Nicole Davis

so ive been running an inverted V for 40m for about two years now, center at maybe 35 feet with the legs sloping down to about 8 feet at the ends. works fine, gets contacts, no real complaints. but i keep reading that a flat-top dipole with the ends at the same height as the center performs noticeably better, lower takeoff angle, more gain broadside, etc. my problem is i only have one decent tall support which is a pine tree in the back yard, so getting the ends up high means either finding two more tall supports or going with a flatter slope question is whether the real-world difference is actually worth the hassle of rigging up additional supports or if im mostly just reading about a theoretical improvement that wont matter much in practice. the inverted V pattern is more omnidirectional which i kind of like for just working around the country. curious what people who have actually tried both setups think, not just what the modeling says

our club is doing a table at a regional fest in ohio next month if anyones in that area, not dayton but still pretty decent turnout usually. ill ask the club secretary if we can post the details here. also side note does anyone know if theres a good way to find smaller hamfests near you, the arrl locator thing seems hit or miss for me

the linked dipole thing is real, i switched from EFHW to a trapped dipole a couple years back for exactly that reason. the EFHW sounds great on paper and everyone online loves them but in practice getting a good match in a random field with trees that are never the right height is a pain. my linked dipole just works and i can tune it with the ATU barely working on the power question, i run two 18ah battleborn packs and that gets me through a full ARES exercise no problem, were talking like 6 hours with moderate tx duty cycle on 100w. key thing is keeping your duty cycle honest, if youre doing voice net control you can spend a lot of time just listening which barely draws anything. the generator route is fine if you have vehicle support but yeah for foot portable its not really an option unless somone else is carrying stuff one thing that helped me was adding a small 50w folding solar panel. not enough to run the radio directly but it keeps the battery topped off if you have any daylight. in summer that makes a real difference over a long day

yeah that waiting-then-chaos pattern is pretty much universal in my experience, doesnt matter if its a shelter op or a marathon or whatever. the exercises are good for the radio skills but they cant really simulate that mental shift you have to make when stuff suddenly gets real and someone actually needs the information you're handling. my first activation was a flood thing back in 2019 and i made so many dumb little errors just from nerves, transposing digits in a message number, forgetting to log the time, stuff like that. having a mentor alongside you like your Dave guy is genuinely invaluable. some counties just throw new people in solo and that's rough. sounds like your group has it together which is great. the ICS training requirement is something our group started pushing harder in the last couple years and it really does make a difference when you're working alongside served agencies who use that structure all day every day.

so ive been going back and forth on this for probably three weeks now and i need someone to just tell me if im making it more complicated than it needs to be. my situation is i have a decent sized backyard, maybe 80 feet across, and im trying to decide whether to put up a 40m dipole or go with a vertical. the dipole would have to be kind of low, maybe 25-30 feet at the apex, which i know isnt ideal. the vertical i was looking at is a hustler 6BTV which a buddy of mine runs and swears by. i mostly want to work dx when conditions are good but im also just getting into HF so honestly half the time ill probably be doing local stuff too. the ground here is pretty average i think, not great not terrible, clay-ish soil if that matters for the vertical question. i keep reading that a low dipole radiates more like a cloud warmer which is bad for dx but then again the vertical needs a good radial system and that sounds like its own whole project. anyone actually run both and can give me a real comparison?

i went back and forth on this same thing for ages. ended up doing a lip mount on the hatch of my SUV as a compromise -- no drilling, better contact than mag mount, and i can still get to it. not perfect but the SWR has been rock solid for two years. probably not as clean as a real NMO but for everyday repeater use and some simplex i cant tell the difference on the air.

congrats on the first build firing up, that never gets old honestly. and yeah the antenna is always going to matter way more than squeezing another fraction of a watt out of the rig — with QRP you really cant afford a mediocre antenna. the random wire with a 9:1 works but its kind of a compromise for everything and optimized for nothing if that makes sense. for park stuff i started using a linked dipole that i can reconfigure for different bands and its made a huge difference. takes maybe five extra minutes to set up but youre not fighting an impedance mismatch on every band. some guys swear by the end fed half wave with a 49:1 and i get it, only one feedpoint to deal with, but i find the linked dipole a bit more predictable. either way get that wire as high as you can, even a few extra feet helps noticeably at low power. sounds like you had a solid first outing though, ohio from virginia on 4 watts is pretty satisfying.

