Linda Chen

yeah what he said about the preamp placement is dead on, i learned that the hard way. also worth knowing that the moonbounce reflections are pretty doppler shifted depending on where the moon is in its orbit so youll need to account for that in WSJT-X, but honestly the software handles most of it once you dial in your settings. the hardest part for me was getting the antenna elevation sorted because if you cant track the moon properly none of the gain matters. even a simple SPID or similar rotor setup helps a lot but ive seen guys do it with manual az/el and a moon tracking app which is kind of impressive and kind of painful at the same time

yeah the switch between two antennas thing is totally doable and a lot of guys do exactly that. coax switch is like $30-40 and you just run two feedlines. i ran an M2 2M5WL alongside my vertical for a while and the difference for that one repeater i was chasing was night and day, like went from occasional scratchy hits to full quieting. the yagi is just a completely different tool for a specific job. stacking verticals is a real thing and does give you gain but it gets complicated fast, you need a phasing harness thats cut right and the spacing matters a lot, and honestly for 3-4 dB gain its probably more trouble than just throwing up a small yagi on a separate mount. if you know the direction of the repeater the yagi wins every time for that use case. i wouldnt overthink it, a 6 element on 2m is a pretty small antenna physically and easy enough to put on a chimney mount or a push up pole

okay so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i still get kind of nervous about nets. like i listen to the local tuesday night 2m net pretty regularly and sometimes i check in but sometimes i just listen and i honestly dont know if thats considered bad form or what. the net control guy seems pretty chill but i dont want to be that person who just lurks every week without ever participating. also related i guess — when net control asks for any traffic or announcements and i have literally nothing to say, am i supposed to say my callsign anyway just to check in or do i wait until he specifically calls for check-ins? i keep second guessing the order of things and sometimes i miss my window and feel dumb about it. not a huge deal i know but just want to make sure im doing it right

yeah i did the same mod about a year ago and the warmup stability thing is real, not your imagination. i run a lot of weak signal VHF stuff and it made a genuine difference for me. the phase noise improvement is supposedly measurable but i think you need pretty serious test equipment to actually see it in practice, most of us wont notice it in real world operating. one thing i will say is if you're doing the mod anyway, its a good opportunity to check the general condition of the board and make sure your thermal paste on the finals hasnt dried out or whatever. mine had gotten a bit crusty and i figured while i was in there id deal with it. just something to consider if you havent been inside the rig before.

JS8Call setup on a 7300 with a SignaLink is basically identical to WSJT-X honestly, same audio routing same COM port stuff. if you've got FT8 working you'll have JS8Call running in like 20 minutes. the bigger adjustment is just mentally — it moves slower, messages take longer to complete, and yeah activity is thinner. but when you do connect with someone it feels like an actual QSO instead of a grid square handshake. i check into a couple JS8Call nets on 40m, one in the evenings, and theres usually a handful of guys around. not wall to wall like FT8 but enough. 14.078 on 20m tends to have more action during the day if you're in north america. give it a shot, worst case you spent an afternoon fiddling with audio levels which honestly we all do for fun anyway

this is kind of timely because i just got wrecked trying to work that recent one from the south atlantic. ran like 400w into a 4el yagi pointed right at it and still nothing for like an hour before i gave up. my logging software shows i transmitted probably 60+ times lol. one thing i noticed though — i switched from VOX to PTT keying and it felt like my timing got a little tighter, less of that trailing noise on the end of my transmission. might be nothing but it felt better. also tried listening on the DX's tx freq for a bit to get a sense of his rhythm before jumping in, that helped with the timing thing you mentioned. i still got skunked on that one but at least i felt like i was doing something more intentional than just screaming into the void

oh man the 857D is such a good rig for mobile, you're gonna love it on 2m. i ran one for probably four years in my old jeep. the head separation cable is a little short for some dash setups but sounds like you already sorted that part out. i dont have a ton to add on the RF interference stuff that the previous reply didn't cover but just wanted to say — when i finally did a proper NMO through hole mount it was like night and day compared to the mag mount i had before. honestly just go for it, worst case scenario you have a small hole in your roof which isnt the end of the world if you seal it right. i used a step drill bit and it went through the sheetmetal real clean.

i did the same thing you described, just had the second radio on with headphones one ear each and yeah it was a mess at first. took me most of a full cqww before i stopped fat fingering calls on the run freq. what actually helped me was using the SO2R features in n1mm properly instead of just winging it — the alt-tab radio switching and having the audio set up right so you can actually hear both without losing your mind. if youre not using n1mm or similar you're making it harder than it needs to be. also even with mediocre antennas the S&P assist mode is worth it just for mult hunting on the second band during your run qso gaps, you'd be surprised

