Contest Fan

so i finally decided to stop putting it off and just build a simple 40m dipole out of some 14awg stranded wire i had sitting in the garage. cut it to the formula, 468/f, came out to roughly 66 feet total, fed it with some RG-8X i had left over from another project. center insulator is just a piece of pvc pipe with the ends drilled out, which i thought was clever at the time. got it up in an inverted-V config with the apex at maybe 25 feet using my push-up pole. SWR at resonance is sitting around 1.8:1 which honestly isnt terrible but i was expecting closer to 1.5 or even lower. the weird part is the resonant point ended up at like 7.050 when i was shooting for somewhere in the 7.150-7.200 range. so its resonating low and the SWR at resonance isnt great either. trimmed a bit off each leg and brought it up slightly but im kind of nervous to keep cutting and overshoot. not sure if its the inverted-V drooping the ends down too close to the fence or maybe the coax isnt choked properly. i didnt put a choke on it, just ran the feedline straight down. running it to an FT-891 if that matters. any thoughts before i hack more wire off?

yeah what he said about just jumping in. i was terrified my first Field Day and ended up having a blast even though i had no idea what i was doing half the time. Field Day isnt until june but its probably the most beginner friendly operating event out there because its set up for clubs and you can just show up and somebody will walk you through everything. worth looking into if theres a club near you doing it

those relay modules are a pain, been there. one thing i'd add is put some flyback diodes across your relay coils if the board doesnt already have them — when the relay de-energizes it spikes voltage back and over time that can do weird things. most of the chinese boards do have them but worth checking. also half second polling might be a bit slow if youre band hopping fast in a contest, i run mine closer to 100ms and it feels pretty snappy. not a huge deal but something to think about

been on 2m EME for about 6 years so maybe i can help a little. the single yagi JT65 thing is technically possible but honestly its kind of miserable, youre talking marginal decodes and a lot of frustration. a 2x9el or 2x11el setup is probably the sweet spot for getting started without going full four-square array. you get real contacts, people hear you without too much trouble, and you dont have to mortgage the house on hardware. for rotators most people doing it seriously run seperate az and el units. the G-800 wont cut it for az either if you want to track the moon continuously, you really want something with computer control. a lot of guys use the Yaesu G-5500 combo which is purpose built for this kind of thing and the software support is everywhere. pairs up with HamLib and PstRotator without much drama. the preamp situation is critical, a good MGF1302 or similar GaAs FET right at the feedpoint makes a real difference, dont skimp there or run long coax before the LNA or youve already lost. power wise if youre running a kilowatt youre in decent shape. some guys do it with 500w and a good array but more is obviously better on a path with that much loss. the EME path loss on 2m is something like 252 dB which sounds terrifying but JT65 handles it if your station is reasonably put together.

For weak signal VHF/UHF work, go with the RSP1A. The HackRF will not be your receiver of choice for casual monitoring - it's better for signal analysis above 2GHz. The RSP1A's superior dynamic range will serve you much better.

this is super helpful im about to do basically the same thing in my jeep with a 578DGPS. been going back and forth on the antenna mount situation for weeks. did you have to do anything special sealing the NMO hole? thats the part im most nervous about, last thing i want is a leak showing up six months from now

I had the same feeling about FT8 honestly, feels automated after a while. I went back to RTTY for contesting because at least you're typing stuff yourself even if it's still kind of a macro fest. PSK31 on 14.070 used to be where all the ragchewing happened but that seems pretty quiet these days, at least on my end. might be a time of day thing but i dunno it feels like everyone just moved to FT8 and stayed there

Had similar issues with Digirig setup. Set TX/RX dials to 9 o'clock position initially, open squelch and adjust RX so VU meter needle centers or slightly left of center. Also verify radio is in FM mode, not NFM.

the wall wart is almost certainly your problem or at least a big part of it. switching to a battery will tell you pretty fast whether its a power supply issue. i built a similar rig a few years back and had the exact same hum, switched to a 9v battery and it dropped way down, then added a simple LC filter on the supply rail and it went away entirely. the touch-the-ground thing is classic ground loop stuff. with ugly construction you can end up with little antenna loops in your ground path without realizing it. try to make sure all your grounds return to one common point rather than daisy chaining them across the board. also worth checking if your audio output wire is running close to the vfo section — that can couple noise in ways that are really hard to trace. id stick with the TL072 honestly, the LM386 has more gain than most people need and its not actually easier to stabilize, just more forgiving of bad bypassing. make sure you've got a 10uf and a 0.1uf right at the opamp supply pins, not a few inches away.

