Diana Washington

14 QSOs absolutely counts, activation is activation. I remember my first one I was so nervous I forgot to write down the park reference on half my log entries and had to go back and fix everything before uploading. what a pain that was. the self-spotting thing is huge and I wish someone had told me sooner too. some guys are religious about not self-spotting but honestly for a new activator just trying to get the 10 contacts and learn the process, just spot yourself. the hunters are out there waiting, they just dont know youre on the air. once you get comfortable you can try working without a spot and see how long it takes, kind of a fun challenge actually. also 40m at 2pm local can be rough depending on where you are, propagation gets weird in the afternoon. might be worth trying 20m next time especially if youre trying to pull in hunters from farther away. welcome to the POTA rabbit hole, it gets expensive from here lol

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because my neighbor has this huge antenna setup and he let me listen in one night and it was actually really cool. anyway i looked it up and apparently you have to take a test? i dont really know what level to go for or what the difference is between the licenses. i found some stuff online but theres so much information i dont even know whats current or what actually matters for the test. does anyone have like a straightforward way to go about this or did you just memorize everything and hope for the answer

yeah same thing happened to me when i first got on SSB, turns out i had the mic too close to my mouth and was getting a ton of low end plosives on p and b sounds which just sounds awful. try keeping it like 2-3 inches away and talking slightly across it rather than directly into it. also worth checking if you have any RF getting back into the mic cable, i had a grounding issue once that was adding this weird hum that i couldnt hear on the monitor but showed up on recordings someone made of my signal. had someone on the other end record a bit of my audio on their phone held up to the speaker and that was way more useful than anything else honestly

the buddipole on 40m might be a bit of a pain depending on how you configure it, just a heads up. i tried running mine on 40 portable once and the coil adjustment took me forever to dial in. might be worth doing a quick tune at home first if you havent already so you know the settings before you're standing in a field squinting at an SWR meter. also bring more water than you think you need, learned that one the hard way last summer. good luck out there

so ive been putting together a portable setup for a ARES exercise this weekend and im running into the usual headaches. the main thing im trying to sort out is power. we're deploying at a site with no shore power so its either the honda eu2200i i borrowed or battery with solar backup, and i cant decide which makes more sense for a 12 hour shift. the generator is obviously more reliable if we need to run the IC-7300 at anywhere near full power plus the laptop and maybe a second radio but god those things are loud and we're supposed to be in a fairly quiet area. the 7300 on full 100w draws what, like 20 amps? so a 100ah lithium would run maybe 3-4 hours at that rate if im doing the math right, less if theres other stuff on it. i have a 200w panel i could bring but its overcast all weekend supposedly. on the antenna side ive got a vertical trapped dipole that i usually use but i was thinking of just doing a NVIS setup with a 40m flat top since we'll mostly be doing regional stuff within a few hundred miles. anyone done a comparison of those two for that kind of range? the flat top is way easier to put up honestly. also if you guys have opinions on the best way to cable manage a field station so it doesnt look like a rats nest id love to hear it, every time i do one of these it turns into a disaster by hour 3

nice, which summit was it? im always looking for new ones in my area that arent too brutal on the legs lol

im kinda in the same boat as you, got my ticket about two months ago and went with the FT-60R after going back and forth forever. no regrets so far, the battery lasts forever and i dropped it once in a parking lot and it was totally fine lol. programming it without the software is a little annoying at first but theres good youtube videos for it.

yeah that's basically the whole game right there, listening first. most people just key up and hope which is why pileups are such a mess. one thing i'd add is paying attention to the timing pattern of the DX operator — some guys have a very consistent rhythm, they'll come back to a station, get the exchange, send QSL TU and then listen again in like 8-10 seconds. if you can internalize that rhythm you can time your call to land right as they start listening again instead of calling through their whole transmission which just annoys everyone. also power matters less than people think. ive broken pileups running 100w into a decent antenna when guys with amps couldnt get through because they were calling at the wrong moment. a 100w call at exactly the right time beats a 1500w call on top of everyone else. propagation also plays into this, sometimes waiting 20 minutes and the band shift will clear half the competition and suddenly you're the loudest one in the window.

oh man i totally missed that opening, was at work and saw it blowing up on the dxwatch page after the fact and was pretty bummed. thats the thing about 10m you never really know when its gonna light up and then poof its gone. ive been trying to set up some kind of alert on my phone for when the flux hits certain numbers but havent quite figured out the best way to do that yet, does anyone have a setup they like for that? not much to add on the radio side since im still running a pretty basic setup but it sounds interesting, i keep going back and forth on whether to upgrade from my entry level rig or just put money into antennas first which is probably the smarter move honestly

i was in basically the exact same spot two years ago and just jumped in with a 4x9el array and the G-5500, made my first EME contact within the first weekend of trying and i was honestly shocked. Q65 has kind of changed the game a bit compared to when it was all JT65. the community on the ON4KST chat is super active and people will literally wait for you to get set up and point at the moon if you announce youre trying for a first contact, really welcoming group for something that sounds intimidating from the outside.

