Robert Mitchell

had almost the exact same thing on my old Tacoma. turned out the coax shield wasnt making great contact at the mag mount base, which was causing RF to travel back down the outside of the coax instead of staying on the shield. classic common mode current problem. what fixed it for me was adding a few ferrite chokes on the coax run close to the antenna feedpoint. mix 31 toroids work great for VHF/UHF, you can slip the coax through a couple of them and it makes a noticeable difference. also worth checking how the coax is routed — if its running parallel to the power leads for any length that can cause issues too. the composite liner shouldnt matter much for the antenna ground plane since the mag mount is on the metal roof of the cab anyway. if you ever do decide to drill, an NMO mount through the roof with a proper ground connection will be a big improvement over the mag mount regardless.

had almost this exact thing on an 817nd a while back. turned out to be the low pass filter board — one of the relays on it had a coil that looked fine but the contacts were welded shut internally. the relay was switching but not actually connecting the RF path through. you'd never find it just probing around unless you're actually injecting signal and tracing it through the LPF section specifically. i think it was RL3 or thereabouts but honestly check the whole board, run signal in before the relay bank and see where it stops coming out. the 817 has a bunch of those little reed-style relays and they do fail, especially if the rig ever got keyed into a bad load. also just double check your finals are actually seated right and the gate resistors on the driver didn't get cooked in whatever killed the originals. common thing to miss.

congrats on the first one, 47 QSOs in two hours with a random wire is solid honestly. to answer your question — yeah the contacts still get uploaded and logged in the database even if you dont hit 44, they just dont count as a valid activation for the activator award. the hunters still get credit for working the reference though, so its not wasted at all. your 31 QSO attempt would have given credit to everyone who logged you, just doesnt count toward your activation tally. worth uploading it if you havent already. on the FT8 thing, I know some folks do it and technically it counts but personally i find it a bit hollow for a parks activation. half the fun is the voice contacts and people asking what the reference is and where you are. but thats just me, some guys swear by it for getting the count up quick when conditions are rough.

the 590SG and the 7300 are actually a decent pairing for this since they're both pretty well behaved receivers and the 590 has good roofing filters. one thing people don't talk about enough is the audio management side of it — running two radios means you need a way to monitor both without going insane, a lot of guys use the left/right stereo split in headphones with each radio on one ear which works surprisingly well once you get used to it. also just mentally — SO2R in Sweepstakes specifically is interesting because you're balancing the run vs multiplier hunting differently than say in a DX contest. the sweep is worth a lot so having radio 2 parked on a band looking for needed sections while you run on radio 1 is where the real gain comes from in SS. its less about raw rate and more about never letting a rare section slip by because you were busy running.

Classic alternator whine, had the same thing in my Tacoma a few years back. The RG-58 might be part of it honestly, that stuff isn't great for mobile use — the shielding isn't as tight as LMR-400 or even LMR-240 and it can pick up all kinds of noise. But the bigger thing to check is whether your coax shield is actually bonded to the vehicle chassis properly at the antenna mount. If the NMO mount is going through the roof and the ground path back isn't solid, you're basically running a loop antenna for all that ignition and alternator garbage. Also worth throwing a ferrite choke on the power leads right where they enter the radio. Like a big clamp-on type, wrap the wire through it a few times if you can. That cleaned up probably 80% of my noise issues. The other thing people dont always think about is grounding the radio chassis itself to the car body with a short braided strap, not just relying on the negative power lead to do that job.

honestly just build the dipole. i spent way too long in analysis paralysis when i was first setting up on HF and the answer is always just get something up and start making contacts. you can always add stuff later. an inverted-V at 35ft fed with decent coax and a 1:1 choke balun is going to work fine for what you're describing

just started down this road myself a few months ago so take this for what its worth. i tried the chart method too and yeah total waste of time for me. what actually helped was just finding a few YouTube channels where guys send practice text slowly and i just listened while doing dishes or whatever, not even trying hard to copy, just letting it wash over me. felt stupid but something about it helped the sounds stick also there's an app called Morse It or something like that, or maybe Morse Mania, i cant remember the exact name but it was free and had a little game format which kept me more engaged than staring at LCWO. im still pretty slow but i can copy my own callsign now without thinking about it which felt huge when it finally happened

Looking at upgrading my mobile antenna setup and trying to decide between a 1/4 wave and 5/8 wave VHF antenna. Currently running a basic mag mount 1/4 wave on my daily driver. I do a mix of highway driving and city/suburban repeater work. From what I've read, the longer antenna should give better DX performance but wondering if there are tradeoffs for local repeater access. Anyone have real-world experience comparing these two antenna types in mobile applications?

ive been on the fence about this exact swap for like six months lol. my 590SG is working fine theres literally no reason to change but the 7300 just looks fun to use. maybe ill wait til i see another good used one come up locally. good to hear the transition wasnt painful at least

the timing thing is super common and yeah it does get better but there's a trick that helped me a lot -- set your weight just slightly heavier than default, like bump it up a little so the dits get a hair more space. dont go crazy with it, just enough that you can hear each element cleanly. the Bencher BY-1 is honestly a fine paddle, thats what i learned on too and i still use mine for portable ops. its not fancy but its solid. one thing that really helped my sending was copying my own transmissions back through a receiver and just listening critically. you start hearing things you never noticed. also try slowing down to like 10 wpm but using PARIS as your word spacing standard so the characters themselves sound right even at slow speed. the character speed vs word speed thing, some people call it Farnsworth method, made a huge difference for me when i was learning. dont ditch the Bencher, just spend more time with it.