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i upgraded to general last month and im still kind of lost on the whole frequency thing. like i know there are portions of 40m i can use now that i couldnt before but every chart i find online seems to show it slightly differently and one of them said something about "band edges" being dangerous to operate near and i dont really understand what that means like is 7.125 safe to use for SSB? and whats the deal with the phone/data portions, is there a hard line or is it more of a suggested thing? i dont wanna step on anyone or worse transmit where im not supposed to as a general. my elmer kind of glossed over this part

vertical. always vertical for dx on 40. low angle radiation is just better for that skip distance and a dipole at 35ft is basically nvis territory. i run a homebrew vertical with about 25 radials on 40 and 80 and it punches way above what i expected. yeah the radial work is annoying but you do it once and forget about it. the clay concern is real but like the other guy said radials fix most of that. just my two cents, ive done both and the vertical wins for dx every time at that height.

honest answer? the theory clicked for me way more than i expected. like i went in thinking it was gonna be pure memorization like the general pool but some of the extra stuff — the filter stuff especially — actually made me understand why my antenna tuner does what it does. the smith chart questions look scarier than they are, theres really only a handful of ways they ask about it and once you see the pattern its not bad. as for the privileges, i thought the same thing as you before i passed. but having access to the lower cw portions of 40 and 80 is actually really nice for dx work, less qrm down there most of the time. and 60 meters is cleaner on the extra segments too. but yeah if youre happy with what youre doing now and not chasing dx or contesting much, its not gonna change your life overnight. i still think its worth it just to have done it though, and studying for it made me a better operator even if i cant explain exactly how.

so ive been trying to get Winlink going for about two weeks now and i think i finally understand the basics but the gateway side of things is still kind of a mess in my head. like i get that Winlink Express is the client software and you connect through an RMS gateway to get your messages routed through the CMS servers but what i dont fully get is whether im supposed to be connecting to a specific gateway or if the software just picks the nearest one automatically. right now im using Vara HF on 40m and i can see a list of gateways in the software but when i try to connect it times out most of the time. i did get through once to W3XSC and it pulled down a test message i sent myself from the web interface which was pretty cool honestly. but im not sure if im just getting lucky or if theres something specific about how you're supposed to pick a gateway — distance, propagation, whatever. also the whole message handling side is something i want to understand better eventually, like setting up a proper winlink address and making sure replies actually come back to me correctly. right now its just the default [email protected] which i assume is fine. anyone been through this learning curve recently and have advice on what clicked for them

yeah 30 seconds fixed is pretty aggressive, especially if youre sitting still. the whole point of SmartBeaconing is it slows way down when you're parked and speeds up when youre turning or accelerating. if its set to fixed 30 sec that means SmartBeaconing isnt actually active. on the D710 you have to go into the APRS settings and explicitly enable it, its not on by default if i remember right. i think the menu is like APRS > SmartBeaconing and theres a toggle. once thats on you set a low speed threshold like 5mph and a high speed like 60mph and let it figure out the interval between those. most people do maybe 5 min when stationary and down to like 30-60 sec when moving fast and turning. way better for the network and honestly gives better track resolution on corners anyway.

yeah the softserial thing will bite you eventually especially if you care about timing accuracy for WSPR since that protocol is pretty unforgiving about being even a couple seconds off. what i ended up doing on a similar project was use a Mega instead of the Uno just so i had the extra hardware serial ports and didnt have to deal with any of that softserial interrupt conflict nonsense. TinyGPS++ works fine but yeah you need it on a real hardware serial port to be reliable. the optocoupler for PTT is the right call, good on you for doing that from the start. i used a PC817 on mine and it works fine, just watch your current limiting resistor on the LED side. one thing i added later was a small relay after the opto just because i felt better about it for the radio side, probably not strictly necessary but whatever it let me sleep at night. also if youre doing WSPR specifically you might want to look at the si5351 breakout boards, some people skip the radio entirely for low power WSPR beacons and just use one of those with a LPF. might be overkill for what you want but worth knowing about.

so i've been licensed for about 6 years now mostly doing SSB and some digital modes but i always told myself id eventually learn CW and just kept putting it off. anyway this winter i actually committed and ive been doing the lcwo.net lessons for a couple months now and im getting close to 10wpm which honestly feels like a huge deal for me. my question is about keyers and paddles. right now im just using the built-in keyer in my IC-7300 with a cheap amazon straight key to practice, but i keep reading that paddles are better for anything above like 8wpm or so. is that actually true or is it more personal preference? also is there a big difference between a single lever paddle and a dual lever (iambic)? ive seen people get pretty passionate about this topic online and im not sure what to make of it all. i dont want to spend a ton of money but also dont want to buy garbage. any thoughts appreciated, even if its just what you personally use.