the ALC thing your club buddy mentioned is actually really important and a lot of people overlook it. basically if your ALC is working too hard — like peaking consistently instead of just occasionally touching — youre compressing the heck out of your audio before it even gets processed cleanly. on the 7300 you want to set your mic gain so the ALC is just barely tickling on voice peaks, not riding it constantly. people set mic gain way too high thinking louder input = louder signal but it doesnt work that way. for the bass issue, the PR-40 is a great mic but it has a lot of low end especially if youre close to it — thats the proximity effect. either back off a bit more or go into the TX equalizer in the 7300 menus and roll off below like 200-300hz. you dont need those frequencies for voice intelligibility on SSB anyway and they just eat up your average power. also check that your speech processor isnt cranked too high if you have it on, that can make things sound muddy too. honestly just spend an hour going through the audio menus with someone giving you reports on another receiver and youll nail it down pretty quick.

honest answer — at 25 feet on 40m your dipole is doing most of its work at fairly high angles so yeah youre not really optimized for DX either way. a vertical with even 4 elevated radials is going to have a lower angle of radiation and you'd probably notice it on the longer paths, like into EU from the east coast or into JA from the west. that said the difference isnt going to blow your mind. you might work stuff you werent working before but youre not going to suddenly be running DX pileups. the elevated radial thing is fine as long as theyre actually elevated, like a few feet off the ground minimum and resonant or close to it. people underestimate how much slop you can get away with if theyre up in the air rather than laying on lossy ground. 4 radials at about 6 feet elevation has worked decently for me on 40 and 80. i ran that setup for about a year before i got my dipole up higher and honestly i didnt feel like i was suffering too badly. if the HOA is a concern the vertical might actually be more stealth depending on what you use — a fiberglass fishing pole with wire on it is pretty invisible compared to a wire strung between two trees.

so i've been licensed about 8 months now and i'm still trying to figure out the unwritten rules. last week i found what i thought was a clear frequency on 40m and just started calling CQ. got a pretty terse response from someone saying the frequency was in use and i should have checked first. i honestly couldnt hear anything before i started so i wasnt trying to be rude or anything. i know the official thing is to ask 'is this frequency in use' before you start but does everyone actually do that? feels a little awkward to just announce yourself on what sounds like a dead frequency. also someone in my club mentioned something about nets that i might have walked into but i had no idea there was a net schedule for that part of the band. is there a good place to find those? i dont want to keep stepping on people by accident

so i pulled my 7300 out of the closet after about 8 months of not really using it and the recieve audio just sounds... off. like muddy and kinda distorted at mid to high volume on the speaker, but if i plug headphones in it sounds totally fine. transmit seems okay based on reports im getting on the air, nobody's complained anyway. my first thought was the internal speaker itself, maybe the cone got warped or something sitting in the garage during summer. temps out there can get pretty bad. but i dont want to just throw a new speaker at it if the problem is somewhere else. could be the audio amp stage i guess? the PA8002 or whatever icom uses in that radio. has anyone pulled the board on one of these to check caps in the audio section? i have a scope and a decent ESR meter so im not afraid to get in there, just wondering if theres a known weak point before i start poking around blind.

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at this for maybe 6 months now. one thing that helped me a ton was just recording myself sending and listening back. sounds painful but you hear mistakes you dont notice in real time. also i switched to a straight key for a few weeks just to get the rhythm of individual characters into my head before going back to the paddle. might not work for everyone but it clicked for me that way

so ive had this thing for about three weeks now and figured id share some impressions since i spent a lot of time reading posts like this before buying. came from an old TS-590SG which i actually really liked but the 7300 was just hard to ignore at that price point, especially with the built in waterfall and the SDR front end and all that. first thing — the touchscreen is way more useful than i expected. i was kind of skeptical because i figured id just ignore it but honestly i use it constantly to click around on signals when im just casually spinning the dial. the spectrum scope is responsive enough that it doesnt feel like an afterthought like some older implementations ive used. receiver feels solid to me. granted im not in a super RF-dense urban environment so i cant speak to strong signal handling in a busy contest situation, but on 40m at night its just... clean. quieter than i expected for a radio in this class. havent really stress tested the roofing filters or anything, just normal operating. one thing that did bug me — the mic audio out of the box was a little thin sounding on SSB. had to mess with the TX equalizer settings for a bit before i was happy with it. not a dealbreaker but it took longer than it should have to dial in, the menu isnt exactly intuitive for that stuff. anyway if anyones on the fence about one of these im happy to answer questions. not trying to be a fanboy, it has quirks, but overall im pretty happy with where it sits in the shack.

