Carol White

yeah the PTT staying keyed thing is a known annoyance with remotehams, there's a watchdog timer setting somewhere in the server config that should release PTT if it loses heartbeat for more than a couple seconds, worth digging into if you havent already. i think its under the advanced tab in the server settings but dont quote me on that, been a while since i poked around in there. the ping spikes sound like a bufferbloat problem at the remote site. even with a fast connection if the router queue isnt managed well you can get those bursts. try running the dslreports speed test with the bufferbloat test and see what grade it gets. if its C or below thats probably your culprit. replacing the router or flashing it with openwrt and setting up fq_codel fixed mine completely, went from random 500ms spikes to rock solid sub 20ms all the time. the VPN idea isnt crazy but i agree its another thing to troubleshoot when something breaks at 2am

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now (general) and i keep hearing people talk about CQ WW and Field Day and all these other events and honestly it sounds like a lot of fun but also kind of overwhelming. like i dont even know what order to think about them in or which one would be a good first experience. from what i can tell Field Day is more of a group thing and CQ WW is more serious? i watched some youtube videos of guys doing SOTA activations too and that looks amazing but i dont have any hiking gear set up for that yet. my buddy mentioned there's also the ARRL Sweepstakes coming up and said it might be a good starter but he couldnt really explain why. anyway i guess my main question is — for someone who's just getting comfortable making regular QSOs and still kind of slow on CW, what would you all suggest as a first real contest experience? do i need a fancy logging program right away or can i just use paper for a first attempt?

so i was just doing my usual morning routine, checking pskreporter before work, and noticed my FT8 spots were showing up all over europe and even a couple from japan which i almost never see from here in the midwest. checked the solar flux and it was sitting around 185 which is pretty high compared to what weve had lately. been a ham for about 3 years now and ive never really paid close attention to the flux numbers until recently when someone on another thread mentioned it matters a lot for 10m openings specifically. anyway i ended up being late for work because i couldnt stop working stations lol. logged a ZL2 which was a new one for me on that band. my question is basically -- is there a reliable way to predict when these openings are going to happen ahead of time or is it mostly just luck and being on at the right moment? i check DXmaps sometimes but im not always sure how to read it. also does the k-index matter as much as the flux for this kind of thing?

your 7 ele isn't going to cut it on its own, not really, at least not for random EME where you're calling CQ and hoping someone hears you. that said for skeds with a big station, like a 10m dish or a massive array on the other end, you might actually pull off a contact running JT65B. the mode is incredibly sensitive and people have done EME with smaller setups than you'd think. the delay is handled automatically by WSJT-X yeah, it knows the propagation time and sequences the transmit and receive windows accordingly, you dont have to do anything manual there. what you do need to worry about is having your system clock synced to within about a second, use Meinberg NTP or GPS disciplined clock if you can, because if your timing is off the whole thing falls apart. honestly the biggest thing holding back smaller stations isnt the antenna as much as it is noise floor. whats your receive setup like, feedline, preamp placement, that kind of thing. a really good low noise preamp right at the antenna can make a bigger difference than adding another yagi in some cases.

congrats on the first one, sounds like a great time. so yeah 44 QSOs is the threshold for a full activation, anything under that still counts in the log but doesnt officially activate the reference. 27 is a solid first run though, you'll get there next time no problem especially once you get comfortable spotting yourself early. for spotting, you can absolutely do it yourself on the WWFF cluster at wwff.world/cluster, a lot of people use their phone to self-spot while operating. someone else can spot you too if they hear you, but dont rely on it especially at less popular references. as for the log submission, in North America you're dealing with KFF which is run through parks and peaks and the submission process is a bit different than the global WWFF one — you upload through the KFF portal and it syncs over eventually. HAMRS should export fine, just make sure your log has the KFF reference in the right field, i think it's the POTA/WWFF field in the ADIF. some people manually add it after the fact if their logger didnt capture it automatically. the deer walking through camp thing is very on brand for WWFF, half the reason people do these activations honestly

so i finally got everything together and im heading out to K-4566 tomorrow morning for my first ever activation. ive been hunting for about 3 months now and figured it was time to actually get out there and do one myself. running a KX2 with a random wire antenna and a 9:1 unun, planning to set up at one of the picnic tables near the trailhead parking lot. i know i need 10 QSOs to make it count but honestly im more nervous about the logging than the radio part. been using HAMRS on my phone which seems pretty straightforward but ive never done it in the field under pressure. do i need to upload to POTA.app the same day or is there a grace period? also not sure if i should spot myself or just hope people find me on the cluster. first time caller here so go easy on me lol

same boat here honestly, im still figuring out the whole propagation thing. what i started doing recently was just checking pskreporter before i get on the air to see where other people are being heard, gives you a real quick snapshot of whats actually open right now rather than trying to predict it from indices. not perfect but way more useful than me staring at numbers i dont fully understand yet lol

