Brian Wilson

yeah the wind thing is real, i lost an activation on a summit in colorado because i just couldnt get the wire to stay where i needed it. now i carry a slinky dipole as backup, not perfect but it holds together better when its gusty. and yeah 4 QSOs counts, dont let anyone tell you otherwise. the 4 contact rule is 4 contacts period.

so i've been meaning to try LEO satellite work for a while now, been licensed for about 6 years but always figured it was too complicated to bother with. finally sat down last weekend and gave AO-73 a real shot with my FT-817 and a couple of hand-held yagis i threw together from a kit. the pass went okay i think, i could hear myself in the downlink after a bit of fiddling but honestly the doppler shift caught me off guard more than i expected. i was using Gpredict on my laptop to track the pass and had the frequencies set up but i kept falling behind on the correction, like by the time i tuned one end the other was already off. is there a good way to handle this without full computer control of the rig? i dont have a CAT cable set up and im not sure the 817 even does full duplex well enough for this anyway. also noticed i had to keep my power way down or i'd wipe out the whole transponder passband which i wasn't expecting. read about it afterward and understood why but in the moment i was confused why everyone disappeared when i keyed up. felt bad about that

The net I help control on Thursday nights we actually say at the top of each session exactly what we want from check-ins, precisely because new folks don't always know. If your net isn't doing that it might be worth mentioning to whoever runs it, a lot of NCS ops just assume everyone already knows the format which isn't really fair to newcomers. Also for what it's worth, "that's all" is perfectly acceptable as a closing, some nets specifically ask for it. So you probably didn't sound as out of place as you thought.

the CTCSS thing — 100hz is actually written as 100.0 Hz in most radio menus, sometimes baofengs list them slightly differently so double check you didnt accidentally program 100 as like a DCS code or something. what you want is the transmit tone set, not the receive tone, a lot of new folks accidentally set both and that can cause weirdness depending on how the repeater is set up. the tail you're hearing is normal, most repeaters have a short squelch tail after you unkey and then a courtesy beep before someone else can come back. if you arent hearing a courtesy tone at all it might just be that particular machine doesnt have one configured, theyre not universal. as for etiquette, honestly just listen for a while before jumping in. most repeaters have regulars who chat at certain times, mornings and evenings usually. key up and say your callsign and that youre just monitoring or listening and see who comes back. people are generally pretty welcoming to new hams, especially if you dont just start talking over an ongoing conversation. you got this

the packet point is interesting, we've been going back and forth in our group about whether to lean harder into winlink for shelter comms or stick with voice for everything because some of the older members dont really trust it. personally i think voice and digital both have their place, like you said for resource requests with numbers and names winlink is just cleaner. less room for phonetic alphabet confusion at 2am when everyone's tired. did your group do any kind of after action review? that's something we started doing after every exercise and honestly it changed how useful the drills feel, like even just 20 minutes talking through what broke before everyone packs up and goes home makes a big difference the next time around.

so i've been fighting this install for like three weekends now and i think i finally got it dialed in but my buddy says my audio sounds kind of muffled and occasionally has this low hum underneath it, not terrible but noticeable enough that he mentioned it twice on the way home from the repeater meetup last night i've got a yaesu ftm-400 mounted under the dash on the passenger side with a diamond NR770H on the roof, ran the coax down the a-pillar and under the carpet. power leads go direct to the battery with an inline fuse about 6 inches from the positive terminal. ground goes to a bolt on the chassis under the dash which i sanded down to bare metal before connecting the hum is worse when the engine is running which makes me think alternator noise maybe? and the muffled audio im not sure if thats a mic thing or settings. the mic is just the stock one that came with the radio, nothing fancy. i checked deviation on the radio and it seems fine but honestly im not 100% sure what im looking for there anyone dealt with this kind of thing? i dont want to rip everything apart again if i can avoid it

so i've been an ARES member for about 8 months now, went to all the nets, did the IS-100 and IS-700 training online, showed up to a couple exercises but nothing real had come up in my area yet. well that changed last weekend when we had some pretty serious flooding and the county EOC actually called us in. i want to say first off that all the training stuff actually does matter, like i was skeptical about some of the ICS paperwork stuff but when you're actually in the EOC and the EC is asking for an ICS-214 at the end of your shift it makes sense why they drilled that into us. the net control discipline stuff too — there were a few moments where people were stepping on each other and you could really feel how fast things can go sideways without proper procedure. my main takeaway though is that my go-bag was not as ready as i thought it was. i had my HT and a spare battery but i ended up being there for about 11 hours and was really glad someone else had a longer antenna and a way to charge things. also the repeater we rely on locally lost power for about 2 hours and we had to shift to simplex which, honestly, not everyone knew the plan for that. anyway just sharing in case anyone else is kind of on the fence about whether ARES training is worth the time. for me it turned out to be pretty worth it. curious if others have had similar first activation experiences

i upgraded last spring and honestly the propagation questions tripped me up a bit, like understanding why 40m works great at night and 10m is more of a daytime band and all that. its not super hard once you get it but i kept mixing things up on practice tests. the operating rules section was pretty easy though, lots of it overlaps with Tech stuff 40m is a great place to start once you get your General by the way, tons of activity and you can work a lot of DX when conditions are decent