yeah they're definitely pulling from different nodes on the DX cluster network, so you'll get some overlap but also spots that only showed up on certain nodes depending on who's connected where. its been like that forever honestly. QRZ's spot feed is pretty solid for casual use but DXwatch lets you filter by band and mode which i find way more useful when im specifically hunting 17m or looking for FT8 activity on 40. for phone apps i've been using DX Alert for a while now, you can set it to notify you when a specific callsign or entity gets spotted and thats been a gamechanger for me. missed way too many rare ones before that because i wasnt watching the screen. HRD's cluster integration is fine but its kind of clunky to navigate if you ask me, feels like it was designed for a monitor from 2003.

i just passed my General last month so this is pretty fresh for me. i used the ARRL General study guide book plus HamStudy and i think i studied maybe 3 weeks on and off, not super intense. the electrical theory stuff is a little more involved than Tech but if you understand the concepts behind it rather than just memorizing the answer letter it actually sticks way better and helps on the ones that are worded slightly differently. havent gotten on HF yet because im still figuring out the antenna situation but thats a whole other problem lol

so i finally did my first summit activation last weekend, been putting it off forever because i kept thinking i needed more gear or a better antenna or whatever. ended up just throwing my KX2 in a bag with a random wire and some coax and drove up to a local summit that was only like a 45 min hike. nothing crazy. set up took maybe 20 minutes which felt slow but whatever, called CQ on 40m and got a pileup going almost immediately which honestly caught me off guard. forgot how many chasers are out there waiting. logged like 22 contacts in about an hour and a half then the battery started getting low so i packed it up. total weight was probably under 4 lbs including the radio which still kind of amazes me. already looking at my next summit. anyone else done POTA and SOTA at the same time when the park boundaries overlap? seems like free points if you plan it right

welcome to the rabbit hole haha. honestly the flux index as a raw number is useful but what i pay more attention to is the trend — is it rising or falling. a flux of 150 that's been climbing for a few days usually means better conditions than a 160 that just dropped from 200 and is still falling. the ionosphere kinda lags behind a bit. for 15m i usually start getting interested when flux is consistently above 120ish, and 10m really starts doing things above 150 or so depending on the season and your path. but honestly just check it. 10m surprised me plenty of times at flux numbers i wouldnt have expected. that band can do some wild things even when the numbers look marginal, especially around the gray line. K index — anything 2 or below and you're generally fine. 3 you might notice some fading on polar paths especially if you're trying to work europe or JA from north america. 4 and above things can get rough, and during an actual geomagnetic storm K5 or higher the high bands can just completely fall apart. 40 and 80 actually sometimes improve during those events weirdly enough, something about the absorption patterns shifting.

honestly the thing that took me the longest to figure out was documentation. i had all the gear but if someone else had to use my kit or i was stressed out trying to remember frequencies and offsets in the dark, it was a mess. now i keep a laminated card in the lid of my case with my common freqs, the local ARES net info, and a basic setup checklist. sounds dumb simple but it has saved me more than once at actual deployments. for antennas, i ended up going with a linked EFHW that i wound myself. cheap to make, no tuner needed for the bands i cut it for, and it packs down to almost nothing. buddipole is fine but its a lot of parts to keep track of when youre tired. whatever you pick just practice setting it up in the dark at least once, seriously. also dont forget a headlamp, some way to charge your phone, and snacks. the radio stuff people think about but then you show up to a 12 hour RACES activation and youre starving by hour three lol.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, just hit 102 confirmed last month and the whole credit system confused me for a while too. one thing that helped me was just uploading everything to LoTW first and letting it sort out what was matched, then i could see exactly where my gaps were. Club Log also has a good tool that shows you which entities youve worked but dont have confirmed yet, that was kind of eye opening for me because i had worked a bunch of stuff that just never got confirmed. the paper QSL route is slower but sometimes thats the only option, i sent a bunch through the bureau and waited like eight months but eventually got the cards back. depends how patient you are i guess.

