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.

congrats on going for it, first activations are a blast even when things go sideways. the pre-announcing thing is called an alert and you put it up on SOTAwatch2 or the new sotawatch3 site, its not mandatory but chasers really appreciate it because they can plan to be around when you're up there. makes getting those 4 contacts way easier especially if you're on a less popular summit cell signal is a real problem on a lot of summits, i've had activations where i had zero bars and had to rely on the alert i posted the night before and just work whoever was listening on the usual watering holes. 14.285 and 14.345 on 20m get a lot of SOTA traffic, and 7.033 on CW if you're into that. if you do have any signal the SOTA spotter app works great and you'll get a pile of chasers within like 2 minutes of posting, it's kind of wild the first time it happens for operating without a table just bring a small foam pad or a piece of closed cell foam to sit on, rest the kx2 on your knee or a stuff sack, and honestly it works fine. the antenna setup takes a bit more figuring out but a random wire with a 9:1 unun and a good ground or counterpoise does the job. have fun up there

the ribbon cable thing on the 857 got me too, spent a good 20 minutes on that the first time. once you know the trick its obvious but yeah none of the guides bother to mention it. the japanese service manual actually shows it clearly but good luck finding a clean copy of that. on the IF mod — i looked into it a while back and from what i could find most of the guys who did it said the difference was pretty subtle unless you're running the radio with narrow filters already. the 857 without the optional collins filters is kinda already compromised in the selectivity department so adding the mod on top of stock filters might not get you much. if you havent already the SSB filter is probably a bigger bang for the buck before messing with the IF circuit.

honestly the feedline situation sounds fine so i'd look at the antenna height before anything else. 25 feet might not be clearing whatever is between you and that repeater. a collinear like the X50 has pretty compressed vertical pattern too which helps on flat terrain but if there's any terrain in the way it can actually work against you depending on the angle. a fixed yagi aimed NNE is really not a bad solution if that's where 90% of your activity is. i ran a 7 element M2 aimed at a hilltop repeater for like 3 years with no rotor and never had a problem. just gotta accept you're not going to swing it around on a whim. the gain difference going from the X50 to even a modest yagi is substantial enough that you'd probably notice it immediately on that path.

had almost this exact same situation about two years ago. ended up going RSP1A and honestly for HF receive it absolutely destroys the RTL-SDR, like not even close. the noise floor improvement alone is worth it and the 14-bit ADC makes a real difference when youre trying to pull weak signals out. SDRuno works fine with it though i mostly run it through SDR++ now which is way smoother. the HackRF thing — i get the appeal but keep in mind its only 8-bit which actually makes the RSP1A a better pure receiver even though HackRF costs more. the transmit capability on HackRF is cool but its not like you can just use it as a radio, youre really doing more like signal generation and experimentation stuff. if you want to eventually transmit with SDR properly youre probably looking at a LimeSDR or something anyway. for what you described, just get the RSP1A and spend the leftover money on a decent upconverter if you need it or a LNA.

so i've been running my FT-7900R in the truck for about three months now, had it just kind of sitting on the seat with a mag mount which i know is terrible but i finally got around to doing a proper install last weekend. ran the power leads direct to the battery with an inline fuse, used the existing grommet in the firewall to route the cable, mounted the radio under the dash on a RAM mount bracket thing. problem is ever since i did the proper install im getting this weird buzzing noise on receive that kind of pulses with the engine rpm. didnt have it before with the janky mag mount setup which makes no sense to me. transmit seems fine, people say i sound good. its just annoying as heck on receive especially on 2m simplex where there's not a lot of signal to cover it up. anybody dealt with this before? i'm wondering if its the alternator but i dont really know how to chase that down. the power leads are pretty close to the engine harness where they go through the firewall, maybe thats it?

so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and honestly i feel like im starting to hit a wall with what i can do on 2m and 70cm. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to just go take the general already but im kind of nervous about the electrical theory stuff. i was never great at math in school and from what i remember the tech exam wasnt too bad but i heard general has more actual calculations and stuff like that. i downloaded the gordon west book from the library and flipped through it and some of it looks familiar but then theres sections on like impedance matching and propagation stuff that looks pretty intimidating. has anyone here gone from tech to general recently and how long did you study? and also once i pass what are the first things i should actually try to do on HF because i dont even really know where to start with that either. i have a baofeng and an old icom ic-718 i got at a hamfest that i havent even turned on yet because it felt pointless without the license

so ive been meaning to do this for like two years and after the storms we had last month I finally got serious about it. got a Yaesu FT-857D that I'm planning to use as the main rig, hooked up to a 40ah LiFePO4 battery I picked up a few months back. threw everything in a pelican-style case from harbor freight (the actual pelican ones are way out of my budget right now). my plan is basically to have everything I need to set up a functional HF and VHF/UHF station within like 20-30 minutes of arriving somewhere. I've got a roll of RG-8X, some coax connectors, a basic dipole kit that I can string between trees or whatever, and a little logging notebook. also keeping a printed copy of local ARES frequencies and the ICS forms in a ziploc in there. but I feel like im definitely forgetting something obvious. this is my first real attempt at a go-kit so I'm not sure what I'll wish I had until I actually need it and it's too late. anyone been through this process and have stuff they always forget or wish they'd packed? also curious what people use for antennas when you cant guarantee any support structures nearby.

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and ive been making contacts pretty regularly, mostly HF on 40 and 20 meters, some SSB some FT8. everyone keeps telling me different things about QSLing and im honestly a bit lost at this point. some guys tell me LoTW is the only one that matters for awards like DXCC and WAS, and that eQSL is kind of a second tier thing that not everyone respects. but then other people say eQSL is totally fine and way more convenient. and THEN theres still people mailing me actual paper cards which i love getting honestly but i dont know if i should be sending them back or if thats even expected anymore. like do i have to upload to all three of these or can i just pick one and stick with it? and for the paper cards people send me, am i supposed to send one back even if they didnt ask? i feel like im offending someone every time i dont respond to a card but i also dont have a huge budget for postage right now. sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out the etiquette here

yeah the third party thing tripped me up too when i first got my ticket. i think the rule is mostly aimed at like, someone using your radio to conduct business or something sketchy, not your wife saying hello. but definitely read 97.115 when you get a chance, its actually not that hard to understand once you look at it directly instead of trying to find a summary somewhere.

i just did this like two months ago, same situation, tech for almost a year and nothing going on locally. passed my general on the first try and yeah hamstudy worked fine. the electrical stuff tripped me up a little, like the formulas for calculating power and resistance but theres not that many of them and once you do the practice tests enough they kind of stick. honestly the hardest part for me was after passing and actually getting on HF for the first time becuase the bands sound really different than I expected. like messier? more QRM and people talking over each other sometimes. but its way more interesting than sitting on an empty repeater waiting for someone to key up