Helen Taylor

yeah this is a pretty common headache with the RRC setup when you're trying to run the SDR stream on top of everything else. the problem is the remotehams client treats the panadapter data as lower priority than audio and CAT control, so when theres any network hiccup it gets dropped first and the software doesnt always recover cleanly without a restart of that window. its not really a buffer setting issue per se, more just how the thing is architected. what helped me was actually putting the SDR on a completely separate network path using a second internet link at the remote end, just a cheap cable connection dedicated to the SDR stream. ran the rig audio and control over the main link and the RTL-SDR or whatever dongle youre using over the second one. annoying extra cost but the dropouts basically stopped. also worth checking if your hotel wifi is doing anything aggressive with UDP packets, a lot of hotel networks throttle or drop UDP which is what most of that streaming runs on. you can test by trying the same setup on your phone hotspot and see if the behavior changes.

so our ARES group has a county-wide exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and i've been tasked with putting together the primary HF station at the EOC staging area, which is basically a parking lot behind the old fairgrounds. no shore power available so we're running off whatever we bring. the club has a Honda EU2200i that we've used before and it runs great, quiet enough that you can actually have a conversation next to it, but im wondering if it's worth the hassle of hauling it out versus just going deep cycle and maybe a decent LiFePO4 battery bank. the rig we're running is an IC-7300 which pulls maybe 20A on transmit and we'll have it going pretty much continuously for 8-10 hours with a laptop, a few phone chargers for the served agency people, and whatever else gets plugged in. for the antenna i was thinking of putting up a linked dipole — got a nice homebrew one that does 40/20/15 and tunes up decent on 80 with a little help from the 7300's tuner, maybe 35 feet at the apex off a push-up mast. the site is pretty open which is good but there's a chain link fence running along one side that i'm a little worried about. anyway the main thing i want to figure out is whether a battery-only setup is even realistic for that kind of runtime or if i just suck it up and bring the genny. anyone done similar stuff and have a rough sense of what they were burning through?

there's no hard rule that says you HAVE to use phonetics, it's more of a practical thing. the reason it exists is that a lot of letters sound almost identical over RF especially when the signal isn't great — B and D and E and P and V all start to blur together when there's any noise. so for a callsign like yours where letters might be ambiguous, yeah phonetics just make life easier for whoever is trying to copy you. on a local repeater with a strong signal and people who know each other it's pretty common to just rattle off the letters normally, nobody's gonna call you out on it. but if you're doing anything where accurate copy matters — like if you're making a contact with someone far away or doing any kind of nets — phonetics are just the polite thing. you'll develop a feel for it pretty fast once you're actually on the air.

so ive been using N1MM for a while now mostly because thats what everyone on the club uses for contests and it works great for that, but for day to day logging its kind of overkill and the interface honestly feels clunky when im just working some casual dx on 20m and want to log a contact without setting up a whole contest profile started looking at Log4OM and it seems like it has better integration with stuff like QRZ lookups and the award tracking is more fleshed out, but im wondering if anyone actually runs both — like N1MM for when a contest comes around and Log4OM for everything else. seems like it might be a pain keeping two logs in sync or importing between them also threw a wrench in things because i started using WSJT-X for FT8 last year and now ive got contacts spread across like three different places and im not even sure my LoTW uploads have been consistent. probably a mess. anyway curious what other people are doing for their main shack logging setup, especially if you do a mix of phone/cw and digital

oh man yeah the first real one is totally different from a drill. i remember mine was a winter storm about four years ago and i showed up thinking id be all prepared and then just kind of froze for a minute when i realized there were actual people depending on the info moving through us. you get past it pretty quick once you settle into the rhythm of the net but yeah that initial moment is real. the thing about forgetting callsign order, dont sweat it, everybody does that when the adrenaline kicks in. net control at a real activation has seen it a hundred times. the fact that you were there and on the air is what matters, the procedural stuff tightens up over time and after a few more you wont even think about it. also side note -- do you guys do ICS-100 and 200 training in your ARES group? our EC made that basically mandatory a couple years ago and it helped a lot with knowing how to operate within the bigger emergency management structure rather than just kind of floating around not sure who to report to.

