong, the coax is RG-8X and the connector on the radio end is a PL-259 i soldered myself which honestly im not super confident about. the NMO adapter and mount itself should be fine, its a Larsen mount and i made sure the hole was clean and grounded to the body. just not sure if 1.8 on 2m is something to worry about or if im being paranoid about this. the radio seems to hit repeaters fine so maybe its okay?

congrats on your first real activation, those are nerve wracking even when they go well. the priority message question is a good one and honestly it depends on what your served agency wants. in our group we always clarify with the EC before anything shuts down for the night whether we hold traffic or attempt contact. if it's genuinely priority and could affect safety, you try again. sounds like you made the right call. the ICS thing is extremely common and its kind of an ongoing battle in a lot of counties. the hams that get treated as full team members are usually the ones whose ECs have spent years building relationships with emergency management, showing up to their meetings, taking IS-100 and IS-700 and the whole FEMA training track. some counties get it, some still think were just backup CB radio guys. best thing you can do is keep showing up, be professional, and let your work speak for itself over time. it does get better usually.

im pretty new to this still but i noticed the same thing on 20, kept hearing stations just disappear mid-qso. my elmer told me propagation can do that but i didnt really get how fast it could change until this week honestly

lol yeah 40 is always where i end up. propagation has been starnge this whole month tbh, solar flux was decent last week but i wasnt getting much skip at all. who knows

i just passed mine last month actually. used hamstudy and just drilled the question pool for like six weeks. didnt fully understand everything but enough to pass comfortably. the phase angle stuff and the transistor biasing questions were the ones i had to really work at. the test itself felt harder than the general but not insane or anything. the extra hf privileges are nice but tbh i upgraded mostly so i could join a certain club that requires extra class lol. whatever the reason works right

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now mostly doing SSB and some digital but i always wanted to learn CW properly. got myself a cheap iambic paddle off ebay and plugged it into the keyer built into my radio (ic-7300) and honestly the paddle itself feels okay but i cannot for the life of me get the dit/dah ratio feeling right. everything i send sounds either too rushed or i squeeze a dah and it spits out two extra dits i wasnt expecting. ive been practicing with the keyer set around 15 wpm because i read somewhere you should learn at speed and then just slow down the character spacing (farnsworth method i think its called?) but im not sure if im even doing that right. been using the G4FON trainer on my laptop for receiving which seems decent. anyone have tips for getting the muscle memory down for sending? its like my thumb and finger dont talk to each other yet lol also not sure if the paddle tension is part of the problem, it feels a little loose maybe. is there a sweet spot for that or is it just personal preference

yeah the 10 meter thing is real, i was on last thursday evening and had a pile of europeans coming back to me which i honestly was not expecting at all on that antenna setup. its been a while since ive seen the band like this, reminds me of the conditions back around 2013 or so. on the icom thing i wouldnt hold my breath too much, these rumors pop up every year and sometimes they pan out and sometimes they dont. that said they are overdue for something in that price range, the 7300 is getting a bit long in the tooth even though its still a fantastic radio. i'd be curious what features they'd even add at this point without cannibalizing the 7610.

yeah running both on the same machine is totally doable and actually pretty common for home stations. direwolf handles it fine, just gotta make sure your config is set up right — the DIGIPEAT line in direwolf.conf is where you define what you'll relay and with what alias. most people just set WIDE1-1 and WIDE2-1 aliases to start and leave it at that. the thing you do wanna think about is your antenna situation and how close you are to existing digipeaters. if theres already good coverage nearby and you start digipeating too you can create what they call a "coverage hole" by actually re-transmitting packets that then confuse the path counting downstream. theres a decent write-up on the WB4APR site about network design that helped me understand it. the short version is, if youre filling a genuine gap like you described, enabling WIDE1-1 digipeating (not WIDE2-2 which is usually reserved for hilltop sites) is probably the right call and wont cause much harm if your power is modest and antenna isnt huge. rx-only igates are great but they dont help a mobile station actually get its packet out when its in a dead zone, they only hear it if it gets there somehow. so yeah id look at the digipeater side of things for your specific problem.

the QCX+ is honestly one of the best kit builds ive done and im not even that great at soldering. hans summers designs them really well and the instructions are super detailed with photos for every step. only tricky part is the toroids, winding those little coils is a bit fiddly but nothing crazy. the radio performs way better than you'd expect for the price, i regularly work europe from the midwest on 40m with 5w CW. only thing is its CW only which some people dont like, but if youre interested in learning morse or already know it the QCX is hard to beat. if you want SSB there's the uSDX or the QDX for digital modes. QRP labs stuff in general is pretty solid. just take your time with the build, check your work as you go, and you'll be fine.

went through this exact thing about a year ago, the AE7 call i ended up with is way easier than my old one. one thing i'll add is there are some websites out there that track available vanity calls and show you when calls are coming back into the pool — like after a licensee passes away there's a waiting period before it becomes available again, i think its around 2 years but dont quote me on that. those sites can help you find something that not a ton of people are competing for which improves your odds a lot. good luck with it