Jessica Nakamura

so ive been chasing summits for about 8 months now and finally decided to stop being a couch activator and actually get out there. signed up for W6/NC-270 which is a 6 point summit not too far from me, moderate hike, shouldnt be too brutal. got my KX2 and a linked dipole im borrowing from a buddy, gonna run it off a 3ah lipo and hope for the best. my plan is to self spot via the SOTA watch app once i get to the activation zone, work at least 4 contacts to validate it (i know i know, the minimum) and then try to get a few S2S contacts if anything is on the cluster. im bringing the 20 and 40m links and might try 30 if the bands are weird. thing is i feel like im forgetting something obvious. ive watched like a dozen youtube videos and read the reflector posts but i always feel like there's some dumb thing nobody mentions. anyone done NC-270 specifically or just have tips for a first activation in general? my callsign is in my profile if anyone wants to chase me, ill post my expected summit time on SOTAwatch the night before.

yeah the K index really does just nuke everything when it gets that high, even if the flux is good. basically what's happening is the solar flux tells you how much ionization the sun is putting into the ionosphere - more is generally better for HF. but the K index is measuring geomagnetic disturbance, and when that spikes it basically scrambles the ionosphere and absorption goes way up, especially at higher latitudes. so you can have great flux and terrible conditions at the same time if there's a geomagnetic storm going on. it's frustrating but that's just the nature of the beast. when the K is high like that i usually drop down to 40m or even 80m at night, or just wait it out. conditions usually recover within a day or two after a storm passes. also worth checking the A index too, its kind of a 24 hour average of the K so it gives you a better sense of where things have been trending rather than just a snapshot.

the winlink.org site has a map where you can click on any gateway and see when it last connected to the CMS servers, that'll tell you pretty quick if the node is actually alive or just sitting there looking pretty on the map. i had the exact same problem with a gateway that showed up fine but hadnt checked in for like 3 days, so yeah check that first before you go nuts reconfiguring everything. on the vara fm thing, one thing that burned me for a while was the bandwidth setting. make sure you and the gateway are on the same vara fm variant, some run narrow some run wide and they wont talk to each other even if your audio is perfect. also double check your soundcard sample rate in vara's config, windows likes to randomly reset that to something dumb after updates and im assuming linux has its own version of that kind of problem. as for RMS gateway vs relay, gateways connect directly to the winlink CMS on the internet. relays are for passing traffic through other stations when theres no internet, kind of like a store and forward thing. for getting started just target gateways, much simpler.

had the RSP1A before the B came out and honestly the dynamic range improvement over a stock RTL dongle is pretty noticeable on HF, especially below 10 MHz where the AM broadcast garbage used to just smear everything. the dual tuner on the 1B is nice if you want to run two independent bands at once but for what youre describing you probably wont use it much. on the software question, SDRuno is fine but feels a little clunky to me. SDR Console handles the RSP hardware well now and the interface makes more sense if youre already used to something like HDSDR or gqrx. i personally run SDR Console for most stuff and then pipe it into VB-Audio cable to Unitrunker or DSD+ for any trunked system decoding. works pretty reliably once you get the audio routing figured out which takes an afternoon the first time. for your use case id skip the HackRF. the noise figure really does hurt it for receive-only work. if you ever want to do transmit experiments later thats a different story but it sounds like you dont need that right now.

So I finally did my first activation last weekend, took my ft-818 and a linked dipole up to a small summit about an hour from home, W4T/SU-something, cant remember the exact reference off the top of my head. Anyway I was pretty nervous about making the 4 contacts minimum but ended up with like 11 in the log which felt amazing honestly. Mostly 40m but threw out a couple on 20m too once the pile settled down a bit. Few things I'm not sure about though. When I was spotting myself on SOTAwatch before heading up, I noticed some chasers had already seen my alert from the day before and were kind of waiting on frequency when I got there which was cool but also a little overwhelming at first. Is that normal? Also someone called me on 2m FM partway through and I wasn't set up for it, I had a handheld but wasn't monitoring anything. Do most activators run both HF and VHF or is that more of a regional thing? Also one activator in a group I follow online mentioned something about unique summits mattering for awards, so if I activate the same summit twice does it count again for points or just the first time? I looked at the rules page but it was a little dense.

so this has been bugging me for a couple weeks now. my 857 was putting out full power (100w on HF) no problem and then one day i keyed up and the meter barely moved. like maybe 20-25 watts on a good day and sometimes it dips even lower depending on the band. receive seems totally fine, SWR is normal on my dummy load so its not the antenna side. i did the obvious stuff already, checked the power supply voltage under load (stays solid at 13.8), reseated the mic connector, checked the ALC setting isnt doing something weird. nothing obvious jumped out at me. im wondering if its a driver stage issue or maybe one of the finals is going soft but i honestly dont know how to tell without just shotgunning parts at it. anyone dealt with this on an 857 before? i dont really want to ship it off to a service center if i can avoid it, i have a decent scope and a few other bits of test gear so im not totally helpless. just not sure what to probe first.

so i've been working on this direct conversion 40m transmitter for a few months now, mostly evenings and weekends when i get time. got the VFO stable enough that im happy with it, the crystal filter came out decent, but im having some issues with the final PA stage and wondering if anyone's been down this road before. im using a IRF510 in the final, running it class C, getting maybe 3-4 watts out right now but the harmonics are pretty rough. like i know i need a proper lowpass filter after the final but even with the filter i built from a design i found in EMRFD the second harmonic is still a bit high. measuring it with my spectrum analyzer and im seeing maybe -35dBc on the second harmonic which i know is not legal for HF. also the IRF510 gets warm pretty fast. not crazy hot but warm enough that i added a heatsink and now im wondering if i should bias it differently or if thats just how it is with that MOSFET at these power levels. the gate bias is sitting around 3.8v which seemed to work but i just kinda arrived at that by fiddling with the pot honestly. anyone have experience getting cleaner output from an IRF510 PA or should i be looking at a different device? ive seen builds using the BS170 but thats for QRP stuff right, like under a watt. not sure where to go from here.

