James Patterson

When the calling station is working split frequency, some radios, like my Elecraft K4, will let you receive both sides. This also helps you to track the calling station if they are listening on a range of frequencies to get in front of them. Modern transceivers have made this much easier than the old days of separate receivers.

So i've been chasing summits on the air for about 6 months now and finally decided to stop being a couch potato and actually do my first activation. picked out a local 6-pointer (W4T/SU-001 area, not gonna say which one cause i dont want a crowd lol) and im planning to head up saturday morning. My setup is pretty minimal right now — just an FT-818 and a random wire antenna i threw together from some info i found online, maybe 40 feet of wire with a 9:1 unun. planning to run 5 watts on 40 and 20 meters mostly. is that actually enough to get 4 contacts or am i setting myself up to fail? ive heard some activators have trouble on low summits if the takeoff angle isnt great but i dont really understand all that yet. also the self-spotting thing through SOTAwatch — do i need cell service for that or is there another way? i know some guys use APRS somehow but i dont have that set up. figured id just pre-announce on the cluster before i leave the trailhead.

With the explosion of new wireless electronics, radio frequency interference is everywhere. Keeping it out of a province-wide system with dozens of repeaters is nearly impossible. The best way to reduce interfering signals is to move to implementing CTCSS tones on the repeaters. I've noticed several repeaters in my area recently adding tone requirements. Repeaters often operate in environments with lots of interference - spurious signals could cause the repeater to activate, but requiring a sub-audible tone ensures it only responds to legitimate signals.

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of new generals. so the actual FCC allocation for general on 40m phone starts at 7.175 MHz, not 7.125 -- 7.125 to 7.175 is extra class territory for phone. for CW and data you get more of the band, generals can go down to 7.025 for CW. the band edge thing is real and worth taking seriously. your rig's carrier might be right at 7.175 but your signal has sidebands that extend a few kHz up or down depending on audio, so if you're running SSB you wanna be a bit inside the edge, most people say at least 3 kHz in to be safe, so like 7.178 or higher for lower sideband. the recommended vs actual thing on the band plan -- the FCC part is law, the recommended stuff is just gentlemans agreement about where different modes tend to congregate.

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up going with the baofeng uv-5r just to have something while i saved up. its been fine honestly, i made my first contacts on it and everything. but i did eventually get a wouxun kg-uv9d and the difference in audio quality on both ends is pretty noticable, people stopped asking me to repeat myself lol chirp is super easy dont stress about it, just download it and there are youtube videos that walk you through the whole thing in like 20 minutes. the hardest part is finding the right cable for your specific radio

I got the Wouxun my first year and never had any complaints but finding accessories for it was kind of a pain, the speaker mics and stuff arent as easy to find as yaesu or kenwood compatible stuff. just something to keep in mind if you think youll want to expand later. either way congrats on the ticket

yeah the 14 gauge stranded is what I used for mine and its been up two winters now with no issues. just make sure your connections at the feedpoint are soldered not just twisted, I made that mistake the first time and the swr was all over the place when it rained. also if you're going for 40m start a little long and trim from both ends equally, way easier than trying to add wire back if you cut too short. I went like 2 feet long on each side and tuned it down over a couple sessions.

yeah the delay thing is real and it's kind of annoying at first. DXwatch aggregates from a bunch of different cluster nodes and sometimes a spot is 5-10 minutes old by the time you're seeing it, especially if you're not filtering by region. what helped me was switching to using a direct telnet connection to a nearby cluster node through something like DX Toolkit or even just the built in cluster access in Log4OM — that way the spots are way fresher, usually just a few seconds behind. the QRZ logbook stuff is mostly separate from spotting, it's more for tracking your contacts and DXCC credits and whatnot. some logging programs can pull from QRZ to auto-fill callsign data when you're logging which is handy but it's not really a spotting tool on its own. your g5rv at 30ft should hear plenty of DX on the right band conditions though so dont give up on it, just gotta be quick when you see something good pop up

so i've been a tech for about 8 months now and i've been thinking about getting into CW for a while. i know its not required anymore for anything but theres something about it that just appeals to me, maybe nostalgia i guess even though i wasnt around when it was required lol. anyway i downloaded a couple apps and tried watching some youtube videos but i feel like im not making any progress. like i can recognize maybe 5 or 6 letters pretty reliably but then i get completely lost when they start coming faster or stringing letters together into words. is there like a method that actually works or am i just doing it wrong somehow. i dont really know what speed i should be practicing at either, some people say go slow and some say go fast from the beginning and i dont know who to believe

