Daniel Patel

honest answer: it depends entirely on how disciplined you are operating it. the guys who see massive rate gains from SO2R are the ones who've spent years getting comfortable enough on one radio that they can basically run on autopilot, then the second radio is filling dead time instead of just creating chaos. if you're still having to consciously think about logging and your run frequency and your exchange then adding a second radio mostly just gives you more things to mess up that said, for mid-level contesting the biggest gains i saw weren't even from running two bands simultaneously, it was more about using the second radio to find a clear freq before i QSYed and for S&P mults while i was running. that part alone probably added 5-8% to my score in a typical cqww. the bandpass filters are non-negotiable though if your antennas are anywhere close to each other, i used the Array Solutions ones for a while and they worked fine, you dont need the super fancy station master stuff unless you're doing really aggressive interleaving the k3s is a great foundation for it too since the noise floor is low enough that youll actually hear stuff on the second radio even with some residual crud from the other band

oh man totally been there, honestly freezing up your first few check-ins is basically a rite of passage. dont sweat it at all. the net control guy has heard everything, trust me. most local nets just want callsign, name, and whether you have traffic or anything for the net. some ask for location especially if its a wide coverage repeater and they like knowing where signals are coming from. the best thing to do is just listen to a few other check-ins before yours comes around and kind of mirror what everyone else does. every net has its own little culture and theyll usually announce at the start what format they want anyway, you just gotta train yourself to actually listen for that part instead of rehearsing what youre gonna say in your head the whole time haha. after a few weeks it just becomes automatic, callsign, name, location, no traffic, and youre done in about 5 seconds.

yeah the SOTA thing during contests is a whole vibe, some activators specifically plan activations to hand out points during CQ WW or ARRL November Sweepstakes, they get a pile-up going way faster than usual. not sure how much overlap you'd actually find because SOTA folks tend to hang out on different parts of the band but it happens. anyway welcome to the addiction, first CQ WW is something you remember

yeah i did my first EME contact with a 4x9el yagi array and the 9700 so the dish is definitely overkill for getting started lol. not that thats a bad thing. one thing that bites people on dishes is the feedhorn positioning, if that's off even a little you lose a ton of efficiency and it doesnt always look wrong visually. worth doing the math on focal length and checking actual feed placement before you assume the surface is the problem if you're getting disappointing results. also just practically speaking, are you in a location where you can track the moon? like do you have a rotator setup yet or is that still on the list. az/el control is kind of the other big piece that people sometimes underestimate in terms of wiring and controller complexity especially if you're adapting a commercial dish mount that wasnt designed for amateur use

I'm kind of in the same boat as you honestly, fairly new to chasing DX and the whole spotting network thing was overwhelming at first. someone at my club mentioned the Club Log app which i've been using on my phone mostly just to check if something is a new one for me while im at the radio. its not perfect but its nice to not have to dig through QRZ on a small screen. still havent figured out how to get spots into my logging software without it being a whole thing so if anyone has a simple setup for that id love to hear it too

so ive been a tech for about two years and just upgraded to general last month, and i finally decided to take the plunge on CW. i know its not required anymore but honestly theres something about it that just drew me in, maybe all the old timers at the club who still swear by it. anyway i picked up a cheap single lever paddle from amazon (i know, i know) and im using it with an old MFJ keyer i borrowed from a guy at my club. ive been practicing with the Koch method on lcwo.net for a few weeks and i can copy maybe 8-10 wpm on a good day. the problem is my sending is kind of a mess. like when im actually trying to use the paddle and form letters it just feels awkward and my spacing is all over the place. dits and dahs come out wrong sometimes and i cant tell if its my technique or if the single lever is just harder to learn on than a dual lever iambic paddle. anyone go through this? does it get better or am i building bad habits right now

N1MM is really built for one thing and it does that thing incredibly well. trying to use it as your everyday logger is kind of awkward, the interface is all optimized around rapid contest exchange entry and the callsign lookup stuff isnt as fleshed out for general rag chew logging. so i get why people keep Log4OM for the day to day stuff. ive just accepted that i have a contest log and a real log and they're different things. a contest QSO is barely even a QSO in the traditional sense, its like 15 seconds of exchange and move on, so treating it differently doesnt bother me anymore.