i went from a 590 to a 7300 about two years ago and honestly... its mostly GAS but not entirely. the waterfall really does change how you operate a little, especially on 10m when you're hunting for openings, you can just see activity pop up without constantly spinning the dial. but the receiver in the 590 is genuinely competitive, icom didnt blow it out of the water there or anything. what actually got me was the built in ATU is slightly more capable on the 7300 in my experience, and the USB audio interface being dead simple for digital modes was nice. but if youre already set up with WSJT-X on the 590 and it works, thats kind of a wash. i dont regret it but i also wouldnt tell someone they need to do it.

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now and always told myself id learn CW eventually and finally sat down with it seriously about 6 weeks ago. im using a cheap beginner paddle i picked up off ebay, plugged into an old MFJ keyer i borrowed from a guy at my club. i think i understand the basics of how a paddle works vs a straight key but my dits and dahs are coming out really uneven and sometimes i get these weird runaway strings of dits when i barely touch the thing. i went through the settings and im pretty sure the squeeze keyer mode is on but honestly i dont fully understand what that does vs iambic mode A vs mode B. the club elmer told me to just use mode A and not worry about it but id love to actually understand the difference at some point. right now i just want my letters to sound like letters lol. im practicing with the G4FON software and slowly working up from like 8wpm. anybody have tips for getting the paddle tension and timing adjusted so it actually feels comfortable? or is it just a matter of hours and hours of practice and it clicks eventually?

So ive been trying to get Winlink Express working for the past week and a half and im pretty much pulling my hair out at this point. The software itself installed fine and i can see gateways in the list when i do a channel selection update, but every time i try to actually connect to one it just sits there and eventually times out. Im using a SignaLink USB with my IC-7300 and i know the audio levels are set right because i can do Winmor just fine in test mode. The issue seems to be specifically with RMS relay stations — the ones marked as telnet connections work perfectly fine so i know my account is set up right and messages are going through when i use that. Its just the RF side thats broken. My question is whether this is a PTT timing thing or if maybe im just not hitting the right gateways. Most of the local ones are 300 baud HF which i read somewhere is slower but more reliable? Not sure if that matters here. Anyone gone through this before and figured out what the stupid obvious thing i was missing was

the JT65 thing is real, i worked my first EME contact last year with a single 15el M2 and an old Kenwood running 400w and a cheap cavity preamp. it took me like three sessions before i actually completed a QSO but i did get it done. the guy on the other end was running something like 4kw and a big array in europe so there was definitely a big gun / pistol asymmetry going on there lol but it counts. one thing nobody told me was how much azimuth and elevation tracking matters, you can lose a lot of signal if your antenna isnt actually pointed well at the moon, seems obvious but i was surprised how quickly things degraded when i was a few degrees off. also if you havent already get wsjt-x set up and just start listening during peak EME activity windows, you can actually hear the bigger stations bouncing off the moon before you even transmit anything and that really makes it feel real

the hum and the microphonics on the pot are almost certainly a grounding issue. with the 602 and 386 combo you really need a solid ground plane, if youre building this on perfboard with point to point wiring it picks up everything. also check that your LO isnt bleeding into the audio stage through the supply rail, they share power and the 602 can inject a lot of crud if theres no decoupling between the two sections. i usually put a small ferrite bead in series on the VCC line to the 602 and a 10uF tantalum right at the pins, that cleans it up a lot. the image thing is just what it is with a DC receiver, you can add a simple low pass filter on the RF input to knock out the image band a bit but youll never fully fix it without going to a superhet. but honestly for a first build getting audio at all on the first try is pretty good, the grounding stuff is fixable

Yeah the Tacoma under-dash situation is rough, i have a 2020 and ended up going the remote head route with mine (different radio, IC-2730 but same idea). The separation cable is honestly not that bad to run, took me maybe two hours including fishing it through the firewall. Main unit lives behind the rear seat actually, not under the front — way less heat back there and i just ran the power cables back to the battery with an inline fuse. Been two summers now and no issues at all. The RAM mount for the head unit ended up on the A-pillar and it works great, stays out of the airbag zone and i can see the display without looking away from the road too much. Only thing i'd say is get the actual Yaesu separation cable, dont cheap out on a third party one, heard people have issues with the connector not seating right.

yeah 10m has been doing some wild things lately, i caught a brief opening to South America on Tuesday that i totally wasnt expecting. just happened to be tuning around and there they were. the SFI has been hovering up around 180 or so the last few days which is pretty solid, best stretch ive seen in years probably. on the IC-905 thing, a buddy of mine at a club meeting last week said he saw one at a hamfest vendor table but i dont think it was actually for sale yet, just showing it off. looked impressive from the photos he showed me. the microwave modules are what really interest me but yeah the cost adds up fast once you start adding those.

so ive been a ham for about 6 years now and i dont think ive seen 10 meters this alive since maybe 2014 or so. was just spinning the dial last tuesday afternoon and worked a station in Argentina no problem, then a few minutes later had a quick QSO with someone in South Africa. running like 100 watts and a dipole in the attic, nothing fancy at all. also saw somewhere that Icom is supposed to be releasing some kind of updated version of the 7300 or at least a new radio in that price range, anyone heard anything more concrete about that? I saw a blurb on one of the Facebook groups but those things are always half rumor. would be interesting timing with the solar cycle where it is right now honestly. anyway just wanted to share since it feels like the hobby is in a good spot right now. lot of new people getting licensed too from what i can tell at club meetings. good time to be on the air.