the 706 has a known issue with the ALC hammering the audio when you first key up, especially through the data port. first thing id check is whether your transmit audio path is going through the mic jack or the data/acc jack on the back -- if its going through mic there can be a delay from the internal processing that screws up the handshake timing. the RMS gateway wont wait long for a valid connection burst before it moves on also worth double checking that express actually has control of the TNC and not some other program fighting for the com port. i had a similar thing where my logging software had the port locked and express would just silently fail. check device manager too, sometimes the KAM shows up on a different COM than you think after a reboot if you can get someone locally to listen on the gateway freq while you connect you can quickly tell if youre actually putting out anything intelligible. sometimes its just a bad cable or level mismatch and the waterfall in express isnt sensitive enough to catch it

went last year and honestly it wasnt bad, found a decent dummy load and a bunch of coax connectors for cheap. the indoor tables were kinda picked over by the time i got there around 10am so if you go get there early. the club stuff and forums are always the best part anyway imo

im in basically the same boat as you lol, been at it about two months. what helped me a lot was just getting on the air even when i felt totally unready. found the QRS frequencies and called CQ a few times and yeah people are slow with me and patient. hearing my actual callsign come back from somebody real was way more motivating than any software ever was. also the koch method if you havent tried it yet, theres a free program called lcwo dot net that a lot of people swear by

yeah the head-patting thing is real lol, i remember my first few passes i was so focused on trying to find my own downlink signal that i completely missed a CQ from someone and then the bird was gone. what i do now is just pick a spot in the passband a little above center on the downlink and call CQ once the bird is like 5-10 degrees elevation on the way up, before the doppler shift gets too wild. and dont worry too much about perfect doppler at first, close enough usually gets the job done on SSB, were not talking about narrow digital modes here

yeah what he said about jitter is right. also just to throw this out there — i ditched RemoteHams awhile back and switched to a combination of RCForb for the radio control and just used a separate websdr instance for the panadapter and honestly the SDR side got a lot smoother. not saying RemoteHams is bad, it just felt like the SDR integration was kind of bolted on and not as tight as i wanted. the IC-7300 over RemoteHams always felt a little sluggish to me even on good connections. might be worth trying a different client stack if you have the time to mess with it.

So ive been seeing a lot of chatter on the reflectors lately about the IC-905 and microwave operating in general, feels like theres a bit of a resurgence happening or maybe im just noticing it more. Also caught wind that there were some pretty decent 6m openings last week across the midwest and I completely missed them because I had the radio off all day, typical. Anyway curious if anyone here has actually gotten their hands on the 905 or even demoed one at a club meeting or hamfest. The SHF capability is interesting to me but I honestly dont know if Id ever use it practically. Feels like a lot of money for something I might just set up once and then it collects dust. Thoughts? And yeah if you caught those 6m openings last week please rub it in, I want to hear about it.

so ive been at this for about 8 months now and im stuck. like really stuck. i started learning CW back in the spring because i wanted to do some QRP stuff and honestly just thought it would be cool to know. got up to 5wpm pretty fast using the koch method with the G4FON software and felt great about it. then around 8-10wpm things just... slowed down. i can copy at about 12wpm now if conditions are perfect and im not tired and the sending is clean, but the moment anything gets even slightly off i fall apart and lose my place completely. what really gets me is that i can hear the characters fine individually but words just dont come together fast enough in my head. someone told me i need to stop counting dits and dahs and just hear the whole character as a sound, and i think ive done that for most letters but my brain still wants to process it like a puzzle sometimes. my numbers are also way behind my letters which is annoying for actual on-air stuff. anyway i guess my question is what methods actually got you past that plateau. ive heard people say just get on the air which i have tried but i get nervous and ask for lots of repeats which feels embarrassing even though i know it shouldnt. did anyone find a specific tool or practice routine that really moved the needle for them?

honest answer is its somewhere in between. some of the theory you can get by with pattern recognition if you really wanted to but the Extra pool has enough questions where if you actually understand the underlying concepts the memorization comes naturally anyway. the impedance and transmission line stuff clicked for me once i sat down with a pencil and just worked through some of the math rather than trying to read it. HamStudy.org is worth using alongside whatever book you have, the spaced repetition really does help and you can see your weak areas pretty fast. as for the privileges, day to day on like 20 meters or 40 you might not notice a huge difference because the General segments are busy enough. but the Extra portions on some bands are noticeably less crowded and during contests or when conditions are good and everyone is piled up in the same slice of spectrum it actually matters. CW sub-bands especially if thats something you do at all. took me maybe two and a half months studying maybe 30-40 minutes a few nights a week so its definitely doable without clearing your calendar

oh man yes absolutely remember mine, i kept forgetting to say my callsign at the end and the guy on the other end had to remind me twice. its one of those things where you know the procedure in your head but when youre actually doing it everything just goes blank. congrats on the first one though, it really does get easier fast. after like 5 or 6 contacts it starts feeling pretty natural. get that general ticket, 40m is waiting for you

Pacificon 2026 is October 16-18 and usually runs W1AW/6. Also check the ARRL website - they maintain a searchable database of upcoming special event stations. Field Day in June always has tons of activity too!