yeah ive done almost exactly this, well close enough. i used a Nano instead of the Uno just for the smaller footprint and powered it off the USB port on the back of the 7300. the band voltage decoding is actually pretty straightforward once you figure out the voltage table — Icom publishes it in the manual but the values are a little weird in practice, like theyre not always exactly what the spec says, probably just ADC tolerance on the arduino side. i ended up adding about a 50ms debounce delay and that cleaned up most of the false triggers when scanning through bands quickly. as for github i think W6JL or somebody had a band decoder sketch floating around a while back but i honestly just wrote mine from scratch, wasnt that many lines of code. the relay board thing works fine but make sure your relays are actually rated for whatever youre switching — i fried a cheap 5v SRD relay board the first time because i was running more coax switching current through it than it liked. swapped to a proper DIN rail relay and no issues since. the pi idea is cool if you want the logging piece but its way more setup for something that a tiny microcontroller handles perfectly fine. that said if youre already comfortable with python and dont mind the boot time, go for it.

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for contacts and i get the appeal but honestly after a while it starts feeling like watching a slot machine. you log the call, they log you, done. no actual exchange of anything. heard about JS8Call and the whole idea of being able to pass actual messages back and forth over weak signals sounds a lot more interesting to me. but ive also heard the learning curve is steeper and the band activity is way lower so finding someone to actually talk to can be frustrating depending on your location and time of day. also running a SignaLink USB into an IC-7300 if that matters, already have WSJT-X dialed in pretty well with the audio levels and all that. wondering if the interface setup for JS8Call is similar enough that it wont be a whole new headache. and does anyone actually use it regularly or is it kind of a ghost town most of the time on 40m or wherever people hang out on it

i actually run both, sort of. Log4OM is my everyday logger because i genuinely like having the QRZ lookup and the map and all that stuff visible while im just casually working stations. it connects to WSJT-X via UDP fine in my experience, been doing that for maybe a year now with no real complaints other than it sometimes takes a second to catch up if youre logging a bunch of FT8 contacts quickly. but when a contest comes around i switch to N1MM because theres just no comparison for that use case. the rate display, the multiplier tracking, being able to run SO2R if you ever go down that rabbit hole... Log4OM isnt even trying to compete with that honestly. so my workflow is contest weekend use N1MM, export the ADIF after, import into Log4OM to keep the master log current. its an extra step but its like a 2 minute thing so i dont really mind.

so i got my general ticket back in the spring and ive been mostly just ragchewing on 40m and doing some SOTA stuff on weekends which has been awesome btw. but a few guys at my local club keep talking about CQ WW and how its this huge deal and i should try it. i looked it up and yeah it does seem like a big deal, like tens of thousands of operators all at once which sounds both exciting and completely terrifying honestly. my setup is nothing special, ic-7300 into a trapped vertical in the backyard, maybe 100 watts. i dont really know the exchange format or what zone i need to give out or any of that. do i need special software or can i just jump on and work stations manually with paper logging? and is Field Day at all similar to this or is that a totally different thing operationally. i did Field Day with the club this year but we had guys running everything so i just kind of sat there and pushed the keyer button when they told me to. also wondering if theres anything else worth doing before end of year, ive seen some mentions of a november sweepstakes thing too

had both at the same time for a while actually. the HackRF is a fun toy but if youre not transmitting and you care about receive quality on HF the RSP1B just walks all over it. the noise floor difference is pretty noticeable when youre trying to pull weak signals, HackRF isnt terrible but its clearly not optimized for sensitivity the way the SDRplay is. i ended up keeping the HackRF mostly for the frequency agility, like when i want to look at something weird above a gig or do some replay stuff but for actual listening the SDRplay is what i reach for. SDRangel is worth it imo but budget a weekend to get comfortable with it, the interface is not immediately obvious and the documentation is... uneven. once it clicks though its really powerful, the built in demodulators and the way you can stack multiple receivers on one device is hard to go back from. still use SDR# for quick and dirty stuff because it just opens fast