three to four days with multiple stations running is gonna eat through that 100ah faster than you think, especially if you're doing any voice operation or running an amp even a small one. i did a 72 hour ARES exercise last spring and we had two 100ah batteries plus a 200w solar panel and we were still a little nervous by day two because we had a cloudy stretch. ended up being fine but it was close. if you can swing both — like bring the honda as backup but run solar primary — thats probably the sweet spot. the eu2200i is genuinely quiet enough that you can run it a few hours in the evening to top everything off and nobody loses their mind. fuel logistics arent that bad if someone just designates a jerry can situation and keeps track. honestly the genny gives you a safety net that lets you not stress about clouds or a station that ends up drawing more than expected. on the EFHW, yeah that'll work fine, just make sure your feedline situation is sorted before you get there. nothing worse than realizing you need a different length coax at the site. i'd bring a little extra RG8X just in case.

yeah fan dipoles are great but theyre also kind of a pain to keep from tangling up if youre using a tree. i went that route and ended up with 40 and 20 legs twisted together after the first windstorm. ended up just putting up a 135 foot doublet fed with ladder line into a tuner and honestly the simplicity is just better for me. works 80 through 10 without too much drama

so this has been bugging me for probably three weeks now and i cant figure it out. got my 7300 about two years ago used, ran great until recently. what happens is ill be in a qso or even just tuning around and mid-transmission the power just drops, like from 100w down to maybe 10-15w for a few seconds then comes back up. sometimes it stays low and i have to release the ptt and key back up. ALC looks weird when it happens, kinda jumps around. at first i thought it was the coax but ive swapped that out twice now and same deal. swr on the antenna is fine, checked it with the external meter. the radio doesnt throw any errors, no PA fault or anything on screen. temps seem okay too, fan kicks on like normal. i did the recalibration thing in the service menu a while back but that was before this started happening. anyone dealt with this before or have a clue where to start? im not opposed to cracking it open but idc want to make it worse

dont worry too much about the full duplex thing starting out, i worked my first few contacts through FO-29 back in the day with just one radio and it was messy but it worked. you kind of develop a feel for it after a few passes. the arrow is a solid choice btw, i still use mine even though i have a better az/el setup now, theres something satisfying about just hand-tracking the thing across the sky. one thing that helped me early on was recording the pass audio and listening back after, you can hear where you were on the transponder passband and figure out what you were doing wrong. also check the amsat status page before a pass, AO-73 goes into power saving mode sometimes and the transponder isnt always on.

so ive been messing with Winlink Express for about three weeks now and i think im close but not quite there. running a Kenwood TS-590SG into a SignaLink USB, got Vara HF licensed and everything seemed fine during the initial handshake tests. the problem is when i actually try to send a message through an RMS gateway it connects, does the banner exchange, starts the session, and then just drops somewhere in the middle of the transfer. doesnt matter which gateway i pick, tried a few different ones within reasonable distance, same deal every time. at first i thought it was my audio levels so i spent like two days tweaking the SignaLink trim pots and watching the waterfall in WSJT-X to make sure i wasnt overdriving anything. levels look reasonable, maybe a little hot but nothing crazy. then i thought maybe it was a timing issue with the PTT so i added some extra tail delay in Vara but that didnt seem to help either. the Winlink session log just says something like "connection reset" or "peer disconnected" which isnt exactly descriptive. has anyone seen this specific behavior where the handshake works fine but the actual message transfer falls apart? im starting to wonder if its something on the gateway end or if my setup is just wrong somewhere. would really appreciate any ideas before i completely tear everything down and start over.

the book you bought, is it the ARRL one or the Gordon West study guide? both are fine but they're pretty different in how they explain things. Gordon West reads more like someone talking to you which some people prefer. i'll be honest i skipped big chunks of my book and just did practice questions and passed no problem, but i also already had some background in electronics from work so your mileage may vary. the RF safety section trips a lot of people up for some reason so dont skip that part, theres maybe 4 or 5 questions from that topic on the actual pool and they're kind of weirdly worded

honestly at 40m in a suburban lot you're probably fine either way, but i'd lean toward the dipole for your situation. the metal roof thing would bug me too — not saying it would definitely cause problems but it's a variable you dont need to introduce. a flat top dipole at even 25-30 feet will get you plenty of contacts, and if you can slope one end you get a bit of a low angle component anyway. the whole 'verticals are better for dx' thing is true in the sense that they have lower radiation angle, but a vertical also needs a really solid radial system to be efficient and people underestimate how much work that is to do right. i put down 32 radials on mine and it still took me a whole weekend. if you just want to get on the air and start making contacts, wire the dipole, slap a 1:1 choke balun on the feedpoint, and you'll be working stations this week instead of still planning in three more weeks.

