Michael Rodriguez

i started with a UV-5R honestly and i dont regret it - got me on the air fast and i learned a lot just tinkering with it. the programming software CHIRP is free and makes loading repeaters way easier than doing it by hand. but yeah i upgraded to a Yaesu after about a year because the Baofeng started acting weird on receive in certain spots. one thing nobody told me when i started - check out repeaterbook dot com and look up whats actually active in your area before you decide anything, because if theres only like 2 repeaters near you then honestly any working HT will do the job just fine

This is the kind of post I really needed to read honestly. I just got my general a few months ago and I've been going to our local ARES meetings but haven't been sure whether to jump into an exercise yet since I feel like I barely know what im doing on HF. But reading this it sounds like even the experienced people find stuff to work on so maybe I should just show up and be useful in whatever small way I can. Question though — do you need a specific setup to participate in something like that or can you just show up with a handheld and help out? I dont have a full HF station yet and I've been worried I'd be in the way.

so i finally signed up on the POTA website and picked a park near me, K-4835, which is just a state recreation area about 20 minutes from the house. ive done a couple activations before but always with my elmer Dave who basically ran everything while i just logged. tomorrow im going solo for the first time and honestly im a little nervous about it. my plan is to bring the FT-891 and a linked dipole i built last winter, run it off a 20ah lifepo4 battery. i figure ill set up on 40m first since thats usually pretty reliable in the afternoon and maybe hop to 20m if i need more hunters. my goal is just 10 QSOs which i know isnt a lot but i just want to get that first activation under my belt without Dave holding my hand lol. anything i should know that i maybe havent thought of? like do i need to spot myself or will hunters find me? i always forget how that part works when dave does it

i did the MARS mod on mine and thats about as far as ive gone, a little nervous about getting into the IF section tbh. did you use the Yaesu service manual for the filter install or find a different writeup? i've seen a couple versions floating around and wasnt sure which one was accurate for the later production runs of the 857d since apparently they changed the board revision at some point.

100ah lifepo4 should be more than fine for that load honestly. at 20-30w out on an IC-7300 youre probably pulling maybe 5-6A on transmit and maybe 1.5-2A on receive, and in a typical voice net youre not keying up constantly so your average draw is way lower than the peak. rough math puts you well under 40ah for 8 hours of realistic use, so youve got plenty of headroom even if conditions are bad and you end up transmitting more. bring the honda anyway though and just leave it in the truck. if something goes sideways - radio acting up, someone else needs power, whatever - youll be glad its there. the weight argument kinda goes away once its in the vehicle and not on your back. worst case it sits there all day and you drive home with a full tank.

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 get that its more privileges and all that but honestly i dont use half the HF bands i already have access to. my buddy keeps telling me to just do it for the theory knowledge alone but the question pool looks pretty intimidating when i started reading through it. the stuff about filter design and advanced antenna theory and all the math behind it... i dunno. is that stuff actually useful day to day or is it more like trivia you learn just to pass the test and then forget. also not sure what privileges im actually missing that id care about, someone told me the extra portions of 40 and 20 are less crowded but i havent really noticed a huge difference when im operating. just looking for honest opinions i guess, not trying to talk myself out of it but also dont want to spend weeks studying for something that doesnt really change much practically

yeah you basically just feel it out. if the band is clear and you can understand each other no problem then nobody really cares if you skip phonetics, but the moment theres any QRM or the signal is fluttery you should go full phonetics every time especially for your callsign. i've had contacts where i thought we were copying each other fine and then they asked me to repeat my call three times because a B and a D sound identical in noise. the old phonetics thing is just guys who learned before NATO standardization was really drilled into everyone. you'll still hear "Adam Baker Charlie" from some old timers, thats the old Able Baker phonetic alphabet from like WWII era military use. nothing wrong with it really but NATO is what most people worldwide recognize so if you're working DX stick to the standard ones or you'll confuse people

oh man i remember my first QCX build, i messed up a solder joint on the BS170s and had to resolder like three times before it would put out proper power lol. yours sounds like it went smoother than mine did. the 3s lipo should be around 12.6v fully charged which is right in the sweet spot for that radio so you're good there. one thing that helped me a lot with QRP was learning to really listen before calling, like actually sit on a frequency for a few minutes and see if theres a pattern to how busy it gets. also CW is honestly worth learning if you havent already, even just the basics, because you can punch through conditions on CW at 5w that just dont work on phone

So ive been reading about WWFF for a while now and finally decided to just go for it this weekend. Theres a nature reserve about 20 minutes from me that has a valid KFF reference and ive never done a portable activation before so im kind of doing two new things at once which maybe wasnt the smartest idea lol. My main worry is the logging. I know you need 44 QSOs to get the reference activated and ive been using HAMRS on my tablet for POTA stuff but i wasnt sure if the same log format works for WWFF or if theres something different i need to do. Also do hunters need to be specifically looking for WWFF contacts or can i just put out a general call and count whoever responds? I know with POTA you can run SSB on 40 and 20 and just pile up contacts pretty easily but i honestly have no idea how busy the WWFF frequencies tend to be on a weekend morning. Running an IC-7300 into a Chameleon MPAS Lite if that matters. Plan to set up near the trailhead which should give me decent ground and a clear shot to the east. Any tips from people whove done this before would be really appreciated, dont want to mess up the log and have the contacts not count.