yeah you are definitely overthinking it haha. the actual exam questions come directly from the published question pool, no tricks, no surprises. the FCC requires the pools to be public so thats just how it works. hamstudy.org is honestly all you need, just do the practice exams over and over until youre consistently getting 80+ percent and youll be fine. the pass threshold is 74 percent i think, 26 out of 35 questions. the books are fine if you actually want to understand the material which i do recommend because otherwise you pass and then have no idea what youre doing when you key up for the first time. but strictly for passing the exam, hamstudy and maybe the ARRL tech manual if you want to go deeper. dont stress it, most people pass on the first try if they put in even a couple weeks of casual studying

yeah the duplicate igate thing is totally normal and not really something you can fix from your end. when two igates hear the same packet theyll both upload it to the APRS-IS and the server side is supposed to dedupe them but sometimes the timing is close enough that both slip through. 4-5 seconds apart sounds like just two igates with slightly different processing times, not a path problem. that said WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 in a suburban area is fine, thats basically what everyone runs. if you were out in the boonies youd maybe go WIDE2-2 but in a dense area some people actually drop to just WIDE1-1 to reduce congestion. the smart beaconing thing with more aggressive settings can increase how many packets you throw out during stop-and-go which does put more load on the digis but honestly one station doing that isnt going to bring anything down. if it really bugs you you can watch the raw packets on aprs.fi and see which igates are grabbing you, sometimes theres an obvious pattern

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech) and i finally got my first HT, a Baofeng UV-5R, and im trying to get into a couple of the local repeaters in my area. i can hear people talking on them just fine but when i transmit nobody responds and i dont think im getting into the machine at all. i looked up the repeater directory and it says the tone is 100.0 Hz. i programmed that into the radio but im not sure if i set it as the transmit tone or the receive tone or both. i think i have it set right but honestly the Baofeng menus are kind of a nightmare to figure out. also is CTCSS the same as PL tone? people keep using both terms and i assumed they were the same thing but now im second guessing myself. and just kind of a related thing — is there like a standard way to break into a conversation on a repeater? i dont wanna be rude and step on someone. i heard you just say your callsign during a pause but i wasnt sure if that was always the case or just for certain repeaters. still trying to figure out the etiquette side of things too

honestly when i first got on HF i was SO worried about phonetics and within like a month it just clicked. the main time it actually matters is weak signal stuff or when theres a lot of QRM and someone really needs to copy your call correctly. on a local net on a clear frequency it probably doesnt matter much. but i still always use NATO just out of habit now. also worth noting some DX operators get confused by non-standard phonetics if english isnt their first language because they learned the NATO ones and thats it, so there is a practical reason beyond just rules

so ive been running a diamond x50 on my roof for a couple years now and its been fine for 2m but i want to add a dedicated 70cm yagi up there, probably a 9 or 11 element, pointing more or less toward the repeater cluster about 22 miles out. the problem is the coax run from the shack to the roof is maybe 55 feet of RG8X that i already have buried in the wall and i really dont want to tear it all out. i know RG8X is fine for 2m but 70cm is a different animal and i cant remember what the loss numbers actually are at 440. anyone done this and thought it was acceptable or is it gonna be bad enough that i should just bite the bullet and pull LMR400 through there. the yagi would be doing most of the work obviously but still.

the digital modes really did change the game for this, youre right about that. back when it was all CW EME you basically needed a serious array and high power just to hear anything back. JT65 and now Q65 have made single yagi operation actually viable, not just theoretically possible. for a realistic starter setup on 2m, a single long yagi in the 20-23 element range plus 100w will get you contacts but youre going to be limited to working stations that have big arrays on the other end. if you can bump power to 400w or so it opens up considerably more. the preamp is honestly just as important as power though — a good low noise preamp right at the feedpoint makes a bigger difference than you'd think, youre looking for something under 0.5dB noise figure if you can manage it. 144.130 is the standard JT65 EME calling frequency, and most people coordinate through the ping jockey logger at dxc.beans.net or the wsjt-x built in logging. you can also just watch the logger and see whos calling. moon rise and moon set windows are when the moon is at a workable elevation for your location so you kind of plan around that. lunac3 or any moon tracking software will help you figure out when to be at the radio. dont get discouraged if it takes a few sessions before you get that first contact, there's a real learning curve just figuring out the timing and pointing even before the rf stuff makes sense

