David Rodriguez

Ground loops are definitely your enemy with FT8. I used an ISO-MAX transformer (1:1 600 ohm) on both TX and RX audio paths and it cleaned up my spectrum considerably. Worth the $30 investment compared to dealing with hash from the computer switching supplies.

so i finally did my first activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from me and honestly it went way smoother than i expected. took my FT-891 and a random wire up in a tree, got there early, set up in maybe 20 minutes and made 15 contacts in the first hour which i guess is enough to count as an activated park right? i was using 40m mostly and switched to 20m for a bit but 40 was just killing it in the afternoon. anyway a couple things i wasnt sure about. when i upload to the POTA site do i need to do anything special with the log file or does ADIF just work straight from my logging program? i was using log4om and it seemed to export fine but i wasnt 100% sure if there were specific fields needed. also someone spotted me on the pota.app and i suddenly got like a surge of hunters calling in, is that normal? felt like a mini pileup which was fun but a bit chaotic lol also is there a way to spot yourself if nobody else does it first? i saw some people talking about self-spotting but wasnt sure if thats considered bad practice or whatever

not overkill at all. conduit indoors is just smart if you have pets or kids tbh. i did the same thing after my cat decided my RG-8X was a chew toy. also if you ever need to replace the coax its way easier to just pull the new run through instead of rerouting everything

been meaning to try JS8Call for ages, you might have just pushed me to actually do it. i mostly do FT4 and FT8 during contests and the occasional RTTY contest but yeah the whole thing does feel a bit robotic after a while. RTTY at least feels like youre actually typing something even if its just 599 TU over and over during a contest run haha.

ok so i've been interested in ham radio for a while now, like probably two years of just watching youtube videos and reading stuff online but never actually doing anything about it. my neighbor is licensed and he keeps telling me to just go take the test already but i honestly have no idea where to start. like do i need to take a class or can i just study on my own? and what even is on the technician test, is it mostly electronics theory or more like rules and regulations stuff? i looked at the FCC website and it was kind of overwhelming. also is there a fee to actually get licensed now, i heard they changed something about that recently. any help appreciated, i feel like im overthinking this whole thing

Yeah this has been bugging me for weeks too! My yaesu does the exact same thing. Im wondering if its the repeater because it only seems to happen on 146.94 but not the other local machines. Maybe try hitting a different repeater and see if it still does it?

yeah the qrp guys mostly just wait for the pileup to die down a bit, like day 2 or 3 of the expedition when all the big guns have already worked them and the frequency calms down. same strategy works for low power honestly. first day of a big one is just a nightmare if you dont have serious antenna real estate. one thing i started doing that helped a lot is running a second radio just to monitor where the DX is actually coming back to. so if im on 14025 and theyre listening up, i tune around with the second vfo or a spare rig to actually hear who theyre working and get a feel for exactly where in the passband they seem to be digging. a lot of people just guess at the split and end up calling in a dead zone nobody's listening to.

Working on an ICOM CI-V to Yaesu BCD band decoder using an Arduino UNO, planning to port it to ATTiny84. The sketch reads ICOM CI-V data, parses the frequency, and converts it to Yaesu BCD band data for my Quadra amplifier. The project requires either an ICOM CT-17 CI-V level converter or a homebrew CI-V level converter. Having trouble with the level conversion - getting intermittent frequency decoding especially on 20m. Using the 7404 hex inverter level converter instead of the transistor assembly, which should provide cleaner signal inversion. Anyone else run into timing issues with CI-V parsing on ATTiny? The Arduino UNO version works flawlessly but the ATTiny port seems more sensitive to bus collisions.

ok so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, mostly because i got into emergency preparedness stuff and also my neighbor has a crazy antenna setup in his backyard that i always thought was cool. anyway i finally decided i want to just do it and get licensed but i have no idea where to start. like do i just show up somewhere and take a test? do i need to study for months? is it actually hard? i looked at some practice questions online and some of them seemed pretty technical, like stuff about ohms law and frequencies and i was like ok maybe this is more involved than i thought. i dont have any electronics background at all so im a little nervous. any advice would be appreciated, or even just like what the process looks like from start to finish would help a lot.

oh man this is making me want to finally do mine, i've had my general for like 8 months and keep doing the same thing you described, talking myself out of it. what antenna were you using exactly, just end fed or a random wire? im trying to figure out the simplest setup to start with

im in pretty much the same boat as you, been doing AO-73 passes for about 3 months. what helped me was just printing out the doppler shift table for 435 and 145 MHz and taping it to my desk so i could see roughly where i should be at different points in the pass. crude but it worked until i got the CAT stuff sorted out also dont stress too much about hearing yourself on the first few passes, even experienced guys lose themselves in the pileup sometimes. the main thing is getting the antenna tracking smooth, everything else kind of falls into place once you're not fighting the AOS and LOS angles

so ive been a Tech for about two years now and honestly i feel like ive hit a ceiling with just 2m and 70cm. been messing around with a buddies HF rig and now im totally hooked on the idea of getting on 40m and 20m myself. problem is i keep putting off studying for the General exam because honestly i dont even know where to start or what to expect difficulty wise compared to the Tech exam. the Tech exam felt pretty manageable once i went through the question pool a few times but ive heard General has a lot more about propagation and like electrical theory stuff which makes me nervous. is there specific sections i should focus on or is it better to just grind through the whole pool? also wondering how long people typically studied before feeling ready. i work full time so my study time is kind of limited to evenings and weekends. any advice appreciated, just dont want to show up and fail it twice like i did with my drivers license test lol