New to digital modes here - should I start with FT8 or jump to FT4? My setup is pretty basic (IC-7300, wire antenna, 100W). Sounds like even compromised antennas can work well with these weak signal modes, which is great for HOA-restricted operators.

nice! i remember my first contact too, hands were shaking so bad i could barely hold the mic. that was about 6 months ago and now i'm on the air almost every day. 2 meters is great for getting started but once you get comfortable you should try some hf frequencies if you can

Hey first off thats great that your group is getting called up, means your EC has been doing the relationship building with the county which a lot of groups struggle with honestly. My advice from doing this for about 12 years now -- the biggest thing that catches new folks off guard is how much waiting there is punctuated by moments where you need to be completely on your game. its not like a contest where youre constantly busy. you might sit for two hours and then suddenly net control needs a welfare check relayed and you have like 30 seconds to get your head in the game. so stay off your phone, keep the log open, keep the radio on. also eat something before you go and bring snacks because nobody is going to remind you and you will forget. For gear yeah VHF/UHF is almost certainly what youll use. your 7300 might just stress you out trying to find HF utility in a county-level activation. bring a good dual band HT as backup to whatever mobile you set up.

the FT-65 is a solid radio for the price, really no complaints from me on build quality and audio. had mine for maybe 18 months and its been on a few camping trips, dropped it once on gravel and it kept going. receiver seems noticeably better than the baofeng stuff though i havent done any scientific comparison or anything. if APRS is something you actually want to use more seriously down the road though, you might want to look at the Yaesu FT3DR instead. yeah its more expensive but it has built-in GPS and APRS without needing anything else. i made the mistake of buying mid-range and then wanting the features of the next thing up, ended up spending more overall. just something to think about depending on how serious you get about SOTA and APRS together.

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth the drive, last time i went a few years back it was pretty decent for finding used gear but i heard it got smaller since then. thinking about loading up the car and making a weekend of it, maybe hit up a couple of the fleamarket tables early before everything good gets picked over. anybody been recently or know if the swap meet part is still going strong

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and yeah its great for contacts and all that but honestly it feels like a glorified signal report machine. you get a grid square and thats it. started looking into JS8Call because i actually want to talk to people, like have a back and forth, and it seems interesting but im not sure if the tradeoffs are worth it. the mode is slower and needs a bit better SNR from what ive read, or maybe its the other way around, i dont remember now. my setup is an IC-7300 into a trapped vertical, so not exactly a big gun station. i can usually pull -15 or -16 on FT8 without too much trouble on 40m. does JS8Call fall apart at those signal levels or does it hold up ok? and is anyone actually using it regularly, like is there a community there or is it kind of dead compared to FT8? also vaguely curious about PSK31 again, used to run it ages ago before FT8 took over everything. feels like there might still be a few people on it but i have no idea if thats true anymore or just nostalgia.

yeah what he said about LoTW is the main thing. i wasted like a year not uploading regularly and then had to go back and chase paper QSLs for a bunch of states that the other ops never bothered putting on LoTW. such a pain. just get in the habit of uploading after every session, takes like 2 minutes in WSJT or whatever logging software you use. also fwiw i started with WAS because it felt more achievable and gave me a feel for chasing before i got obsessed with DXCC. now im at 187 entities and cannot stop, send help lol

so ive been working on this little 40m CW transmitter for the past few weeks, pretty basic stuff, just a crystal controlled thing based on a design i found in an old QST article from like 1987 or something. got the oscillator stage working fine, crystal is pulling to about 7.030 which is where i want it, but when i hook it up to the dummy load and watch the output on my scope the waveform looks kinda... mushy? not a clean sine, more like the top of the wave is getting clipped or flattened a bit. im running about 12v in and the final is a 2N2222 which i know is a bit light but i was just trying to get something on the air to prove the concept. output is maybe 200mw into 50 ohms which is fine for now. checked all my solder joints, nothing cold that i can see. the low pass filter after the final is 5 element chebyshev cut for 40m, values came out of the ARRL handbook so those should be right. not sure if the clipping is a problem with the driver stage not giving enough base drive, or if the 2N2222 is just being pushed too hard, or something with the supply. anyone dealt with this before? i dont have a spectrum analyzer so i cant check harmonics directly but im guessing theyre not great if the waveform looks like that.

been thinking about putting together a DC receiver for 40m, maybe 80m too if i can figure out the switching. saw some designs online but they all seem to use different mixer chips and im not sure whats still available. anyone done one recently that actually works decent? not looking for contest station quality just something that can pull in the locals and maybe some dx on good nights

so ive been trying to get more into DX chasing lately and someone at our club mentioned using the dx cluster spots to find active stations before i start spinning the dial. i set up an account on QRZ a while back mostly just for the logbook but i just noticed they have their own spot display on there too. and then theres dxwatch which someone else told me about and i guess there's also dx summit and a few others? my question is basically — are these all showing the same spots or are they pulling from different networks? like if i check one am i missing something on another. also i cant quite figure out if the spots on qrz are real time or if theres some delay. sometimes i'll see a spot for a station and then tune there and the frequency is totally dead by the time i get there, which is either me being slow or there being a lag somewhere i guess also is there a way to filter by band on dxwatch because right now im seeing everything and its a bit overwhelming when im just trying to work 20m mostly. still pretty new to all this so go easy on me haha