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now, general class, mostly just doing some local 2m stuff but i keep hearing about CW and honestly it sounds kind of cool. problem is i have zero idea where to start. like do i need to learn the alphabet first and then try to copy actual transmissions or is there some specific order you're supposed to go in? i downloaded a couple apps and they all seem to do it differently. one of them teaches you like 5 letters at a time and another one just throws random characters at you from the start. i dont know which approach is better or if it even matters. also i keep reading about something called the koch method but i dont really understand what makes it different. just looking for some direction i guess, not trying to get anywhere fast just want to actually make a CW contact someday

yeah 40m in the evenings is kind of its own thing. theres a group that meets around 7.250 most nights around here and i just check in sometimes when i want company without having to go anywhere lol. nobody cares about signal reports or antennas it's just people talking

the inverted V angle is almost certainly whats pulling your resonant frequency up. when you fold the legs down from horizontal the effective electrical length gets shorter so the antenna acts shorter than it actually is, which pushes resonance higher. its counterintuitive but thats how it works. most people find they need to add a few inches to each leg for an inverted V to get resonance back where they want it, so youre actually in decent shape just needs trimming back toward your target freq. the 1.8:1 at 7.150 is honestly fine if your rig can handle it, most modern rigs with internal tuners wont even blink at that. but if you want to get it lower just lengthen both legs by equal amounts, maybe 3-4 inches at a time and recheck. go slow its easier to trim than to add back on. the balun question is a real one. without one you can get common mode current running back down the outside of the coax which can mess with your pattern and sometimes cause RF in the shack. a simple 1:1 current balun or even a coax choke (wind 8-10 turns of your coax near the feedpoint) makes a real difference, worth doing even on a basic dipole.

honestly i went through the exact same thing last year around the same speed. what helped me weirdly was just bumping the character speed up way past where i was comfortable -- like setting LCWO to 20wpm character speed even though i couldnt really keep up -- and just letting myself miss stuff. at first i felt like i was getting nowhere cause my copy was terrible but after a few weeks something started to click and i wasnt sounding out letters anymore. i think my brain just kind of gave up trying to decode dits and dahs and started learning the sounds as whole characters. took maybe 6 weeks before i noticed a real differnece. also just being patient with yourself, 3 months is not that long for this stuff

yeah what he said about band edges is the main thing that got me when i was new. i actually did transmit slightly out of band once without realizing it because i thought the dial frequency WAS my frequency, didnt understand the whole carrier vs. where the audio actually sits thing on SSB. nobody said anything but i checked with a more experienced guy later and he pointed it out the ARRL band plan chart is probably the most reliable thing to reference, just google that specifically rather than random sites. some of those third party pages haven't been updated since like 2012 and the allocations did change

i was in the same boat when i started lol. what clicked for me was just thinking of LoTW as the official one for awards and eQSL as kind of like the casual one where you get nice looking digital cards sometimes. i still upload to both just because why not, takes like 2 minutes extra. the physical card thing is genuinely fun though, i started sending cards out for any DX contact i make and i've gotten some really nice ones back. just get yourself some cards printed, there are a bunch of places that do them, and keep a small stack ready. QRZ lets you put your mailing address so people can direct QSL you too which is how most of it works these days i think

im basically in the same boat as you, maybe a little behind actually, so i cant give you expert advice but i did read somewhere that the plateau around 13-15wpm is really common and has something to do with how your brain processes the patterns. like you hit a point where the easy characters are automatic but common words and letter combos arent yet, so you slow back down without realizing it. ive been trying to practice with actual words and sentences instead of random characters lately and it does seem to help a little. also just wanted to say the QSO thing — yeah my first few were rough too, dont sweat it

honestly dont stress it too much. the math on the General exam is pretty straightforward, theres some ohms law stuff and a bit on decibels but nothing you need a calculator for if you just memorize the formulas. i was in the same boat as you, worried about all the theory and it turned out fine. i used HamStudy.org and just drilled the question pool for like 3 weeks, maybe 20-30 minutes a day while commuting. as for what you get -- the big one is 40m and 20m phone privileges, which is where most of the action is for general class. you get chunks of those bands but not the whole thing, Extra class guys get a little more room especially on 20m cw portion. but honestly General is plenty to get on the air and have a real good time with HF. you can work a lot of DX, get into nets, contest a bit. the bands youll care about most are probably 40m for domestic and nighttime stuff and 20m for DX during the day when propagation cooperates

so ive been messing around with FO-29 and AO-73 for a few weeks now and the doppler correction is just killing me. im using SDR# with a plugin for doppler on the receive side but my uplink is just a handheld pointed at a yagi which i know isnt ideal but bear with me here. the problem is even when i think im tuned right i can hear myself come back through the transponder way off from where i expect, like sometimes i find myself and then i lose it again before i can even say my callsign properly. i tried using gpredict for the tracking data and its pretty decent but syncing the doppler correction to my actual radio while also manually adjusting the uplink is just a lot to juggle. is there a way people usually handle this that isnt a full computerized rig with CAT control? i dont have CAT on my HT obviously lol. also is there a trick to just parking somewhere in the passband and staying put rather than constantly chasing the frequency? i feel like ive seen people mention this somewhere but cant remember where. the passes where the max elevation is under like 20 degrees are basically useless for me right now, i think my antenna situation is part of that but still. any tips appreciated, been lurking here for ages and figured id finally just ask.