so ive been running a half wave dipole for 40m for about two years now, center fed with 450 ohm ladder line into a balanced tuner. its at about 25 feet which i know isnt ideal but its what the trees allow. been thinking about swapping to a vertical, probably a quarter wave with a decent radial field, partly because i want to try some low angle DX and the dipole at that height is basically just an NVIS cloud burner. thing is ive read a lot of conflicting stuff. some people swear by verticals for 40 and 80 DX, others say unless you have like 60 radials and its over saltwater its not worth it. my yard situation means i could probably put down 20-30 radials but not much more than that. is there actually a noticeable difference in practice or am i chasing something that wont pan out

so i passed my technician exam on tuesday and got my callsign friday and i just couldnt wait so i programmed up my baofeng (yeah i know, everyone starts with one i guess) and just keyed up on the 147.xxx repeater in town and said my callsign and that i was new and honestly wasnt expecting much but like three guys came back to me and one of them talked with me for almost 20 minutes about just random stuff, his antenna setup, what bands i should try next, whatever. it was way better than i expected. i dunno i just thought id share because ive been lurking here for months reading everything and it felt like a big deal even though it was just a short conversation on a local machine

so i finally participated in an actual simulated emergency exercise with our local ARES group after months of just attending meetings and reading about it. we ran a scenario where a major storm had knocked out all normal comms infrastructure and we were tasked with relaying health and welfare traffic between two EOCs and a shelter about 15 miles away. honestly it was a bit of a wake up call. i thought i was pretty prepared — i have a decent go-kit, spare batteries, the whole thing — but when the net control started throwing curveball "injects" like hey your primary repeater just went down, figure it out, i kind of froze for a second. ended up fumbling around trying to remember my simplex frequencies while people were waiting on traffic from me. embarrassing but also really valuable i guess. the biggest lesson i took away was that muscle memory matters way more than i thought. knowing your equipment under stress is a totally different thing from knowing it at your desk at home. we also had one station that couldnt get their winlink to cooperate and they spent like 20 minutes troubleshooting while everyone waited, which kind of highlighted how you need a backup for your backup. anyway my question is — for those of you who do these drills regularly, how do you keep your skills sharp between exercises? do you just do lots of nets, or is there other stuff you practice on your own?

so ive been a General for about two years now and i keep going back and forth on whether to bother with the Extra exam. like i got my General on the first try and that wasnt too bad but i keep hearing people say the Extra is a whole different animal. mostly im curious about the theory sections because im not an engineer or anything, i work in landscaping lol. i can handle memorizing stuff but some of the questions ive looked at on the question pool about like impedance matching and filter design and whatever, i just kinda stare at them. is it actually necessary to understand what youre learning or can you sort of grind the question pool and pass that way? and honestly whats the biggest reason people even bother getting Extra, is it mostly just for the HF frequencies you cant access otherwise or is there more to it than that? not trying to be lazy just trying to figure out if its worth the time investment right now

omg wait the 10m opening happened Friday?? i was at work and completely missed it, thats so frustrating. i just got my general a few months ago and havent really had a chance to work HF properly yet, been mostly on 40 and 20 with mixed results. someone told me 10 meters is almost like VHF when its open which sounds amazing. is there any way to know in advance when these openings are gonna happen or is it just luck and being around at the right time? i check dxmaps sometimes but im not always sure what im looking at tbh.

the linked repeater thing is actually pretty cool once you get used to it. yeah basically some repeaters are tied together through internet linking or RF linking so a conversation on one gets rebroadcast on the others at the same time. some systems use Allstar or EchoLink for that. it can be a little weird at first because theres sometimes a slight delay and you have to make sure youre not stepping on someone who's already mid-sentence coming in from a linked node somewhere else. i made that mistake a few times when i was new and felt pretty bad about it lol. just pause a second after the repeater's courtesy tone before you start talking and you'll be fine.

I just did this like two months ago actually, went from tech to general and I studied almost entirely with the hamstudy site and the ARRL general manual. Took me maybe three weeks of casual studying, maybe 20-30 minutes a day. The propagation sections tripped me up a little, like MUF and skip zones and all that, but once it clicks it makes sense. There's also some stuff about HF operating procedures that you just kind of have to memorize. One thing nobody told me before I upgraded -- once you get on HF it takes a while to figure out what bands are good at what times of day, and right now the solar conditions are pretty decent so 20m and 17m have been really active. I picked up a used Icom 7300 and just started listening for a few weeks before I ever transmitted anything and that helped a lot honestly.

honest answer is it depends on what you want to do with it. for low angle dx a vertical with a decent radial field will usually edge out a low dipole just because of the radiation angle. your dipole at 25 feet on 40m is radiating at a pretty high angle, good for regional stuff but not ideal for working europe consistently. that said i ran a dipole at 30 feet for years and still managed to work 100+ countries so its not like youre stuck. the gap titan specifically, ive heard mixed things. its a compromise antenna for sure, works on multiple bands which sounds great but you give up some performance on each individual band compared to a dedicated antenna. if youre going vertical id honestly look at a simple 40m vertical with 16 or 32 radials laid on the ground before i bought a trap vertical. cheaper too. but if real estate is the issue a trap vertical might be the only practical option and it'll still get you on the air which is whats important