So ive been on HF for about two years now mostly digital modes but lately been spending more time on phone and honestly the reports i'm getting are all over the place. some guys say i sound great others say i sound muffled or like im in a barrel and i cant figure out what the difference is. im running an IC-7300 with the stock mic, no EQ set on the radio, just basically default settings out of the box. i did read somewhere that the bass response on the stock mic is too heavy for SSB and you want to roll off below like 300hz or so but i havent touched any of that yet. also i notice when band conditions get rough my audio is the first thing to fall apart — like guys running 100w like me will still punch through better somehow. is it really just mic EQ or is there more to it? compression? ALC? i feel like theres a whole rabbit hole here i havent even started going down

Telnet test is the move honestly, just eliminates half the variables right away. if you can send and receive via Telnet your account is fine and the issue is definitely RF/modem side. also worth trying ARDOP instead of VARA if you're still stuck — its free and built into Winlink Express without any extra software. slower but it works and its good for just confirming your radio is actually making a proper connection to the gateway. once you get one successful session the rest usually makes more sense.

I keep both installed, been doing it for years, never had a real problem. The only annoyance is remembering to do the ADIF export/import dance after Field Day or whatever but its not that bad. Log4OM is just way nicer for looking up your history and tracking awards and stuff, N1MM doesnt really care about any of that it just wants to know if the callsign is a dupe and how many points you got

so i finally got off my butt and did my first summit activation last weekend, W4T/SU-something, i'd have to look up the exact reference. been chasing SOTA for about a year and figured it was time to actually climb one of these things instead of just sitting in the shack waiting for alerts. brought my KX2 and a 40m linked dipole i threw together from some stuff i had laying around, figured that would be enough. the hike itself wasnt bad, maybe 2.5 miles, but by the time i got to the summit i realized i forgot to charge the battery pack. had maybe 20 minutes of operating time if i was lucky so i jumped straight onto 40m and posted a spot from my phone. ended up with 4 QSOs which i know is the minimum to qualify but honestly i was just happy to make any contacts at all. the signal reports were all over the place, one guy gave me a 59 and the next gave me a 57 which fine whatever. my biggest mistake was not alerting ahead of time on SOTAwatch so there wasnt really a pile waiting for me. lesson learned i guess. anyone else have a rough first activation? also wondering if 20m would have been better for the time of day, it was around 2pm local

i did mine about 8 months ago and was in the same spot, zero background. i used the HamStudy app on my phone mostly during lunch breaks and just kind of did 20-30 questions a day. took me maybe 3 weeks. the electrical stuff like ohms law and the basic circuit questions look scary but theres really only a handful of formulas that actually show up and you can just memorize which numbers go where honestly. passed with a 32 out of 35 and i still dont fully understand what a dipole is lol, learning that now

yeah what he said about lotw. also just wanted to add — dont stress too much about the caribbean entity you worked, if you check your log you should have the callsign and you can usually figure out the entity from that. clublog has a really good lookup tool and there are a few others. once you get into dxcc chasing you start to recognize callsign prefixes pretty quickly anyway, its kind of fun i chased DXCC for like two years before i finally submitted and honestly half the fun was just the hunt. some entities are super easy and some you wait months for a good opening. welcome to the addiction i guess

yeah the CTCSS thing trips up a lot of new folks, dont worry about it. basically for most repeaters you just need to set the encode tone — meaning your radio transmits that 100.0 Hz subaudible tone along with your voice, and the repeater's receiver is set to only open up when it hears that specific tone. that way random noise or distant stations on the same frequency dont accidentally key the machine up. on the uv-5r you want to go into the menu and find the T-CTCS option, that's the transmit one, and set it to 100.0. the R-CTCS is for your radio to filter what it receives and most people just leave that off unless the repeater output is really busy and you dont want to hear random traffic. once you set the encode tone try keying up and giving your callsign, something like just "[callsign] testing" and see if you get the repeater's tail or a courtesy beep back. if you do you're making it in. and honestly if nobody responds right away it might just be a quiet time on that repeater — some of them barely get used during the week.