so ive had the 7300 for about three weeks now coming from an old ft-450d that i ran for like 6 years and honestly the difference is kind of hard to put into words. the waterfall alone is worth the upgrade if you do any kind of band hunting because youre actually seeing whats happening instead of just tuning blind and hoping something pops up in your headphones. real talk though the learning curve on the menus is a little rough at first, icom's menu system is just kind of its own thing and i kept accidentally changing stuff i didn't mean to. took me a solid weekend of messing around before i stopped feeling lost. the audio out of the box on receive was a little harsh to me, had to tweak the bass/treble a bit and turn the NR down from whatever default it ships at. transmit audio reports have been really good, couple guys on 40m told me it sounded cleaner than what they were used to hearing from my old setup. running it into a MFJ tuner and a fan dipole in the attic. nothing fancy but its working. curious if anyone else went through a similar upgrade path or if youre running the 7300 and have any settings you swear by

so i passed my technician exam last tuesday and im waiting for my callsign to show up in the FCC database. my VE team said it usually takes a few days but ive been checking every morning and nothing yet. its only been like 4 days so i guess im just being impatient. anyway while i was waiting i started reading about vanity callsigns and now im kind of confused about the whole thing. like how does the sequential process actually work? is the call you get assigned just whatever is next in some list? and then after that if you want something specific you have to apply for vanity separately? i saw some people on another thread talking about 1x2 and 2x1 formats and i dont really know what any of that means yet. also does the vanity application cost anything now? i thought the FCC got rid of fees for a while but then i heard they brought something back? just want to understand the basics before i start going down a rabbit hole on this

yeah the inverted-V thing is real, drooping legs definitely lowers the resonant freq compared to a flat dipole. the rule of thumb ive always used is figure on needing to shorten by a few percent when you go from flat to inverted-V. but honestly 6.9 vs 7.15 is a bigger shift than id expect from geometry alone. the ends being that close to the ground and near vegetation is probably contributing a lot more than people give credit for. soil moisture, leaves, all that stuff loads the antenna electrically. id try raising the ends up off the bushes as much as you can first, even a foot or two makes a difference, then re-sweep before you start trimming. trim conservatively, like an inch at a time, you can always take more off but you cant put it back. also 2.1:1 at your target freq isnt terrible honestly, a lot of guys would just run it with a tuner and call it done, but i get wanting to understand it first.

honestly i was the same way when i started, felt kinda dorky saying whiskey foxtrot whatever for my callsign lol. but after trying to copy a callsign in a pile up once and mishearing it completely i totally get it now. just use em whenever theres any doubt, you get used to it fast and it just becomes automatic

yeah im planning on it, went last year too and it was decent size for a regional fest. Dont expect Dayton or anything but the tailgate crowd is usually pretty solid. I always bring a box of random stuff i keep meaning to get rid of so maybe ill see you there lol. what time you usually show up?

so i was just messing around on 10 meters yesterday afternoon, wasnt really expecting much because its been pretty quiet lately, and all of a sudden the band just opened up like crazy. i was hearing stations from south america, europe, even picked up what sounded like a japanese station for a few minutes before i lost him. running just 100 watts into a dipole in the attic and i was getting 59 reports from guys in Brazil. honestly havent seen 10m like that in a while, felt like the cycle 25 stuff people have been talking about is really starting to show up. also saw a post somewhere that Icom is supposed to be releasing some kind of updated version of the 7300 or a new rig in that same price range? cant find the original article now. anyone heard anything about that or know where i saw it? been thinking about upgrading from my current setup and that price range is kind of where im looking.

so ive been going back and forth on this for a while now and i cant really find a straight answer anywhere. im trying to decide whether to put up a proper 40m dipole at about 30 feet or just stick with the vertical i already have. the vertical is a hustler 4BTV that i put up a couple years ago and it works ok i guess but i feel like im always running into noise and i dont know if thats the antenna or just 40m being 40m at this point in the solar cycle. the thing is i have decent space for a dipole, maybe 70 feet of run available if i angle it a bit, but the feedline run would be kind of ugly and id have to convince my wife about another pole in the backyard. the vertical is already there so its more about whether its worth the effort. anybody gone from a 4BTV to a dipole on 40 and actually noticed a real difference or am i just chasing something that wont matter much at 100 watts

So ive been chasing for about 8 months now and finally decided to stop being a wimp and actually go activate something. Picked out a summit near me, W4C/EM-064 if anyone's familiar with it, supposed to be about a 4 mile round trip which honestly doesnt sound too bad but ive never done this with a full radio kit on my back so who knows how that'll go. My plan is to bring the FT-818 with a linked dipole, probably set up on 40m first and then 20 if I can get some DX chasers. I already posted on the SOTA reflector and sotawatch so hopefully i'll get some spots. Planning to hit the summit around 10am local which should be decent timing I think. Main thing I'm nervous about is just... what if nobody answers? Like I know thats a silly worry but I've seen some activations on the alerts that just seem to sit there for a while. Should I self spot more aggressively or just keep calling? Also wondering if 5 watts is enough or if I should bring my KX2 instead, my buddy keeps telling me I'm overthinking this. Any tips from people who've actually done this would be great, leaving in the morning so kind of last minute I know.