congrats on the 100 confirmed, thats a real milestone even if it sneaks up on you. to answer your first question — basic DXCC is just any 100 current entities, mixed bands and modes all count together. you dont need 100 on a single band for the basic award. the band and mode endorsements are separate things you can go for later once you have the main certificate, and yeah those do require 100 confirmed on that specific band or mode. deleted entities is kind of a whole rabbit hole. short version is they dont count toward your current entity total for the basic award but ARRL does keep track of them and there are some old timers with deleted entities on their account going back decades. not something you need to worry about starting out. WAS is completely separate, administered differently, and is 50 US states confirmed. totally worth chasing alongside DXCC since a lot of your domestic contacts will count toward it. honestly your instinct to just work everything and sort it out later is probably the right one — LoTW does most of the heavy lifting once you get people confirming.

congrats on passing the ticket. honestly the baofeng vs real radio debate has been going on forever and the truth is somewhere in the middle. the UV-5R works fine for hitting local repeaters, i still have one in my go bag as a backup, but yeah the audio quality isnt great and programming them without the software is a bit of a pain. if your budget can stretch to the ft-65 id probably go that route, its solidly built and yaesu's audio on receive is noticeably better, especially in noisy environments like a parking lot or whatever. the APRS thing — if thats something youre actually interested in and not just a nice-to-have, look at the yaesu ft3dr or the kenwood th-d75. theyre more money but they have built in GPS and real APRS support, not just the half-baked stuff some radios claim to do. the wouxun you mentioned is decent too, i dont have personal experience with that specific model but wouxun quality has come up a lot since the early days. just figure out what you actually want to DO with it first and work backwards from there

so ive been licensed for about 4 years now, mostly HF stuff but ive been reading about EME for a few months and honestly its just wild to me that people are bouncing signals off the moon and actually making contacts. i finally went down a rabbit hole after talking to a guy at the club who works 2m EME with a big yagi setup and he made it sound almost doable for a regular person. my question is basically what does a realistic entry level EME setup look like these days. i know the old school way required massive antenna arrays and high power amps and basically a whole field of yagis but ive been reading that JT65 and now Q65 have kind of changed that? like people are doing it with a single long yagi and 500 watts or something? im on 2m already and have a decent preamp situation, just wondering if anyone here has actually done a first EME contact and what your setup was when you did it. also is there a minimum elevation your moon needs to be at before its even worth trying, i feel like ive seen different numbers thrown around on that.

Honest question — does antenna really matter that much compared to just having the right technique? I'm running a G5RV at about 30ft and I feel like no matter what I do in a big pileup I'm just not getting through. 100w is probably part of it but I can't run an amp right now. Is there a point where technique can compensate or am I just physically not loud enough to compete? I got lucky once with a ZL but that was a pretty thin pileup on 17m at like 6am and I think conditions just happened to favor me. Anything with a real crowd I end up giving up after half an hour.

there is actually an ARRL document with a big list of them if you google around, i found a pdf once that had like every Q code plus all the common procedural abbreviations. honestly though most of the ones you actually hear day to day are maybe like 15 or 20 of them. QRP is low power operation which you see a lot online too not just on air. QSO is a contact or conversation. QRM QRN QSB like the other guy said. QRX means wait or standby. QRT means im shutting down or going off air. people say going QRT all the time on voice. the one that tripped me up when i started was QRZ, i thought it just meant whos calling but it can also be used at the end of a cq as kind of a question like whos there, and then on the qrz dot com website its a whole different thing lol

yeah i was totally lost on this stuff too when i first got my ticket. the one that got me for a long time was QRZ, i kept thinking it meant someone was calling CQ but it actually just means whos calling me or whos there. totally different vibe. also QTH is your location which you hear constantly on phone too not just CW. dont stress too much about memorizing all of them at once, the ones that come up in conversation you'll just start remembering naturally. the weird obscure ones like QUG or whatever nobody really uses anyway

so ive been noticing 15m has been doing some strange things this past week or so. some mornings it sounds completely dead and then like an hour later im hearing europe no problem and then it just dies again. been watching the solar flux numbers and they've been bouncing around pretty good, yesterday it was up around 160 which i thought would mean decent conditions but i was still struggling to work anything past maybe 2000 miles or so. im not super experienced with reading propagation, ive been licensed about 2 years and i mostly just fire up the radio and see what happens. wondering if anyone with more experience has a good feel for what's going on with the bands lately or if theres a good resource for actually understanding the solar flux numbers vs just knowing higher is better. also saw something about a coronal mass ejection last week, not sure if that messed things up or if that was before the good conditions i was seeing. just kinda confused about all of it honestly.

