Jessica Taylor

Tuesday nights our local club does a net on 2m but its pretty short, maybe 20 mins tops. after that i usually end up doing the same thing on HF. 40 or 80 depending on the noise floor at my place. 80 gets rough this time of year tho

oh man the rocky summit antenna problem is real, ive literaly just started tying the far end of my wire to my trekking pole and jamming the pole between some rocks. its janky but it works well enough. also a 9:1 unun can help clean up the SWR weirdness if the wire length isnt ideal. i picked up a cheap one and its made a big difference.
DX on your first activation though, thats awesome. i've done maybe a dozen activations now and still get excited when i get a european in the log.

so ive been putting together a go-kit type setup for our ARES group and i keep going back and forth on the power side of things. right now i've got a 100ah lithium running a 857D and it works fine for a few hours but if we're talking a 24+ hour activation that battery just isn't gonna cut it on its own, especially if other people are pulling from the same source for laptops and whatnot.
been looking at the honda eu2200i vs a predator 2000 from harbor freight. i know the honda has a better rep but the price difference is pretty significant and honestly for ARES work we're not running anything that sensitive are we. the RFI from cheaper inverter gennys has been a concern someone brought up at a meeting but i've never actually tested it myself. has anyone run a predator or similar next to an HF setup and noticed noise issues or is that kind of overblown
also the antenna situation — im currently using a buddipole which i actually like for VHF/UHF stuff but for HF it's kind of a pain to tune and i feel like i spend more time messing with it than actually operating. thinking about just bringing an EFHW with a 9:1 unun and throwing it up in whatever tree or structure is around. is that a reasonable approach for field work or am i giving up too much compared to a resonant antenna

so ive been studying code for about 4 months now and im decent at copying at around 13-15 wpm with the software but when i actually try to send with a paddle its just awful. like i know what i want to send but my hand doesnt cooperate at all. im using one of those cheap amazon paddles that came with my radio bundle and i wonder if thats part of the problem or if its just me needing more practice.
the keyer in my IC-7300 has the iambic modes A and B and honestly i dont even know which one im supposed to use. ive just left it on whatever the default was. also my dit/dah ratio feels off somehow but i cant tell if thats a settings thing or just my terrible technique. anyone been through this and have advice? i really want to get on the air for CW contacts before the end of the year and right now i feel pretty hopeless about it

so ive been sitting on doing the mars/cap mod on my FT-857D for probably two years now and finally just did it last weekend. pretty straightforward honestly, just the one diode removal and you open up the TX range. i know some guys arent into this kind of thing but i wanted to be able to test some stuff on NVIS freqs for our ARES group without having to borrow someone elses rig every time.
anyway while i had the covers off i also cleaned the fan and noticed the thermal paste on the finals looked pretty dry and crusty, so i went ahead and redid that too. pretty sure the radio runs cooler now but honestly hard to say for sure without actual measurements. the fan does seem to kick on less during long transmissions though.
has anyone else done anything more involved on the 857D? ive seen some posts about a mod for the display backlight but im not sure if its worth the hassle. also wondering if the CAT interface performance changes at all after these kinds of mods, mine seems fine but one of the guys in my club swears his got flaky after he did something similar on his 897

yeah i went through this same thing a few months ago when i started getting into DX. ended up just bookmarking like three different sites and honestly i rotate between them depending on my mood lol. one thing i'll say is the cluster data is all kind of coming from the same network of nodes anyway so the spots themselves aren't that different, its more about which interface you like looking at.
i did find an android app called VK logger or something similar, i forget the exact name, that shows live spots and lets you tap on a callsign to pull up QRZ info which is pretty handy when youre just casually watching from the couch. not gonna replace sitting at the rig but its nice for keeping an eye on things