honestly the General exam isnt that bad once you start going through the question pool. i used HamStudy.org and just did like 20-30 questions a day for maybe 3 weeks and felt pretty comfortable. the electrical theory stuff looks scarier than it is, a lot of it is just recognizing formulas and picking the right answer even if you dont fully understand the math behind it. and yeah General gets you plenty of HF to work with. you get big chunks of 40m, 20m, 15m, 10m, and a few others. 20m alone could keep you busy for years. Extra opens up the edges of those bands which matters more for contest operating or when the bands are packed, but for getting started and actually making contacts General is more than enough. my first HF contact was on 40m like two days after i got my General and it was a guy in Germany which blew my mind compared to hitting the local repeater.

the plateau you're describing is super common, like almost everyone hits it somewhere between 10 and 15. what clicked for me was stopping the character-by-character copying and just... listening. i started doing what some people call head copying where you just listen and try to get the gist without writing anything down. felt totally wrong at first, like i wasnt doing any real practice, but after a few weeks my brain started processing whole words instead of individual letters and that was the thing that broke it open for me. also honestly the jump-to-higher-speed thing has some truth to it. i used to practice at like 15wpm with a 15wpm character speed but then i switched to 20wpm characters with extra spacing between them (farnsworth timing) so my brain had to learn the sounds of the letters at speed even though the overall pace was still manageable. took maybe 3 weeks before things started clicking. LCWO has a farnsworth option if you havent tried it already.

thats pretty much how i got into the hobby in the first place, just listening on a shortwave before i even had a license. nothing wrong with it, sometimes the best ham radio is just absorbing whats out there

so i've been wanting to learn CW for a while now and i finally decided to just do it but i honestly have no idea where to start. i downloaded a couple apps and tried some stuff on youtube but nothing really seems to stick. like i can hear the letters and kind of recognize maybe 5 or 6 of them after a few days but then i sit down the next day and its like i forgot half of them again. is there like a specific method people use that actually works or do you just have to grind through it until it clicks? i heard something about the Koch method but i dont really understand how thats different from just learning all the letters at once. also does the speed you practice at matter early on because some of the apps let you slow it down really far and i wasnt sure if that was helping or hurting me. any advice appreciated, been a ham for about 2 years but never touched CW until now

Gamma match tuning on these imported Yagis can be finicky and sensitive to nearby objects. Any metalwork, guy wires, or other antennas in the near field? Even something 1/4 wave away can shift your impedance significantly on UHF.

so our club is trying to organize a carpool situation for the hamfest coming up and i figured id post here too in case anyone else from this area is planning on going. last year we had like 6 guys show up and it was a blast, found a pretty clean HF rig for way less than i expected and one of the elmer types in our group talked me out of buying like three things i didnt need so that saved me some money lol anyway if anyones going or knows if the swap meet portion is still happening this year let me know, i heard they scaled it back a little but not sure if thats true

so ive been doing single op assisted for a few years now, mostly phone contests but getting more into CW, and my rates are decent but i keep hitting this ceiling where i just cant seem to push past like 80-90 Qs an hour sustained even when conditions are good and the band is hopping. been reading a lot about SO2R and wondering if thats the missing piece or if im just leaving other stuff on the table first. my current setup is a K3 into a tribander at 45ft plus a 40m wire, pretty standard stuff. i run N1MM and have bandmap going but honestly i dont think im using it as efficiently as i could. like i know the theory of running a frequency while S&P on a second radio but the implementation seems like it would just fry my brain trying to manage two radios, two antennas, the audio switching, all of it at once. is there a point where you kind of have to commit to SO2R to be competitive or is there still room to optimize single radio operation a lot more? curious what people who actually run SO2R think about the learning curve vs rate improvement. also any tips on just general rate optimization even without a second radio would be appreciated because i feel like theres probably low hanging fruit im missing

im still pretty new to chasing DX seriously but something that helped me a lot was just getting a better antenna honestly. i was on a dipole in the attic trying to break pileups and it was basically hopeless for anything competitive. once i got even a modest wire outside the difference was immediate. not saying you need a big yagi but theres a floor below which technique doesnt really matter much because youre just not loud enough for anyone to hear you cleanly. whats your setup like when you were doing this?