Tower Climber

yeah the message handling piece is almost always where exercises fall apart in my experience. People practice the radio skills and then assume the rest just works itself out but it doesnt. We had a similar issue a few years back where our net control was logging contacts fine but nobody was actually tracking which messages had been delivered vs just sent. Ended up with a bunch of duplicates and some that got lost entirely. What helped us a lot was running a smaller drill first, like just 4 or 5 operators, specifically focused on the paperwork flow from start to finish before we tried to scale it up. Boring but it really showed where the gaps were. Also designating one person as basically a traffic manager at the EOC who doesnt touch a radio at all and just handles the forms — that made a huge difference. The radio people can focus on the radio and someone else worries about the ICS forms. The repeater backup power thing is a classic. We put it on a checklist now but for a long time it just kind of got assumed. Good on you for running the drill and catching this stuff now instead of during an actual event.

totally normal to feel that way early on, dont stress about it. listening without checking in is completely fine — nets arent mandatory and net control knows not everyone checks in every week. the regulars who show up every single time are great but nobody expects that from everyone. as for the check-in procedure, the typical flow is net control will say something like "all check-ins please give your callsign" or sometimes they do it by region or phonetic. you just throw your callsign out during that window, they acknowledge you, and then later if they ask for traffic you can either pass (which just means you have nothing) or say your callsign again and give your announcement. on most local nets just saying your callsign during check-ins is enough even if you have nothing else to add. you're not expected to have traffic every week, most people dont. honestly the best thing you can do is just check in more often. you'll get the rhythm of it pretty fast and it stops feeling awkward after a few times.

I made pretty much the exact same move, older Kenwood to the 7300. The ATU thing you mentioned on 40m — are you running the end-fed with a matching unit at the feedpoint or just straight into the radio? I ask because mine was doing something similar and it turned out my 9:1 unun was the culprit not the radio ATU. swapped it out and 40 cleaned right up. might not be your issue but worth checking if you havent already.

62 ohms at the feedpoint for an inverted V is actually pretty reasonable, nothing to stress about. the angle of the legs affects the feedpoint impedance and with an inverted V that isnt very high up youre gonna see it shift from the theoretical 73 ohms a flat dipole would give you. the shallower the angle, the lower it goes. so yeah 1.8:1 is totally workable, most rigs are fine with that and if it bugs you a 1:1 choke balun right at the feedpoint sometimes helps settle things down a bit. one thing i would check though is whether that HDPE center piece is thick enough that moisture cant wick up between the connector and the wire. i used PVC on one of mine and had weird SWR shifts in the rain until i sealed everything with self-amalgamating tape. might not be your issue but worth keeping in mind.

yeah the offset thing is probably the single biggest thing most people ignore. everyone just piles on whatever frequency the last QSO ended and then wonders why they cant get through. i spent a lot of time just listening to how operators like N2AA or some of the serious DXpedition guys work a pile and they are very deliberate about sweeping the spread, they're not just randomly picking calls. so if you can figure out the pattern — even just loosely — you can position yourself better. the suffix-only thing is situational imo. if the expedition op is running a pretty clean pileup and copying calls well, sending full call is actually better because it gives him more to work with for a partial. but when its a complete wall of noise and he's clearly just grabbing whatever stands out, yeah, just the suffix cuts through better. K1TTT wrote something about this years ago that was pretty good, might be floating around on eham still. one thing i'd add for running lower power into a serious pile — sometimes just waiting it out genuinely works. like the first 30-60 minutes of a new one going on the air is complete mayhem, the rate comes down eventually and your 100w starts looking a lot better relative to the QRM. patience is underrated in this hobby.

so ive been a ham for about two years now (general class) and i keep hearing about go-kits at every club meeting but nobody really sits down and explains what should actually be IN one. like i know the basic concept, portable radio, power, antenna, etc. but the details are where i get lost. right now i have an FT-891 that i use mostly at home and a little HT, and i figure the HT would be the obvious thing to throw in a bag but is that really enough for actual emergency comms? my club does ARES stuff occasionally and i want to be more prepared but every time i look online i either get some super minimalist setup or these insane pelican case rigs that look like they cost more than my car. what do you guys actually use day to day or when something real comes up? and how do you keep it ready without having to rebuild it every time you want to take it somewhere

so ive been messing around with remote station control for about 6 months now and im at the point where i need to decide whether to keep going with RemoteHams or just bite the bullet and set up my own thing with something like flrig and a VPN back to the shack. the RemoteHams client works ok but honestly the SDR remote side of things has been kind of a mixed bag for me, sometimes the waterfall just decides to freeze and i have to reconnect and by then whatever i was chasing is long gone on 17m the main thing i like about it is the internet linking stuff, being able to hop on from a hotel and just work a pile-up without lugging equipment is pretty nice. but the latency when im more than like 500 miles from the station is noticeable enough that SSB feels a bit weird. CW is actually fine, go figure anyone else running a hybrid setup or did you just pick one and stick with it? also curious if anyone has tried tying in a proper SDRplay or Airspy on the remote end instead of just using the transceiver's IF output, wondering if that helps with the waterfall lag or if its a bandwidth thing on my end