yeah the middle ground approach is actually where most people start and honestly where a lot of competitive ops stay. running a second radio just for monitoring is sometimes called SO1.5R or people just call it SO2R lite, technically you're still SO1R if you're not transmitting on both simultaneously but whatever, semantics. the real gain from proper SO2R isnt just grabbing extra S&P contacts on the second radio its more about never losing your run frequency when you need to go find a mult. you can be sitting on your 20m run, hear a rare mult on 15 on the second rig, work it, and be back before anyone notices you were gone. that's where the mult count starts separating top ops from mid-pack ops in my experience. the rate thing is kind of secondary actually. for getting started i'd say get the second radio going with just headphone monitoring first, no transmit interlock or band decoder yet, just so you can hear whats happening on the other band. after a couple contests doing that you'll naturally start reaching for the second PTT and then youll want the proper setup. takes maybe 2-3 serious contests before it stops feeling like rubbing your head and patting your stomach at the same time

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me, KFF reference, and honestly it went way better than i expected. i was only planning to do like 20 minutes but ended up staying almost 3 hours because people just kept calling in. i think i made somewhere around 47 contacts which i know isnt a huge number but for me sitting out there with my KX2 and a random wire up in a tree it felt pretty good. anyway i have a couple questions for people who have done more of these. first, do i need to submit my log anywhere specific for the WWFF program or does it just go through ADIF upload to the main site? i found the wwff.cc site but its a little confusing with all the different national program pages. second, is there a standard way people announce activations ahead of time? i just kind of showed up and started calling but i noticed some activators seem to get big pileups right away and i wonder if theyre posting somewhere beforehand. also someone spotted me on the POTA cluster which was nice but WWFF has its own spotting thing right? sorry if these are obvious questions, i spent a while reading the site but it still felt a bit scattered to me

nice work. i did my first WWFF a few months back and was also surprised how active the chasers were, way more international contacts than i usually get doing POTA. had a couple europeans in the log which was cool for a simple wire antenna setup. what band were you mostly on?

honest answer — fix the antenna first. i ran an RTL-SDR on HF for ages and once i put up even a halfway decent random wire with a 9:1 unun the difference was night and day. the direct sampling mode on the v3 is genuinely not bad for what it is, it just needs signal to work with that said i did eventually get an RSP1A a couple years back and yeah the dynamic range improvement is real, especially if you're anywhere near AM broadcast stations or have a noisy RF environment. the ADC in the SDRplay units is just better. but if your noise floor is already wrecked by a crappy antenna youre not gonna hear the difference between the two radios anyway. so wire first, then upgrade the SDR if you still feel like youre missing something

yeah i just took mine last month and did basically all hamstudy, no book. got a 92% i think. the thing that helped me was when i got a question wrong i actually read the explanation before moving on instead of just clicking next. some of the regs stuff like the part 97 rules and the band privileges for tech class, those can be tricky because theres a lot of similar-sounding answers. also dont skip the section on repeaters and CTCSS tones, thats on there more than you'd think

yeah you basically hit on the eternal debate there. honestly after 20+ years at this i still do all three and i wont pretend thats not a bit much. but here's the thing — they serve different purposes depending on what you want. LoTW is the gold standard for ARRL awards like DXCC, nothing beats it for that, and once you get the hang of the TQSL software the uploads are pretty painless. eQSL is more of a mixed bag, some ops swear by it, others ignore it completely, and the award recognition for it is more limited, but the confirmations come fast and its free so why not. physical cards though — dont give up on those. some older DX operators and especially rare entities basically only confirm by card, and there is genuinely something nice about getting an envelope from like a VP9 or ZL station. i still send cards through the bureau for most contacts and direct for anything really special. the outgoing bureau through your section is cheap and easy once you set it up. your LoTW cert doesnt expire as long as you renew it before it does — i think the default is a few years, you can check in TQSL under your callsign certificate and it'll show the expiration date.

