Amanda Taylor

so ive been chasing bouvet for literally years, had the cluster alerts set up and everything, and last week during the 3Y0J operation i actually managed to get through on 17m after about 45 minutes of trying. wanted to share what finally worked because ive tried a lot of different approaches over the years and most of them dont. first thing i did was stop trying to call on top of everyone else. i know that sounds obvious but honestly i spent the first 20 minutes just throwing my call in with the rest of the pile and getting nowhere. what actually started to work was listening really carefully to where the DX station was actually coming back to — not where they said they were listening but where the contacts were actually happening. those two things are often not the same, especially as the op gets into a rhythm. i run about 400w into a 4el yagi at 45ft and i was still getting buried. ended up dropping to like 200w because i was getting intermod on myself from the amp and it was making my signal muddy. cleaner signal at lower power seemed to help. also started timing my calls to fill the gap right after the DX station sent their last character, not when i heard other people starting to call. the split listening thing took me a while to really internalize. you have to kinda mentally tune out the chaos on the tx frequency and only focus on what the dx is doing. anyway just sharing in case it helps anyone. curious if others have techniques that work consistently because i feel like every pileup is different

one thing nobody told me when i started messing with this is how much the azimuth and elevation accuracy of your rotator setup matters. i had a cheap az/el rig that was off by several degrees and i couldnt figure out why my signals were so much weaker than expected, especially near moonrise and moonset when the path length is longest. turns out i was just not pointing where i thought i was. ended up getting a G-5500 and actually calibrating it properly and things got noticeably better. not saying you need fancy gear but dont overlook the mechanical side, a great LNA on a poorly aimed antenna is still going to disappoint you

so ive been mulling this over for a while and finally decided to just start messing with it. basically i want to use an arduino mega to handle my antenna switching between like 4 different antennas based on what band i qsy to. right now im doing it all manually with a coax switch and its getting old especially during contests when im jumping around a lot. my rough idea is to read the band data output from my ic-7300 (it has that on the acc port i think?) and then use relays to switch between the antennas automatically. i already have a relay module i pulled off an old project, 8 channel one from amazon that i never really used for anything serious. has anyone done something like this or something similar? im not super experienced with arduino stuff but i can read code okay and modify things. not starting from zero but not super confident either. also wondering if a raspberry pi would be better for this or if the arduino is overkill or underkill or whatever. pi seems like more than i need honestly but maybe im wrong

the warmth on the ubitx is pretty normal honestly, the final transistors run in class AB so there's always gonna be some heat even when you're not transmitting much. if it gets uncomfortably hot to the touch during long periods of transmitting you might wanna check your duty cycle but for casual portable use its probably fine. some people add a small heatsink to the finals which doesnt cost anything if you have junk box parts. on the tuner question i go back and forth on this. i used to always cut a wire for the target band and that works great if you know exactly what you're doing that day. but now i carry a small z-match tuner i built from a kit, weighs maybe 150 grams and lets me jump to 20m if 40 goes dead which has saved a few activations. the LNR end fedz wires are popular in the SOTA crowd for good reason too, resonant on multiple bands without a tuner so thats another option worth looking at.

congrats on the first activation, that's a great feeling getting those 4 QSOs and qualifying. the alert time thing is something everyone figures out eventually. what most people do is just post a fresh self-spot when youre actually on the air and ready — the alert is really just to let chasers know you're planning to be somewhere around that time, nobody expects you to be perfectly on schedule. if you have cell service you can update the alert on sotawatch but honestly most activators I know just spot themselves when they're set up and chasers watch for that. the S2S guys especially watch the spots closely. the trekking pole antenna thing is a good skill to have, I do it on almost every activation now since summits above treeline dont give you many options. worth setting up in the yard like you said just to get the feel for it. also for future reference if you can post on the SOTA reflector or the regional groups before a big first activation there are often local hams who will make a point to be listening for you which helps a lot with that initial pile-up anxiety.

oh man i had the same problem when i was first getting on HF, nets are such a good way to start. i ended up just scanning around 3.900 to 3.960 on weekend mornings until i found something and then wrote everything down in a notebook like its 1985 lol. worked though. the net control on the one i found was super patient with me when i fumbled my callsign the first time checking in.

so i finally did my first parks on the air activation last weekend at a state park about 45 minutes from my house. been wanting to do this for months but kept putting it off because i wasnt sure if my setup was good enough or whatever. ended up just throwing the KX2 and a random wire antenna in a backpack and driving out there got 12 contacts in about an hour and a half which i know is just barely over the minimum but hey it counts right. mostly 40m, tried 20m for a bit but conditions werent great that afternoon. spotted myself on the POTA app and things picked up after that, had a little pileup for maybe 10 minutes which was fun and kind of stressful at the same time couple questions for people who do this regularly -- when you upload your log do you just use ADIF straight from your logger or is there something else i should know about. also i noticed some hunters were sending their grid squares in their exchange, is that standard or just something some folks do. and is there a good way to know ahead of time if a park has already been activated a bunch of times vs one that hasnt been done much, does that even matter

honestly I'm kind of in the same boat as you, started LCWO about two months ago and im at maybe 12 characters now. its slow going but i can actually hear letters now without thinking about it for some of them which is wild compared to when i started one thing someone told me that helped was to just tune around on 40 or 80 and listen even if you cant copy anything, just getting your ear used to the rhythm of it. theres also a bunch of youtube channels that do slow code practice transmissions which i found useful for getting off the pure drill stuff and hearing it in a more real context

okay so first thing, no you dont need to know morse code anymore, they dropped that requirement years ago so dont let that scare you off. the technician exam is definitely where you want to start, its 35 questions multiple choice and you need to get 26 right to pass. the question pool is public which is honestly the best part because you can literally study the exact questions that will be on the test. most people use hamstudy.org or the hamradioprep site, i used hamstudy when i got my tech and it just drills you with practice questions until you start recognizing them. took me maybe two or three weeks of casual studying in the evenings and i passed no problem. some people do back to back tech and general but id say just get your tech first, get on the air, and then study for general when you feel ready. no rush honestly

im kind of in the same boat as you and just started a few weeks ago, so take this for what its worth. i use the morse code ninja stuff on youtube, he has videos that go through each character and also these word practice videos which are actually really helpful once you know a few letters. i also found just having it on in the background while im doing other stuff helps a little but probably not as much as sitting down and actually focusing on it lol one thing i heard is dont try to learn too many letters at once, like five or six max before you really drill them. anyway still a work in progress for me too

so ive been running this 80m dipole i built last spring using some 14awg stranded house wire i had laying around. worked fine all summer but now that its getting colder the swr is creeping up and sometimes i get weird resonance spots that werent there before thinking maybe i should have used something heavier like 12awg or even 10awg? the spans are pretty long, about 65 feet per leg hanging between some trees. or could it be the trees themselves changing with the seasons affecting things anyone else notice seasonal changes with wire antennas or am i overthinking this