Priya Patel

i just use N1MM for literally everything including FT8 contacts and export to ADIF at the end of the month into my main log. Log4OM is nice but honestly for contesting N1MM is just in a different league, the SO2R stuff alone is worth it even if you only use half the features. the learning curve is steep at first but once its dialed in you dont really want anything else running.

i did almost this exact same install on my 4runner last year, ft-891 but same general idea. went with the lip mount on the tailgate and honestly it works great, no complaints. the ground plane off the truck body seems fine for vhf/uhf, never had anyone tell me my signal was bad. one thing i didnt think about until after i was done -- where are you planning to put the head unit itself? i spent like an hour fiddling with different spots on the dash before i found somewhere i could actually see it without it being in the way. ended up with one of those ram mount things on the dash which i was skeptical about but its rock solid. just something to think about before you start drilling or whatever

yeah the vendor floor has definitely shrunk but honestly the tailgate stuff is still worth it if you get there early, like right when it opens. last year i snagged a barely used tuner for 40 bucks from some old timer who just wanted it gone. the afternoon is mostly picked over. our club usually does a caravan up from Chillicothe if thats any closer to you, we got maybe 5 or 6 guys going this time.

honestly at 25ft on 40m your dipole is going to be what, roughly 0.2 wavelengths up? you're right that it's going to be mostly nvis, good for regional stuff but the takeoff angle is going to be too high for consistent DX. you'll still get DX, just not reliably and you'll be missing a lot of the low angle stuff that's actually making it through. the vertical is probably the better call for what you want to do, but and this is a big but — the radial system matters way more than people admit. ive seen guys throw up a 6BTV with like 8 radials and then complain it doesnt work and yeah of course it doesnt. if you can get 16-20 radials down, even short ones, it starts to actually perform. the 6BTV is a decent antenna for the money but its not magic. if noise is your concern you might look at a receive only antenna for listening and use the vertical just for TX, some guys do that with a small loop or a beverage if you have the space, but thats probably more complexity than you want right now. short answer: vertical with a real radial field for DX, accept the noise, use good filtering and a decent receiver.

im pretty new too so take this with a grain of salt but i downloaded an app called Ham Alert and it pings me when certain DX stations get spotted on bands i care about. helped me not miss openings while im at work. still learning the solar stuff myself honestly

so ive been going back and forth on this for probably two months now and i cant make up my mind. the situation is i have maybe 60 feet of usable run in the backyard before i hit the fence and my neighbor's shed. the lot is narrow but i do have a decent tree at about 35 feet near the back corner. i was thinking an inverted V hung from that tree would get me on 40m without too much drama, but then i started reading about verticals and now im second guessing everything. main thing i want to do is work some DX, not just regional stuff. ive heard verticals have a lower takeoff angle which is supposed to be better for that? but also ive heard ground radials are a huge pain and if you dont do them right the vertical just becomes a dummy load basically. the inverted V feels simpler but im worried about the high angle radiation being more of an NVIS thing. anyone run both and have an actual opinion? not looking for a textbook answer, just what worked for you

yeah definitely try it, worst case you make like 20 contacts and have fun. the zone thing confused me too at first but once you look at a zone map it clicks fast. i think im zone 4 up here in michigan but honestly i still double check every time lol one thing i'd add is just dont stress about your score your first time out. i spent my first CQ WW just hunting and pouncing, never called CQ myself, and it was way less stressful that way. you kind of learn the pacing and the lingo just by listening to how other people do the exchange and copying them basically. SOTA is actually good prep for this stuff in a weird way because youre already used to quick efficient exchanges

yeah ae7q is the one everyone uses, i went through this whole thing like two years ago when i upgraded to general and wanted a shorter call. took me a few tries to find something i actually liked that wasnt already taken or in some weird pending status. the FCC application itself isnt too bad once you find the right form, just slow sometimes. good luck

