Jennifer Davis

yeah the flux has been all over the place this solar cycle, cycle 25 has actually been way more active than most predictions said it would be which is great news for HF ops. the thing about 10m is its just genuinely fickle even when conditions look good on paper. high flux doesnt automatically mean a band opening, you also need the geometry to work out — like the path between you and wherever youre trying to work needs to have enough ionization at the right layer and at the right time of day. for tools i basically live on DXMaps.com to see where spots are coming in real time, and i check the NOAA space weather site for the actual flux and K index numbers. there's also a site called voacap online that lets you model predicted propagation paths which is pretty useful once you get the hang of entering your setup info. honestly though after a while you start to just get a feel for it. if youre seeing spots from europe on the cluster in the morning on 10m, drop what youre doing and get on because it might not last long.

so ive been running my home station remotely for about a year now using a pretty janky combination of a raspberry pi, some port forwarding, and teamviewer for the screen and it works but its kind of a mess honestly. audio latency is all over the place and half the time my XYL accidentally closes the laptop and kills my session mid-QSO which is fun. anyway a buddy of mine at the club keeps pushing me toward RemoteHams and specifically the SDR remote stuff they have going. i played with it briefly at his shack and it seemed solid but i honestly couldnt tell if the latency i was hearing was the setup or just his internet. hes on some kind of rural DSL which doesnt help. my home connection is fiber so im thinking that part would at least be better on my end. main thing im trying to figure out is whether the RemoteHams client handles the audio compression in a way that doesnt murder weak signal work. im mostly doing SSB and some digital, not really CW so the latency tolerance is a bit more forgiving than it could be. but ive read a few threads elsewhere saying the codec choices matter a lot and i dont fully understand all the options in the software. also curious if anyone has tied this into any kind of internet linking setup, like using it as a node or relay point for a repeater system. probably a whole other rabbit hole but the thought crossed my mind.

The -21dB spec is legitimate but depends heavily on your receiver's dynamic range and AGC settings. On HF bands with lots of strong signals, dynamic range becomes more important than sensitivity. Try turning off preamp and using attenuator if you're seeing overload - counterintuitive but often improves weak signal decoding.

so ive been at this morse thing for about a year now and honestly im kind of frustrated. started with the Koch method using LCWO and got up to around 13wpm copy pretty comfortably but now i just... cant seem to push past it. like i'll be copying along fine and then i miss one character and suddenly im lost and the whole thing falls apart. i read somewhere that 13-15wpm is kind of a wall a lot of people hit and that you're supposed to just force yourself to listen at higher speeds even if you're only catching like half of it? tried bumping up to 18wpm and it was pretty rough, felt like i was just guessing most of the time. not sure if that approach actually works or if im doing something wrong. for context im practicing maybe 20-30 minutes a day, sometimes skipping days. using LCWO for random letter groups and also the W1AW code practice files. anyone else gone through this and actually made it to 20wpm? what finally clicked for you

yeah im planning to go, drove up last year too and it was worth it. the swap meet is definitely still on from what i saw on the club website, maybe smaller vendor area but the tailgating part should be the same. bring cash obviously and get there early if you want the good stuff because by noon all the decent gear is gone

When you listen before transmitting, use your call sign properly, and respect frequency allocations, you help keep the airwaves open and welcoming - your conduct reflects on the entire amateur radio community. These fundamentals never go out of style, whether you're working DX or just ragchewing.

so i've been running my FT-857D in the truck for about three weeks now and overall im pretty happy with how it came out. got it mounted on a RAM mount setup between the seats, ran the power cables directly to the battery with an inline fuse, the whole deal. antenna is a Tram 1185 on a mag mount for now until i figure out where i want to drill. the problem is the audio. when im driving on the highway, especially over about 55mph, i basically cant hear anything on 2m or 70cm. like the road noise and wind noise just completely overwhelms the speaker. the radio's built in speaker is pointed kind of downward-ish and i think thats part of it. i tried cranking the volume but then when i stop at a light and someone keys up its way too loud. does anyone run an external speaker with this thing? i was looking at the Kenwood SP-50 or just a generic external speaker but i dont know if it matters much what you get. or is this just a mobile life thing and i gotta deal with it

okay so ive been listening to a lot of ham radio conversations lately and everyone keeps throwing around these short codes and abbreviations and honestly i cant keep up. like what is QSL exactly, i see it used as a verb sometimes and a confirmation other times? and QTH i think is location? but then theres QRM QRN QSB and like a dozen others and i dont know where to look these up in a way that actually makes sense in context. also people sometimes just say 73 at the end of a conversation which i gather is like goodbye but where did that even come from. and whats the deal with OM and YL, are those like ranks or something. sorry if this is a really dumb question im still pretty new to all of this and the lingo is a bit overwhelming when youre just starting out

went two years ago but missed last year. is it still at the fairgrounds off route 9? i remmeber the parking was kind of a mess in the morning but once you got in it was fine

the printed frequency list is not optional in my opinion, dont skip that. when things are actually going sideways the last thing you want is to be digging through menus or trying to remember what the regional simplex calling frequency is. i laminated mine and it lives in the front pocket of the bag permanently. has our county ARES primary and secondary, state emergency net, NOAA weather freqs, and a few common national calling freqs. took maybe 20 minutes to make and its saved me more than once. paper log is still the way to go for pure go-kit stuff unless you have a really solid power setup for a laptop. i run a little clipboard with preprinted ICS-309 forms and it works fine. if the situation is bad enough that you need the kit you probably dont want to be troubleshooting why your laptop wont talk to the rig on top of everything else. on the coax question, yes bring more. always bring more. i keep two 25 foot pieces and one 50 foot piece and i still ended up wishing i had more at a marathon comms assignment last spring when they moved the finish line checkpoint on us. the extra weight is worth it.

the 7300 actually has really decent built in processing once you learn where to look. first thing id check is the TX bandwidth setting — a lot of people leave it on the narrower setting (i think it defaults to something like 100-2900 Hz) which cuts a lot of the warmth out of your voice. try widening that to 300-2700 or even 100-3000 depending on conditions and see how it sounds. you lose a tiny bit of splatter protection but on a clean signal it makes a huge difference in perceived quality. also check your mic gain and the TX monitor. most people run mic gain way too hot which is where that harshness comes from — compressor or no compressor, clipping the front end sounds bad. id suggest getting a friend to spot check you on a dummy load while you talk and have them tell you if your ALC is pegging constantly. a little ALC action is fine, slamming it is not. mic technique honestly matters too — stay a few inches back from the mic rather than eating it, speak across it slightly not directly into it if you can.