so i finally did my first summit activation last weekend, took the ft-818 and a random wire up a little 2 pointer about an hour from home. wasnt sure id get 4 contacts but ended up with like 11 including two s2s which was a nice surprise. the antenna situation was a mess tho, i was trying to hang the wire off a branch and the wind kept blowing it into the guy wire and i had no idea if it was even resonant but the atu seemed happy enough with it. sat on 20m for most of it and then dropped down to 40 near the end when propagation seemed to get better. honestly the whole thing took maybe 90 minutes including the hike and i kept thinking why did i wait so long to try this

oh dont stress about it too much, that happens to literally everyone at some point especially when youre new to a net. the honest answer is yeah, if you think you might have been the one doubling, just come back with your call and say something like "KD9XYZ, I may have caused that interference, my apologies" and net control will usually just say no problem and move on. most nets are pretty forgiving about this stuff, theyre not there to embarrass anyone. the thing is, if nobody fesses up net control just has to move on anyway, so saying something actually helps them out and it shows youre paying attention. the nets ive run over the years, i always appreciated when someone owned up because at least then we knew what happened and could keep things moving. youre doing the right thing by listening first and learning the rhythm before checking in, thats more than most new folks do honestly

so ive been trying to learn CW for about three months now and i finally broke down and bought a paddle instead of just using a straight key. picked up a cheap Bencher clone off ebay and im using the keyer built into my radio (IC-7300) and honestly the timing feels completely wrong to me. like i know what i want to send but what comes out sounds nothing like it. dots bleed into dashes or i get these weird extra elements sneaking in. my code speed when copying is probably around 12-13 wpm on a good day but when i actually try to send anything i fall apart. is this just a muscle memory thing that takes months or is there something specific i should be adjusting. i've messed with the weight setting a little but im not sure im doing it right. any tips from people who went through this same thing would be great

i just use N1MM for literally everything and kind of brute force it. yeah the award tracking isnt great and the DX cluster integration is a bit clunky compared to some other stuff but i got used to it. the contest performance is why i started and at this point i dont want to learn another piece of sofware honestly

self spotting is totally fine and honestly kind of expected for WWFF, nobody is going to give you grief for that. most hunters are monitoring the spotter page or have it linked to their phone so thats usually the best way to get a pile going. the reference number is what matters for the log, the park name doesnt need to be perfect as long as the KFF or whatever prefix you used is correct and matches the WWFF database. congrats on the first one, 40m SSB in a valley with decent reports sounds like you had a solid setup going

been putting together a go kit for emergency deployment and wondering if im missing anything obvious. got my ft-857d, power supply, couple antennas, coax, swr meter, basic tools. threw in some snacks and water too but feel like theres probably stuff i havent thought of that would be really important when youre out there for hours trying to help with communications this would be my first time doing any real emergency work so any advice from folks who have been there would be great. what did you wish you had packed after your first deployment?

yeah the window system trips a lot of people up at first. basically when a callsign becomes available there's a filing window — used to be tiered by license class so extras got first crack, then advanced, etc. but they changed that a while back and now it's kind of a simultaneous window for everyone who qualifies. if multiple people apply for the same call during that window it goes to a tiebreaker which is basically a random lottery among the qualified applicants. so yeah, partly luck if a desirable call gets multiple apps. the 30 day thing you saw is probably referring to the quiet period after a licensee dies or lets their license lapse before that call becomes available for vanity. there are different waiting periods depending on the circumstance, like if a ham is still living and just let it expire vs deceased. lotw and the ae7q site are your friends here, ae7q especially has great tools for tracking call availability and seeing when calls drop.

so ive been chasing DX seriously for maybe 3 years now and for the longest time i just could not break pileups to save my life. like i'd hear a rare one come up, throw my call in, and just get absolutely nowhere. watching other guys get through in 2-3 tries while im sitting there for an hour getting nothing. anyway i think i finally figured out some stuff that actually works, at least for me on 100w and a wire antenna which is not exactly a powerhouse setup. first thing that changed everything was learning to actually listen to where the DX is coming back. sounds obvious but i used to just tune to where most of the pileup was and call there. total waste of time. now i spend the first couple minutes just watching where he's actually pulling calls from and working out his pattern if he has one. second thing — and this one took me forever to learn — is timing. i used to just call constantly like everyone else. now i wait for a slight gap right after he finishes a QSO and throw my call in once, maybe twice, clean. not a long call, just callsign once. i've read that running your call over and over just makes you part of the noise. the split listening thing too, like actually confirming where he's listening before you transmit at all. i wasted so many calls just beaming at the DX frequency instead of finding his actual listening window. anyone else have stuff that worked for them? curious especially about working rare ones when propagation isnt in your favor, that seems like its own whole problem