QCX mini is such a good first kit honestly. i built one a couple years back and it was the thing that got me actually interested in homebrew. the receiver on those is surprisingly good for what it is for SOTA i've been using mine with a linked dipole that i can switch between 40 and 20. takes maybe 5 minutes to set up if you have a decent tree or a telescoping pole. the whole thing rolls up into a stuff sack and weighs almost nothing. 3 watts into a dipole at elevation will get you a pile up if the band is cooperating, trust me. some of my best DX has been from hilltops with embarrassingly simple wire antennas one thing worth knowing before you head out — the QCX runs warm when you're transmitting for extended periods so if it's a hot summer day just keep an eye on it. never caused me a problem but i've read about it. also bring a fully charged battery pack, that thing sips current but you still want margin for a full activation

for what youre describing id probably lean collinear honestly. the omnidirectional pattern just makes life easier when youre doing social activations with the club — nobody wants to stand there cranking a yagi around every time someone new calls in from a different direction. a diamond X50 is pretty robust for portable use too, doesnt take much to get it vertical on a camera tripod or a small mast section. that said, if you start getting into weak signal SSB work on 2m youll eventually want a beam because gain actually matters there and the omni will frustrate you. maybe just do the collinear now and build a cheap tape measure yagi to throw in the bag for when conditions are interesting. the tape measure design is light enough that its not a real burden and you can collapse it down. done both for years and thats the setup i keep coming back to.

so ive been noticing 20m has been kind of all over the place the last few weeks and im not sure if its actually the solar flux doing something weird or if theres something going on with my antenna that im missing. like some days i can hear europe clear as a bell in the morning and then the next day same time same everything and its just noise. checked my SWR and everything looks fine on that end. looked at the solar flux numbers on spaceweather.com and they were sitting around 145 or so which i thought was supposed to be decent? but then we had that geomagnetic storm a few days back and yeah that kind of explained the one really bad day but the inconsistency before that is what im puzzled about. anybody else seeing this on 20 or is it a regional thing. im in the midwest if that matters. also been hearing some wild stuff on 10m in the afternoons which i didnt expect at all given where we are in the solar cycle. thought maybe Es but it seemed more consistent than that for a few days running.

honest answer — it depends on how serious you want to get. for a lot of guys who are chasing top 10 nationally it's basically mandatory at this point, but if youre not in that bracket already the gains from just improving your single radio operating are probably bigger than anything SO2R gives you. that said the audio routing is the part that trips most people up and once you solve that piece the rest sort of falls into place. a lot of guys use a headphone mixing setup so one ear is the run radio and one ear is the S&P radio at lower volume, takes some getting used to but your brain adapts. the antenna isolation side of things with a K3 and 7300 is more annoying since youre dealing with two different manufacturers and the intermod situation can get ugly depending on how close your antennas are. 180/hr peak on phone 20m is solid work for single radio honestly. i wouldnt rush into SO2R just because someone told you to, get your rate consistency up first and then add the complexity when it stops feeling like complexity if that makes sense.

same boat here six months ago lol. i was terrified my first check in. the long winded guy on your net sounds like every net has one of those, ours does too. i think he just likes the hobby a lot which is fine but yeah net control sometimes has to kind of move things along. you did fine trust me, short check ins are totally normal

So I was just sitting down with my coffee around 8am local time, had the radio on kind of as background noise while I was checking email, and all of a sudden I'm hearing stations on 6m like I've never heard before. Worked a couple guys in Florida from up here in Minnesota which honestly I wasn't expecting at all for this time of year. The band just opened up out of nowhere and lasted maybe 45 minutes before it was gone again. Also saw someone mention the new Icom IC-905 has been showing up at a few dealers finally, anyone actually gotten their hands on one yet? I've been on the fence about it but man the specs look interesting for microwave work. Feels like there's been a lot of new gear dropping lately, between that and the new Yaesu stuff it's a good time to be paying attention I guess. Anyway just wanted to share, keep your ears on 50MHz folks, the Es season seems to be ramping up early this year at least in my experience.

honest answer? for most HF contests it absolutely is worth it once you get past the initial setup pain but that caveat matters a lot. the interference issue with your specific antenna arrangement is going to be a real problem if youre trying to run on 40 while searching on 80 simultaneously. i ran a similar situation for about a season before i gave up and put a decent bandpass filter setup in line — the 4O3A filters made a massive difference but thats another 600 bucks you probably werent planning to spend. the workflow thing is honestly the bigger hurdle than the hardware. i'd suggest not even thinking about running on both radios at first. just use radio 2 strictly for finding mults while youre running on radio 1. its not true SO2R in the full sense but your rate will still go up noticeably and your head wont explode. i picked up maybe 15% more QSOs per hour just doing that before i ever tried running two frequencies at once. the key is getting N1MM set up right so the bandmap on the second radio is feeding useful spots automatically and you're not manually hunting around.