Kevin O'Connor

so i've been obsessively checking pskreporter and DXmaps basically every morning before work this week because the SFI has been climbing and i figured something had to give eventually. yesterday afternoon around 3pm local time i noticed spots starting to pop up on 10m from Europe and just jumped on it without even really thinking about it
ended up working like 14 stations in about 45 minutes, couple of them were Spain and Portugal which i dont usually hear at all from here in the midwest. signal reports were all over the place, some 59 some barely there, but it was definitely a real opening not just random scatter or whatever. the band was doing that thing where it sounds kind of hollow? like signals come and go every few seconds
anyway my question is really about the solar flux index — im still kind of fuzzy on how to actually use it as a predictor. like i know higher is better generally but how high does it need to get before 10 and 12 meters are actually worth checking? i feel like ive seen it at 150+ and still heard nothing and then other times like yesterday it was only around 130 and the band lit up. is there something else i should be looking at alongside it

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and ive been slowly logging contacts and someone at the club mentioned I should be working toward DXCC but then another guy said WAZ is more satisfying for HF newcomers and honestly im just kind of lost about the whole thing. like i understand the basic concept — work a certain number of entities or states or zones — but i dont really understand how the credit submission works or whether I need to get QSLs from every single contact or just the ones i submit.
also is there a difference between having a contact count and actually having confirmed credits? because my logging software shows like 47 countries worked but i only have maybe 12 physical QSL cards and a handful of LoTW confirmations. do those LoTW ones count toward the actual award application or do i still need paper cards for everything. sorry if this is a really basic question, the ARRL website kind of goes in circles when i try to read through it

yeah the repeater going down thing catches everyone off guard even when they know it's coming in an exercise, which is kind of the whole point right. our group went through something similar a few years back and what actually helped was we started doing a short 20 minute simplex-only net every month, nothing fancy just check ins and passing a short message, so people are comfortable operating that way before they need to do it under stress.
the laminated card idea is solid by the way, we have them and they do get used. but honestly the bigger thing for us was just making sure every single operator had the backup freqs programmed in their radio with a consistent naming scheme before any exercise. our EC basically made it a requirement and it cut down on a lot of confusion. the tabletop idea before a full exercise is really worth doing too, we found it surfaces a lot of procedural gaps that you dont want to discover when the served agency is watching.

I just got WSJT-X running and made my first FT8 contact to Europe yesterday! The 15-second transmission cycles and quick 60-90 second QSOs are perfect for building confidence. Still learning when to use which bands - any recommendations for a new Tech trying to maximize activity?

so ive been a Tech for about two years now and mostly just messing around on 2m and some 70cm stuff, did some APRS, got into a few nets. but lately ive been really curious about HF and a buddy of mine keeps telling me i should just go ahead and upgrade to General because its not that bad. i guess my main question is how different is the General exam from the Tech exam and what kind of stuff do i actually need to know that i dont already know? like i remember the Tech exam had some electrical stuff and rules and all that, is General a lot more of the same or is there stuff thats totally new territory. also not sure how long i should study before i feel ready, i tried reading through the ARRL book once and kinda got lost in the HF propagation sections. any advice would help, im not in a huge rush but would like to get on HF before the summer when conditions are supposed to be good

yeah the arrl frequency/privileges chart is honestly the thing you want for this, way easier to read than part 97 itself. just search for arrl technician privileges chart and you should find a PDF. the one your club guy mentioned about 40m -- techs do get 40m but its CW only, 7.025 to 7.125 i think, so no phone down there. same deal with 80m and 15m, CW privileges only in limited segments. the real phone action for techs on HF is 28.300 to 28.500 on 10m.
dont stress too much about accidentally keying up in the wrong place when youre just starting out, but yeah its good that youre thinking about it. most rigs will let you transmit anywhere so the responsibility is on you to know. once you upgrade to general a lot of this gets way simpler honestly

oh man i didnt even know WWFF was a thing until like two months ago, been looking into it since i got my general. so you can just activate any nature reserve or does it have to be a specific listed reference? i looked at the WWFF directory and there seem to be a ton of references near me but i wasnt sure if theyre all active or what the process is to actually register an activation before you go out

congrats on the 7300, i made the same jump a couple years ago from an older rig and yeah the learning curve on the touchscreen menus is real but you get used to it fast. one thing i wish someone told me early on is go into the settings and mess with the RF/SQL knob behavior because the defaults felt weird to me. also the receive audio really does slap compared to what most people expect from a radio in that price range, not just you.