yeah what he said basically. also dont stress too much about it, after a while it just becomes natural and you'll feel when you need them. the repeater thing is pretty casual usually. HF is where it really matters imo

mode A vs B honestly doesnt matter much at the speeds you're working at, and even most experienced ops just pick one and stick with it. i've been using mode A my whole CW life and never had a reason to switch. id just leave it wherever it defaults and focus on the actual sending for now. the stiffness thing is almost certainly the tension adjustment — yes those side screws control the gap between the contacts and the spring tension. loosen them just a tiny bit at a time and test. you want the paddle to feel light but not so loose that it bounces. it takes some fiddling and honestly every paddle is a little different. cheap amazon paddles can be hit or miss with consistency but theyre totally fine to learn on, i started on something similar. one thing i'd add — dont get too caught up in the keyer and paddle stuff right now. the real work is training your ear and your brain to copy. lcwo is good but also just get on the air and listen to actual QSOs on 40 meters around 7.050 or so, even if you cant copy everything yet. hearing real sloppy human fists versus computer perfect tones is a big adjustment

yeah wind is the thing nobody warns you about until youve been up there struggling with it lol. what i started doing is bringing a couple of those cheap bungee cords and a small ground stake, just put some tension on the feedpoint end so it isnt swinging all over. also helped when i switched to a more vertical-ish setup instead of a flat dipole, way less surface area for the wind to grab. 4 contacts still counts though, activation is an activation

the path loss is actually closer to 252dB on 2m depending on lunar distance, but yeah roughly that ballpark. honest answer on your antenna question — a single long yagi running JT65B can absolutely work EME, especially with a good low-noise preamp at the feedpoint. ive seen guys make contacts with a single 9el cross-yagi and 100 watts, its slow going but it happens. the 4-yagi array is obviously way better, each time you double your antenna elements you get 3dB which adds up fast. H-frame vs X-frame is mostly a mechanical preference thing in my experience, the stacking distances matter more than which frame style you use. if you go with 4x yagis you want to get the horizontal and vertical spacing optimized for your specific yagi design, usually around 2.2 to 2.6 wavelengths depending on the boom length. dont just guess at the spacing, there are stacking calculators online and its worth spending an hour on it. the other thing people underestimate is the preamp. a 0.3dB noise figure vs a 0.6dB one sounds like nothing but at these signal levels it matters. EME pro is still the go-to logging software for this stuff if you havent looked at it yet.

I still use the bureau system for most DX cards. The bureau allows hams to exchange QSLs at a fraction of the cost of direct mail, though it can take years and the incoming bureaus may request funds to cover operating expenses. For special catches or DXpeditions, I'll spend the extra for direct mail to ensure I get the card.

Don't forget about Faraday rotation being more pronounced at lower VHF frequencies and becoming less significant at 1296 MHz. On 2m, polarization mismatch can kill your signal completely. A SSB Electronics SP70 preamp feeding an IC-9700 with optimized WSJT settings can pull out very weak signals.

ok so i passed my general exam like three weeks ago and ive been trying to figure out exactly what frequencies im allowed to use. i read through part 97 but honestly its kind of hard to parse, like i get the basic idea but then theres all these sub-bands and allocations and i keep second guessing myself before i transmit anywhere. specifically im confused about the 40 meter band because i keep hearing technicians can use part of it too? and then theres the whole thing about phone vs CW privileges and where the lines are. i dont want to accidentally transmit somewhere im not supposed to. is there like a plain english version of this somewhere or do i just have to memorize the band plan chart

the interlock thing is what bit me when i first tried it. forgot to properly configure the keying interlock in N1MM and briefly had both rigs keyed up at the same time into antennas that were not well isolated. nothing blew up but it was a bad moment. make sure whatever logging software you use has that sorted before you key anything up.