so ive been running an inverted V for about two years now, center fed with 450 ohm ladder line into a tuner, apex is at maybe 35 feet which is about the best i can do with what i have in the backyard. works fine, no real complaints, but i keep reading stuff online that a flat top would be meaningfully better and im not sure if i buy it or if its just one of those things people repeat because someone wrote it in a handbook decades ago i guess my main question is whether the pattern difference actually matters in practice or if its one of those things that looks huge in EZNEC but in real life the difference gets swallowed up by everything else going on. my ends would only be maybe 8 feet off the ground if i went flat top which feels low, or i could do a compromise and raise the center to 40 feet and drop the ends a bit. not sure thats worth the hassle of rerouting the feedline anyone actually done a side by side comparison or have a strong opinion on this? im on 40m mostly with occasional 20 and 80

oh man i was just in this exact situation like two months ago for my first activation. the pre-spot thing works really well, i did mine the evening before and woke up to like three replies from chasers saying theyd be listening. honestly it made me way less nervous knowing people were expecting me. one thing i wish someone had told me -- bring way more water than you think you need if its warm out, i was so focused on radio gear i kind of skimped on that and regretted it. also the EFHW tripod setup, give yourself more time than you think to get it sorted once youre up there, first time i ever set mine up in the field took like 20 minutes because i kept fumbling things. now i can do it in 5 but yeah. good luck, post how it goes

im kind of in the same boat as you were, still haven't put mine together yet, so this is actually really helpful to read. quick question though — did you do anything special to keep the battery from draining just sitting in the case between uses? thats one thing ive been worried about, like if something happens and i grab the kit and the battery is dead thats kind of the whole problem.

im basically in the same boat as you, started a few months ago. i went through like three different paddles before settling on one that felt right for my hand so dont be surprised if the amazon one ends up not being your forever paddle. the thing that helped me the most honestly was slowing way down on lcwo and just being really deliberate about each character instead of trying to rush to higher speeds. also i heard somewhere that you should learn to recognize the sound of the whole letter rather than counting dits and dahs and that totally changed things for me once it clicked

WAS is probably the most satisfying one to start with if you're in the US, just because you can knock out a big chunk of it during a single decent contest weekend. sounds like you're already almost halfway there without even trying. the contacts you've already made absolutely count as long as you have them in your log — lotw retroactively applies everything once you upload your adif. so go back and upload all your logs if you havent already, you might be surprised how many credits you already have sitting there. the cost thing is a bit confusing at first. lotw itself is free to use for logging and matching, you only pay when you actually apply for the award certificate. DXCC has a fee per entity credit when you apply, WAS I think is just a one time thing when you submit the application. none of it is crazy expensive but it adds up if you're chasing endorsements constantly. honestly my advice — dont overthink it. just work stuff and upload to lotw consistently, the credits accumulate on their own and one day you'll look and realize you're at 87 entities or 46 states and then it gets fun. the chasing is half the point anyway.

yeah i had the same confusion when i first started checking into nets. what helped me was just listening to how the more experienced guys did it. our net control actually reminded everyone about proper ID procedure a few weeks back which i thought was cool, wasnt preachy about it just mentioned it casually. i think most nets are pretty forgiving especially for newer folks as long as you're making the effort.

so anyway the app i ended up liking is Ham Radio Deluxe's DX cluster view but thats because i was already using that software. if you're on your phone just messing around, DX Toolbox is decent and i think there's a free version. the delay thing is real though, ive tuned to spots that were only 5 min old and still missed the guy completely. some of it is propagation just closing on you and some of it is the pileup already died down. you kind of get a feel for it after a while which spots are worth chasing and which ones are probably dead already based on the band and time of day

JS8Call does have an active community but its definitely not FT8 numbers, not even close. the 40m JS8Call calling frequency gets some traffic especially evenings in north america and theres a loose group that does store-and-forward relay stuff which is honestly pretty cool if you're into that side of things. for actual ragchewing though its hit or miss — sometimes you'll find someone and have a solid 20 minute back and forth, other times you sit there watching the waterfall for an hour and nothing. your read on the weak signal performance is basically right. JS8Call uses a slower version of the FT8 waveform so you get that coding gain but at the cost of bandwidth and speed. its more like a 25hz wide signal depending on the speed setting you use. normal speed is fine for most stuff but if the band is really in the toilet you can drop to slow mode and it gets almost ridiculous how weak a signal it can pull out. i've decoded stations on 40m that were genuinely inaudible to me. the ic-7300 works great for it btw, same USB audio setup as WSJT-X basically. dont overthink the configuration side of it.

okay so i just got my technician license a few weeks ago and ive been listening to a lot of nets and repeater traffic trying to get the hang of things before i actually key up. one thing im noticing is that some people use the NATO phonetics every single time they say a callsign, like every single letter gets spelled out, and then other people just kind of... dont? like theyll say the letters normally and only go to phonetics if theres interference or something. so my question is is there like an actual rule about this or is it just whatever you feel like. also i keep second guessing myself on some of the words, like i know most of them but i always blank on X and i keep wanting to say X-ray but then i second guess myself thinking thats wrong. and does it matter if you use the ITU ones vs the NATO ones or are those the same thing

yeah what he said about checking raw packets is the way to go. also worth looking up what digis are actually in your area on aprs.fi map — zoom in and filter for digipeaters, gives you a pretty good sense of the coverage you're actually working with before you spend too much time tweaking paths blind. tbh in semi rural areas i usually just run WIDE2-2 and call it good, keeps it cleaner