Sarah Williams

the battery buffer idea is exactly the right call and not overcomplicating it at all. we've been doing basically that for two years now with a pair of battleborn 100ah cells and a Victron IP67 charger running off the honda. the Victron handles absorption and float properly so you're not cooking the batteries and the rig just sees clean stable voltage the whole time regardless of what the genny is doing. biggest thing is make sure your charger output can actually keep pace with your draw if you're running the 991 at 50w or so on SSB, you're pulling maybe 10-12A average depending on duty cycle, so a 20-30A charger keeps you net positive most of the time. on the antenna thing, we switched to a Spiderbeam HD pole, the 12m version, and its been solid. pricey but it doesnt flex like crazy in wind and breaks down into a manageable bag. the painters pole duct tape engineering is a proud ham tradition but yeah probably not ideal for a formal exercise where someone from the county EOC might be watching

yeah i went through almost the exact same thing when i first got on 40m, it can be a jungle down there especially in the evenings. one thing that helped me was just finding a few regulars on the bands i like and asking them where the usual net frequencies are in my region. people are generally happy to share that stuff. and honestly sometimes you just gotta QSY and move on, not every interaction on the air is gonna be perfect and the experienced ops know that too.

had the 590SG for about four years then picked up a 7300 when the price dropped and ran them both in the shack for a while before selling the Kenwood. honest take: for what you're describing the 7300 is probably fine. the strong signal handling stuff you read about is real but its really only noticeable if you're running without an attenuator near a broadcast station or during a contest with a very active band. day to day domestic HF and FT8 the 7300 is genuinely great and that waterfall becomes something you rely on more than you'd expect. the 590SG is a more mature design and some guys just prefer it, nothing wrong with that, but for a first serious HF rig the icom is hard to argue with at that price point. just my two cents, ymmv.

congrats on the first one, the second one is even easier once you realize nobody actually cares that youre in a park with a weird wire in a tree haha. on the spotting question -- yeah spots do go stale after a while, i think its like 30 minutes on the pota app before they grey out. most of the time hunters will re-spot you if theyre hearing you work people, especially if youre on a popular frequency. but if things slow down i usually just re-spot myself and sometimes move bands at the same time so it pings people again. no real rule about how long to stay on a freq, i usually give a frequency maybe 20-30 minutes if its producing contacts and then move if it slows down. on 40m in the afternoon you might find 20m is hopping more depending on time of day and conditions. 12 contacts is a solid first run, some people struggle to get the 10 minimum on their first go especially if they dont pre-announce on social media or the POTA groups.

omg same thing happened to me, i was on 10m trying to work some contest stations and suddenly there were europeans everywhere and i had no idea what was happening lol. i just started calling and worked like 4 new countries in an hour which for me is huge. i had no idea the band could do that, i thought 10m was basically dead most of the time because every time i checked before it was just static. gonna start checking those sites you mentioned more often i think

so ive been going back and forth on this for a few weeks now and i cant find a consistent answer. building a shortened vertical for 40m, only have about 20 feet of vertical space to work with which puts me well short of a quarter wave. i know i need a loading coil to electrically lengthen it but everything i read seems to contradict everything else when it comes to where to put the coil — base loading, center loading, top loading, everyone has an opinion and the opinions dont agree. my gut says top loading is more efficient because the current distribution is better but my gut is also wrong a lot. base loading seems way easier to build and tune, you can just stick it in a weather-proof box at the bottom and call it done. center loading seems like a compromise that maybe doesnt get the best of either world? anyway if anyone has actually modeled this or built a few different versions id love to hear what you actually measured rather than what the theory says should happen

yeah the tail delay thing is real, that got me too. but also — have you tried connecting to a telnet session first just to verify your Winlink account is set up right and your callsign/password combo works before you blame the RF path? i spent like three days chasing an RF problem that turned out to be i had a typo in my winlink password so the session was failing at the authentication step not the radio step. the error messages in Winlink Express are not exactly informative about which part of the sequence failed lol

so ive been running a KX3 for about 4 years now mostly doing portable ops and the occasional shack session with it on a little desk stand. loved it honestly but i kept feeling like i was leaving stuff on the table especially on 40m when the band gets crowded and everyone is running 100w and im sitting there at 10w trying to dig out of the noise. anyway picked up a used IC-7300 off a guy from the local club, he'd barely put 50 hours on it, came with the original box and everything. got it home, hooked it up to my OCF dipole which has been sitting on the shelf since i built it last winter and hadnt really had a proper radio to drive it, and just... wow. the waterfall alone is worth it. i know everyone says that and its kind of a cliché at this point but coming from a rig with no display at all its genuinely a game changer for understanding what the band is actually doing. RF gain adjustments feel more intuitive than i expected, and the DSP noise reduction is actually usable unlike some rigs ive tried where you turn it on and the audio sounds like youre underwater. 40m last night i was working stations id never have gotten through with the KX3 at least not from the home setup. im not bagging on QRP, still love it for field day and SOTA stuff, but for the shack i think i waited too long to make this jump. anyone else run both and have thoughts? also curious if the 7300 plays nice with fldigi i want to get into some digital modes but havent set that up yet