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at it for like 4 months now and just started making actual QSOs on 40m which feels surreal. the paddle adjustment thing is real, i had my gap way too tight and kept getting garbage output and thought i was just bad at it. also try slowing the keyer speed down even further than you think you need to, like embarrassingly slow, and just focus on making clean letters before worrying about speed at all. thats what finally got it clicking for me anyway

yeah what he said, also worth mentioning that 40m gets real busy at night because of skywave and you get stations from all over piling in. i made the mistake early on of parking on a frequency thinking it was clear and then an hour later the band had shifted and i was basically on top of someone in South America who had been there the whole time, just wasnt making it to me yet. so even when you find a clear spot keep an ear out and ask if the frequency is in use before you start calling CQ. QRM happens but no reason to add to it

yeah the battery thing gets everyone at least once. i showed up to an exercise a few years back with a radio that had maybe 20% charge because i assumed i had topped it off. lesson learned pretty quick when i had to borrow someone elses HT by hour two. the ICS form stuff is really where a lot of people fumble too, not because its hard but because most of us just dont practice it enough in normal day to day radio stuff. our group started doing a monthly simplex net specifically so people can practice passing formal traffic without the pressure of a full drill. has helped a lot with the newer members feeling more comfortable. the other thing we added to our exercises is a deliberate comms failure midway through — like the net control station goes silent and someone else has to step up and take over. that one scenario taught us more about our actual readiness than almost anything else we had done before.

yeah the courtesy tone is your friend on repeaters. once you hear that little beep after someone unkeys you're good to go. and hey, net control has heard way worse trust me. the fact that you listened for six weeks before jumping in puts you ahead of most people honestly.

so i finally got my az/el rotor setup working well enough to track AO-73 and ive been making contacts on the linear transponder but im still confused about something. when im operating SSB through it, do i adjust the uplink or downlink or both? ive been reading conflicting stuff and my passes are short enough that i dont have time to think it through mid-pass. my current setup is an ft-818 on the uplink at 435 MHz and an sdr running gqrx on the downlink around 145 MHz. im using gpredict to track the bird and it'll do doppler correction on the sdr side but i havent figured out if i should also be manually tuning the 818 or just leaving it fixed. i can hear myself in the passband when the bird is close to AOS but further into the pass things start sounding weird, like my signal drifts. not sure if thats me, the bird, or just my setup being garbage. anyone been through this learning curve? feels like there should be a simpler explanation somewhere but everything i find online is either super basic or assumes you already know what youre doing

im still pretty new to chasing DX seriously so take this for what its worth but i spent an embarrassing amount of time just calling on the DX frequency itself before someone finally told me how split operation works lol. like nobody tells you this stuff when youre starting out. once i understood that and got a radio that could actually do proper split without the second VFO bleeding over i started actually making contacts. the panadapter thing the other guy mentioned is huge too, i picked up an rx-only SDR just to watch the pileup while i transmit and even that cheap setup helped me understand what was happening way better than just listening could

yeah i was in almost the exact same situation on my first net check-in lol. didnt know if i stepped on somebody or if it was just a radio thing. i just kind of sat there mortified for like five minutes. eventually i just asked on the local repeater after the net ended if anyone noticed and one of the regulars walked me through what i should have done. most people on these nets have been doing it forever so they're pretty used to new folks making little mistakes, nobody's gonna yell at you or anything

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for about two years now and honestly i like it fine, good interface, integrates with clublog and lotw without too much fuss. but every time contest season rolls around i feel like im fighting it. the contest modules just dont feel as snappy as they should and ive had it drop a few dupes that i swear i worked before. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just switch everything over to N1MM for contests but then i'd be running two separate logs and trying to merge them back together after the event which sounds like its own nightmare. does anyone actually do this workflow, like Log4OM for the daily stuff and N1MM when a contest weekend comes around, and if so how are you handling the ADIF imports afterward without making a mess of your main log. also i run WSJT-X for FT8 and FT4 and right now i have that pointed at Log4OM which works okay, the UDP logging usually works but sometimes it just silently drops a qso and i dont notice until im checking against pskreporter. wondering if N1MM handles the WSJT-X integration any better or if thats just a wsjtx thing regardless of what logger youre feeding.

honestly the general exam isnt that bad once you get into it. i was in the same boat, no electronics background, kind of dreaded it, but hamstudy plus the gordon west book got me through in about six weeks of studying maybe 20-30 minutes a day. the impedance and propagation stuff clicked more than i expected once i just read through the explanations instead of trying to memorize answers cold. for getting on HF in a rental situation people do it all the time. a lot of guys start with an end fed half wave or just a simple wire dipole in the attic if thats allowed. magnetic loop antennas are another option if youre really cramped for space. i wouldnt worry too much about the antenna situation until after you pass, theres always something workable. honestly just take the test, worst case you fail and learn what to study more and try again, its only like 15 bucks

honestly i've had decent luck just being really disciplined about only sending my call once and then shutting up and listening. most of the pileup is guys sending their call like 4 or 5 times in a row which just creates more QRM and buries everyone. send it once, listen, if nothing come back wait a beat then try again. the ops i've talked to at club meetings say they can actually pull a single clean call out of a mess way easier than you'd think, it's the guys kerchunking their calls over and over who get ignored. also dont underestimate band conditions timing. sometimes the pileup thins out right at a greyline moment and your signal pops up 10db and that's all it takes. i got into a VP6 expedition on 40m by just being patient and waiting for the greyline window when half the other stations in the pile faded out