Paul Wilson

i did this exact thing a few years ago visiting family in ontario. it worked fine, nobody gave me any trouble. just made sure i had a printed copy of my FCC license with me and knew my callsign suffix deal. the hardest part was honestly just getting the rig across the border without the customs guy getting weird about it lol. he asked what it was and i said a radio and he just waved me through.

haha yeah the self-spotting thing gets everyone at least once. after my second activation i started texting my wife the summit reference and frequency before i even start hiking so she can spot me on SOTAwatch if i ask her to via text. works pretty well if you have any signal at the trailhead. also some guys use APRS to self spot which is pretty slick if your radio supports it. 4 contacts on your first one with no spot is honestly impressive, dont be too hard on yourself. some people do their first activation on a busy summit and still barely scrape 4. the W1 chasing you from Colorado on 20m, thats just SOTA magic right there, those guys are dedicated. whats the next summit youre eyeing?

oh also dont overlook the special event stations — those are really fun and a good low pressure way to make contacts. there are usually a few running any given weekend, sometimes for parks on the air, sometimes for historical events or whatever. you just call them like any other station and they often have a more relaxed pace than contest pile-ups. the arrl website usually lists upcoming ones and so does qrz if you poke around a bit. got a nice certificate from one last summer for a lighthouse event and it was genuinely one of the more enjoyable afternoons ive had on the radio.

General is a step up but nothing crazy. the part that catches people is the operating privileges section, there's a lot of questions about which frequencies you can use as a General vs Extra and it gets a little tedious to memorize all the band edges. just drill those until they're automatic and the rest kind of falls into place. once you get it though, 40m is addicting. especially at night when the band opens up and you start hearing stations from europe or south america just casually sitting there. first time i worked a DX station on phone i think i sat there for a few minutes just kind of staring at the radio. anyway yeah just go take it, worst case you fail and you learn what you got wrong and take it again, no big deal

could also just be the Flex itself going into some kind of idle state? i dont use RemoteHams but i remote my 6300 over SmartSDR and ive seen it do weird things when the DAX audio pipeline gets confused. probably different issue but worth checking the Flex event log on the remote machine if you have access to it. sometimes theres stuff in there that doesnt show up anywhere obvious

I've been a happy Tech for two years, mostly using 2m and 70cm repeaters locally. I know upgrading gives additional bands plus increased power from 200 watts to 1,500 watts PEP on HF, but is it really worth the study time? What specific HF privileges make the biggest difference in practice? Looking for real-world experiences from those who made the jump.