i just passed mine last month and the thoery wasnt as bad as i expected. some of the questions about digital modes and the emission types stuff is actually pretty interesting once you get into it. the filter stuff did trip me up a few times in practice but by the time i sat for the real exam it was mostly fine. go for it

yeah i went through this last year and the ae7q site the previous guy mentioned is genuinely a lifesaver. i spent like an hour on the FCC site getting nowhere then found ae7q and had my application in within 20 minutes. you can filter by available calls in your district and see exactly whats open. one thing i'll add — when i got my vanity call i had to wait like 18 days after the window closed before it actually showed up in the system. felt like forever but it did come through. just dont expect it to be instant even after you get the grant notice.

so i finally got activated for real last weekend, not just a drill. there was bad flooding about 30 miles east of here and the county EOC requested ARES support for about 18 hours. ive been a member for almost two years and done maybe 6 or 7 training exercises but nothing had ever gone live before so i wasnt totally sure how it would actually feel. honestly the biggest thing i noticed was how different the pace is compared to drills. during drills everyone kind of knows its not real and theres this low-key relaxed vibe even when we're pretending to be serious. but when the net control at the EOC was passing actual shelter locations and real headcounts it just felt different. i was way more focused and also weirdly more calm than i expected, like the training actually kicked in. one thing that tripped me up was my logging. i use whatever the standard ICS 214 form is but i hadnt really practiced filling it out fast under actual pressure and i fell behind a couple times. nothing major but my EC noticed and we talked about it after. also had a brief issue with my simplex frequency not being heard at one of the outlying sites but we worked around it pretty quick. anyway just wanted to share because i remember reading posts like this when i was newer and wondering what a real activation would be like. if youre in ARES and havent been activated yet, the drills really do matter even when they feel repetitive.

so the short version is — LoTW is run by the ARRL and it's the one that counts for DXCC and a lot of the bigger awards, so that's the one you really want to get sorted first. eQSL is a separate thing, some people use it, some dont, but it's generally not accepted for DXCC. paper cards are still used and some awards specifically require them or at least give you the option, but a lot of people have moved mostly digital. for LoTW you need to make sure your log dates and callsign match exactly what you uploaded and that the other station also uploaded their log — both sides have to be in there for a confirmation to show up. 40m ssb is pretty active on LoTW so if youre not seeing confirmations after a few months it might be worth double checking that your certificate is set up right and tied to the right callsign and dates. the ARRL has a walkthrough on their site. it took me probably two evenings of fiddling to get it all sorted when i first started. as for the bureau — yeah your club receives incoming cards for members and you drop off outgoing cards with them. it's slow, like months sometimes, but basically free. totally worth it if you ever start chasing DX because a lot of DX stations still send paper.

i tried JS8Call last winter and honestly couldnt get into it, felt like nobody was ever on when i checked. might be a time of day thing or a band thing. FT8 you tune in and theres always somebody there which is part of the appeal i guess even if its not much of a conversation. one thing i will say is if you want actual keyboard to keyboard stuff that still works on mediocre conditions, have you messed around with WSPR just to get a feel for weak signal propagation and then like cross reference when to try PSK31 or whatever. not the same thing i know but it kind of helped me understand when my antenna was actually doing something useful vs when the band was just dead and i was wasting time. RTTY is still my favorite for actual rag chewing when conditions allow, theres something about the sound of it.

I had almost the exact same experience on my first activation, right down to the UTC time issue. What I do now is just keep my phone showing UTC the whole time I'm operating, like literally tape a piece of paper over the local time display so I stop glancing at the wrong thing out of habit. Sounds dumb but it works for me. Also I found that 20m in the late morning is usually where I can rack up QSOs fastest, especially if youre in the eastern US. The European chasers are really active and they love WWFF references. Once you get a decent pile going it snowballs pretty quickly and 44 stops feeling like this huge mountain.