N1MM is basically the answer for contesting, i dont think theres much debate there honestly. ive tried to make other loggers work during serious contest ops and you always run into some edge case that bites you. the dupe checking speed in N1MM is just in a different league, especially when youre running a pile and cant afford to think about it. that said the WSJT-X UDP integration in Log4OM has gotten better, i think there was a version around 2.9 or so where they fixed some latency issues with the dupe check callback. if youre on an older version that might be part of your problem. but even then for anything like the big DX contests or the sprints id just use N1MM and import the ADIF into Log4OM afterward for your permanent log. thats what i do and it takes like two minutes.

Building out a comprehensive EmComm go-kit and doing deep analysis on power systems. Currently comparing 35Ah LiFePO4 vs 75Ah AGM deep cycle for powering IC-7300 at full power during extended operations. Initial calculations show the LiFePO4 providing approximately 280Wh useable vs 450Wh from AGM (60% DOD). However, the weight difference is dramatic - 9.5lbs vs 52lbs. For backpack portable operations, this seems like a no-brainer despite the capacity disadvantage. Has anyone done real-world runtime testing with 100W SSB operation? Looking at continuous 50% duty cycle scenarios, not the typical 20% POTA operation. Solar charging capability during daylight hours would be available via 100W panel. Also considering the Bioenno BLF-1220A vs Dakota Lithium DL+ 12V35Ah-C - both appear well-regarded in the amateur community.

K1JT himself expects QRA64 to replace JT65 for EME use over time, and I can tell you from my VK perspective that weekend activity on QRA64 is definitely picking up. The sensitivity improvement is real - I'm copying -28dB signals that would have been impossible on JT65.

so i finally did my first summit activation last weekend, W6 something up in the sierras, took the yaesu 818 and a random wire i threw together the night before and honestly i was not prepared for how windy it was up there. spent like 20 minutes just trying to get the wire up in a tree and then gave up and just held the end of it with a stick i found. probably not ideal. managed to get 4 contacts on 20m SSB which i guess counts as a valid activation but i really thought itd be easier to find people calling CQ. do you guys usually spot yourself on sotawatch before you start calling or do you just start calling and hope someone hears you

oh man i remember feeling exactly like this. the thing nobody tells you is that net control has heard every possible mistake in the book and they genuinely don't care, they'll just work through it. most nets especially local ones are pretty forgiving with new folks. for a basic check-in just wait until they ask for check-ins then key up and say your callsign phonetically, like "Whiskey 5 X-ray Yankee Zulu" or however yours goes. some nets like you to say your name and city right then, others will come back to you after logging you and ask. honestly the best thing is just listen to how a few other people do it before your turn and copy that format. if you kerchunk the repeater or step on someone it's really not the end of the world, just wait a second and try again. everyone started somewhere and most of the regulars will be happy you showed up.

yeah the mic gain and ALC thing trips up a lot of people. the rule of thumb i always go back to is: set mic gain so the ALC is just starting to move on voice peaks, not sitting pegged during normal speech. if your ALC is working hard all the time you're already compressing the signal before the processor even touches it and it ends up sounding squashed and distorted especially on the high frequencies. the other thing with the stock SM-30 type mics on Icom rigs — they tend to be voiced pretty warm which is great for some things but on SSB you actually want a bit more presence in the 2-3kHz range because thats where speech intelligibility lives. some guys run a tiny bit of treble boost in the TX equalizer settings, like just 2-3dB around 2.5kHz, and it makes a noticeable difference without sounding harsh. the 7300 has a decent parametric EQ in the menu if you dig around in the set menu under connectors i think. worth playing with. honestly the best thing you can do is get a friend on a nearby frequency and just key up and have them describe what they hear while you tweak. recordings help too if you can do a near field monitor or just throw a SDR on the signal.

the wall you're hitting around 8-9 wpm is completely normal and almost everyone goes through it. what's happening is your brain is still trying to process individual dits and dahs rather than hearing the whole character as a sound. the fix is exactly what that person told you — bump your character speed way up, like 20wpm character speed but slow the word spacing down (farnsworth method). lcwo can do this. it forces your brain to stop counting and start recognizing. as for timeframes, honestly it varies so much i hate giving numbers. i know guys who got to 20wpm in 6 months of serious daily practice and others who took 2-3 years of casual work. the daily consistency matters way more than how long each session is. 20 minutes every single day beats 2 hours on weekends. and get on the air even before you feel ready — there are slow speed nets specifically for this, the LICW has some good ones, and just hearing real QSOs even if you only catch half of it does something to your motivation that practice software cant really replicate.