so we finally got around to doing a full scale simulated disaster exercise with our county ARES group and honestly it was a real eye opener. the scenario was a major flooding event that knocked out all the repeaters in the southern part of the county and we had to establish comms from scratch using nothing but simplex HF and a couple of portable VHF setups.
first thing that went wrong — and i mean within like the first 20 minutes — was that nobody could agree on what frequencies we were supposed to fall back to. we had a plan on paper but half the guys hadnt looked at it since we updated it six months ago. so we basically spent the first half hour just sorting out who was on what and whether everybody had the right PL tones loaded. meanwhile in a real disaster that half hour is everything.
the other big thing was battery life. we kind of assumed everybody showed up with charged gear and yeah, that was a bad assumption. one of our most experienced guys showed up with a radio that had maybe 2 hours of runtime on it. again, in a real event that would have been a serious problem.
anyway we learned a lot and i think the exercise was worth every bit of the chaos. curious if anyone else has done similar drills recently and what kind of stuff caught you off guard. seems like the lessons are always the same but you still have to live through them yourself to really internalize it i guess.

im in pretty much the same boat as you actually, been licensed about a year and just started getting into the awards stuff. one thing i'll add is that for FT8 specifically a lot of people do upload to LoTW pretty regularly because the logging software makes it easy, so your confirmation rate might actually be decent once a few weeks go by
i did buy some paper QSL cards when i first got licensed and i dont regret it, its fun to get one back in the mail even if it takes forever. but for chasing awards LoTW is really the main thing you want to focus on

i went through exactly this last year. ended up getting an arrow 2m/70cm yagi and honestly its fine for what you described, packs down pretty small and the dual band thing is handy. though i'll admit for pure 2m SSB performance its not like a dedicated 2m yagi would be, its a compromise. but for portable use the convenience factor counts for a lot.
one thing nobody mentioned — if youre mainly hiking to summits and doing SOTA activations or whatever, you probably also want to think about your radio's battery weight before agonizing too much over the antenna. ive definitely been the guy at the top of a hill with a great antenna and a half dead battery because i optimized the wrong thing lol

so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 dongle for probably two years now and honestly its been great for what it is, picked up ACARS, some NOAA weather sat stuff, did the whole ADS-B thing with dump1090 for a while. but lately im wanting to do more and the limitations are starting to bug me especially the dynamic range and the noise floor on HF even with the direct sampling mod.
been looking at either the SDRplay RSP1B or just jumping straight to a HackRF One. the price difference is pretty significant, SDRplay is what like $110-120 and HackRF is closer to $340-350 depending where you get it. i know the HackRF can transmit which is cool but im not sure i actually need that for what im doing. mostly just wanna do better HF monitoring, maybe some trunked P25 stuff, and eventually try decoding some weak signal digital modes.
anyone gone from RTL-SDR to one of these and can actually compare? not looking for a spec sheet just wondering what the real world difference felt like

had the exact same issue when i was starting out, the signalink levels drove me crazy. what finally worked for me was setting the signalink TX knob pretty low, like around 9 oclock, and then adjusting from there while watching the ALC on the radio. you really dont want ALC movement at all with vara or any of the digital modes, it'll trash the signal. once i backed off the drive everything clicked into place and i started actually completing sessions
the gateway thing is just trial and error honestly. some days a gateway thats 300 miles away works better than one in the next county. propagation is propagation

nice, ive been wanting to try WWFF too. did you have any trouble finding the reference number for your location before you went out? thats the part that confuses me, like how do you know if a place is already in the database vs you having to submit it as a new one

yeah the ULS vanity process looks intimidating at first but its actually pretty straightforward once you do it once. basically you go into the ULS system and file a modification to your existing license, and you can list up to 25 callsigns in order of preference. the FCC then runs these filing windows — i think its like every few days — and if one of your picks is available and nobody with higher preference (like a close relative of a previous holder) applied for the same one during that window, you get it.
your current callsign doesnt just disappear while you're waiting, you keep using it until the vanity is actually granted. and once the new one is issued you have a short period where both show up in the system but really you just start using the new one. the whole thing took about two weeks for me back when i did it, though i've heard it can vary. just make sure the format you want is actually available for your license class — generals cant get 1x2 calls, those are extra class only. there's a site called ae7q dot com that lets you search available calls and even shows you the filing windows, that thing is super useful.

I've been studying for months and feel ready to take my Technician exam, but I'm nervous about the actual test session. What's the process like? Do I need to bring anything special besides ID and the exam fee? How long does it take, and what happens if I pass?
Should I arrive early? Can I take multiple exams in one session? How soon will I get my callsign?

I just got WSJT-X running and made my first FT8 contact to Europe yesterday! The 15-second transmission cycles and quick 60-90 second QSOs are perfect for building confidence. Still learning when to use which bands - any recommendations for a new Tech trying to maximize activity?

I was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and I ended up getting the Yaesu FT-65R, it was like $90 at the time and its been totally solid for hitting repeaters. nothing fancy but it works and the audio is way better than the baofeng my friend has. honestly for just getting on the air and learning the basics I dont think you need to spend $300 right away, you can always upgrade later once you know what you actually want