pretty much situational yeah. on a clear local repeater with good signals most people just say their call normally, especially for check ins where theres no confusion. phonetics really shine when the band is noisy, youre doing a contact with someone far away, or if you just said your call and the other person didnt quite catch it. if theyre asking you to repeat it, thats usually when you spell it out phonetically so theres no ambiguity. like the difference between B and D or M and N can totally disappear in QRM. also some nets specifically ask for phonetics, usually the more formal or traffic nets, so it just depends on what kind of net youre on. you werent doing anything wrong on that 2m net, that other guy was probably just being thorough or is the type who always does it out of habit.

so i finally did my first ever SOTA activation last weekend up on W4T/SU-001 and man i had no idea what i was in for. i'd been chasing summits for about six months just from home and figured how hard could it be to just go up there yourself right. wrong. first thing that happened was i forgot my coax adapter so i had to rig something up with what i had in my bag, managed to get the antenna up with some paracord and a random tree branch but the SWR was all over the place for the first like 20 minutes. was starting to think i was gonna have to just walk back down without making a single contact which wouldve been embarrassing after telling everyone on the club reflector i was going up there. eventually got things sorted and worked 7 stations on 20m SSB which i know isnt a lot but it qualified the summit so i'll take it. W6/CT-002 was in my log which felt pretty cool, guy had a great signal from california. the whole thing took maybe 3 hours including the hike and honestly it was one of the better days ive had in this hobby. already looking at topo maps for next weekend. anybody else do their first activation recently or have tips for not being so disorganized on the approach? i feel like there has to be a better system for packing the gear.

i had the same confusion with the dxwatch filters when i started, took me a while to realize you gotta hit apply after changing the band or it just keeps showing everything. might be obvious but i felt dumb when i figured that out lol. also the timestamps are utc so if youre not used to that yet spots can look older or newer than they are depending on your timezone

yeah i had the same frustration when i first tried it. ended up joining a couple of the JS8Call nets which helped a lot more than just parking on frequency and hoping. there are a few scheduled ones that run weekly, worth searching the JS8Call groups.io list. once you get a few regulars in your log it becomes more interesting because you actually start recognizing callsigns and having ongoing conversations over multiple sessions which feels more like what ham radio is supposed to be imo FT8 is fun for the DX chase dont get me wrong but sometimes i just want to tell someone my antenna fell down in the wind and have them commiserate, JS8Call lets you do that at like -15dB which is pretty wild when you think about it

The CTCSS thing is almost certainly your issue. On the UV-5R it's kind of buried in the menu — you need to make sure you're setting the T-CTCS (that's the transmit tone) not the R-CTCS which is just for your radio to squelch on receive. A lot of new folks set the receive side and wonder why nobody hears them. Go into the menu when you have that channel selected, look for option 13 which should be T-CTCS and set it to 100.0 Hz. The directory listing showing "PL 100.0" means the repeater requires that subaudible tone on your transmitted signal to open the repeater's squelch, your voice going out without it just gets ignored by the machine. As for waiting between transmissions, yeah there's kind of an unwritten rule that you pause a couple seconds after a transmission ends before you key up. Gives the repeater time to drop the courtesy tone and lets other stations jump in if they need to. If there's an active QSO happening, best to just listen and wait for a natural break, usually happens when they say "go ahead" or toss it back to anyone listening. You'll get the hang of it pretty quickly once you're actually making contacts on there.

man your story is almost exactly mine from like 6 months ago except i screwed up two of the toroids on my first attempt and had to reorder parts lol. that moment when you make your first contact on something you built yourself is genuinely hard to explain to non hams i dont do SOTA yet but ive been doing some POTA and for quick portable stuff i just use a random wire with a 9:1 unun and a small tuner, its not super efficient but its flexible and i can work multiple bands. probably not ideal for only 5w but ive made it work. one of these days im gonna build a proper EFHW setup like the other guy mentioned

yeah what the other person said about hamstudy is solid, thats what most people use now. i'd also say dont stress too much about cramming every single concept perfectly before you sit for the exam. the technician test really isnt that hard compared to general or extra, and you can retake it the same day at most VE sessions if you dont pass on the first try, though honestly most people pass on the first attempt if they put in even a few hours of prep. one thing i'd add is find a local club near you because they usually run license exam sessions and some of them do free study nights too. the ARRL has a club finder on their site. your neighbor who got you interested might even know when the next session is, worth asking him