the tape measure yagi is actually pretty decent for what it is, i built one last winter from one of the ARRL designs and was surprised how well it held up. for pure summit to summit contacts where you roughly know the bearing its hard to beat for weight vs performance. that said if your doing nets or just generally operating from a hilltop without a specific target the omni is just more practical, less thinking involved too when you're already dealing with wind and cold and trying to log contacts.

so ive been on HF for about two years now and honestly my SSB audio has always kinda bothered me but i kept putting it off. finally had a guy on 20m tell me i sounded like i was in a tin can and that was enough to make me actually look into it. my setup is an IC-7300 into a stock mic, the one that came in the box. i know i know, but bear with me. i've been reading about compression settings and the speech processor and honestly the manual is not super helpful on the practical side of things. like it tells you what the knobs do but not really what they should be set to for a decent signal on SSB. i did some recordings using the monitor function and yeah it does sound pretty harsh, especially when i talk louder. is this a mic gain issue, compression issue, or is the stock mic just genuinely not good enough for decent audio? and also — what's the actual deal with upper vs lower sideband, i always just use USB on 20m because thats what everyone else seems to do but im not 100% sure i fully understand why LSB is used on 40 and 80. sorry if thats a dumb question tacked on at the end there

congrats on the first activation, 44 QSOs is a solid number especially for a first outing. you dont need to register beforehand for WWFF, just show up and operate, the log upload is what counts. some people do post a spot or alert on the WWFF spotting network ahead of time to drum up chasers but its not required at all. sounds like you did everything right honestly. the IOTA thing is just people being hopeful, lots of chasers have multiple programs they're working at once so they ask just in case. totally normal, just say no IOTA and they'll move on. and dont feel bad about staying on 20m, your antenna is your antenna, nobody expects you to have everything. some activators bring a linked dipole that covers multiple bands but thats a whole other rabbit hole if you want to go down it eventually.

so ive been keeping an eye on the IC-7760 stuff since icom finally started shipping them to dealers here in the states and honestly the remote head design is way more interesting to me than i expected. been watching a few unboxing videos and reading the early reviews on eham and it seems like the people who are actually getting hands on time with it are pretty happy, especially guys doing mobile or shack-in-a-closet setups where the separation really matters. also on a completely different note -- 10 meters has been absolutely wild this past week. had a qso with a station in south africa on 28.490 yesterday morning like it was nothing, just called CQ and he came right back. solar flux has been hanging around 200+ which i havent seen in a long time. if you havent turned on your radio in a while, seriously worth firing it up and just spinning the dial on 10 or even 12 meters. anyone else been checking out the new icom or is everyone waiting for prices to settle a bit? i'm tempted but my 7300 still works fine so hard to justify it right now honestly.

yeah this is basically the eternal ham radio software problem lol. i gave up trying to have one program do everything a while back. N1MM is king for contesting, full stop, nothing else comes close if you actually care about your score or even just running a clean log under pressure. but its not really designed to be your everyday logbook and i dont think the developers ever intended it to be. what i do now is just keep N1MM for contests only and accept that the post-contest ADIF merge into my main log (i use DXKeeper) is gonna take like 20 minutes of cleanup. its annoying but its predictable. the WSJT-X thing though i just let that log to its own ADIF file and import separately, never tried to get UDP going to two programs at once, sounds like a nightmare honestly. might be worth just turning off the Log4OM UDP listener when youre in contest mode so at least you know where everything is going

honest answer — for the 500-800 QSO range SO2R is probably not where your time is best spent. the big gains from SO2R come from filling dead time, and if you're not already running close to 100% efficiency on radio 1 then you're leaving more points on the table from things like not knowing when to switch from running to S&P, or not having a good feel for when a band is about to close. those are zero-cost fixes. that said the "radio 2 just for monitoring" thing is actually underrated and I did that for a couple years before going full SO2R. just having a second receiver on 10 while you're running 15 so you notice when 10 opens — that alone has saved me mult opportunities i would have completely missed. you dont need filters or anything special for that if you're not transmitting on it, just keep the gain backed off and physically move the antenna jack if you have to. not elegant but it works. the filter situation is real though, dont skip that when you do go SO2R for real. ran without them once during SS and my second radio was basically useless the whole time i was transmitting on radio 1.

Worth mentioning that the SDR radio will require a good USB supply, this can be an issue if you already have lots of other devices connected to your PC. I had to add a powered USB hub because my laptop couldn't handle the RTL-SDR plus all my logging software and rig control simultaneously.

so i passed my technician about three weeks ago and ive been lurking here trying to figure out what HT to actually buy. everyone keeps saying different things and im kind of going in circles at this point. i mostly want to use it for local repeaters, maybe some APRS eventually, and just general learning. my budget is somewhere around 150 bucks maybe a bit more if something is really worth it. i keep seeing the baofeng stuff everywhere and it seems like half the people love it and half think its garbage. then theres the yaesu FT-60 which looks solid but older? and someone at my local club mentioned the VX-6R but that seems pricey. i honestly dont know what questions to even ask at this point, theres just so much. does dual band even matter for a beginner or am i overthinking this