honestly the hardest part for me is just being patient enough to actually listen before transmitting. i know thats like the most basic advice but i still catch myself jumping in too early when i get excited about a rare one. spent like 45 minutes calling a VP8 a few months back before i realized they had moved up 10 on the split and i was just yelling into the void the whole time lol

i swapped to a pi 4 for my shack automation stuff and a lot of the flakiness i had on the zero just went away. might be overkill for logging but the extra horsepower means i can run a few other things on it too — i got fldigi, a little web dashboard, and my rotor controller all on the same box now. the zero is fine for simple stuff but USB on it really is its weak point. also are you running the full raspbian desktop or lite? lite made a noticeable difference in stability for me when running headless, less garbage running in the background fighting for resources

same tbh. life just gets in the way sometimes. i went like 8 months barely touching anything and then there was a big storm and i ended up helping with some local emcomm stuff and that kind of lit the fire again. wasnt even planned just kind of happened

honestly the thing that got me unstuck was just getting on the air and actually making contacts even when i was terrible at it. i know that sounds scary but there are slow speed nets specifically for people learning, like the slow speed net on 40m, and most cw ops are incredibly patient if you tell them youre still learning. copying real qso traffic with all the pressure of a live contact made my brain work harder than any practice file ever did. i went from maybe 10wpm to 15 in like two months just from doing that a few times a week. still not at 20 but im getting there

so ive been in kind of a weird spot with the hobby lately, not really transmitting much just been tuning around on 40m at night mostly. theres something weirdly satisfying about just listening to random conversations, catching bits of dx, hearing guys work nets and stuff. dont even feel like jumping in half the time. not sure if thats a phase or what but figured id see if anyone else goes through stretches like this

i was in the same boat when i started lol. what got me was i spent like two weeks trying to figure out the LoTW certificate thing and almost gave up. there are some youtube videos that walk through it step by step which helped me way more than the ARRL documentation honestly. the physical cards thing is real though, i got my first card in the mail from a guy in Japan and it was just really cool to hold it. i have a little pile of them now. i dont send them to everyone but for DX contacts i usually try to at least send one out, i got a batch printed from one of those online services for like 20 bucks for 100 cards which wasnt bad at all

honestly the General exam isnt bad at all if you put in a few weeks with a decent question pool app. i used hamstudyorg when i did mine last year and just drilled questions every evening for maybe 20-30 minutes. the electrical stuff like calculating impedance and the reactance questions tripped me up at first but once you just accept that youre memorizing the formulas rather than fully understanding them from first principles it gets a lot easier. at least for the purpose of passing the test. the frequency allocations are actually worth learning, not just for the exam but because you'll actually use that info once you get on HF. like knowing that phone is generally in the upper portion of a band and stuff like that. its not as much raw memorization as it sounds once you sit with it a bit. i think i studied for maybe 3 weeks and passed with only a couple wrong. you'll be fine just dont overthink it and book the exam before you feel totally ready, that deadline pressure helped me a lot

I was in the same boat last year! Our EC let me start attending nets and exercises right away, but I had 6 months to complete the basic FEMA courses. The training really is a personal commitment - once you start, you'll see why it's important for working with served agencies during actual emergencies.

You can learn more about this antenna concept by searching "coaxial-sleeved dipoles" online. Typically used for vertical VHF/UHF designs. Your HF adaptation is clever - the multiband capability with a tuner makes this quite practical for contest portable operations.

came from a TS-590SG to a 7300 and honestly had pretty similar experience with the WSJT-X setup taking forever. the audio codec stuff through the USB is great once its working but getting windows to not mess with the audio levels automatically was the part that got me. theres a setting buried in the sound properties where you have to disable all the windows audio enhancements or it keeps adjusting the levels on you. might already know that but just in case.

Great comparison! I've been torn between these two. How did the X5105's CAT control work with logging software during activations? That's been a deciding factor for me.

The ARRL Lab staff is available to help amateurs make these determinations and perform calculations to ensure compliance. ARRL also has an RF Safety page on its website and is working with the FCC to update OET Bulletin 65. Don't stress too much - most typical HF stations will be compliant with minimal effort.

so ive been licensed about 3 years now and mostly just done local stuff and some HF here and there but lately ive been getting more into chasing DX and honestly its kind of addictive. last weekend i worked a station in Heard Island during a pileup and just about lost my mind waiting to get the call confirmed, that was a rush i wasnt expecting. anyway i want to start actually pursuing DXCC properly and im a little confused about how the credit system works. like i understand the basic concept — 100 confirmed entities — but do i need to submit paper QSLs for everything or can i just use LoTW for all of it now? and what about entities that are really hard to get a card from, is there any kind of waiver or alternative process for those. also is it worth going after WAS and WAZ at the same time or should i just focus on one thing. i dont want to spread myself too thin but i also feel like a lot of the contacts overlap anyway so maybe it makes sense to just track everything from the start. running an IC-7300 into a trapped vertical in the backyard, nothing fancy, but ive been surprised how far i can get on 20 and 17.

been studying for months and got my license 2 weeks ago but kept chickening out on actually transmitting. last night around 9pm i finally worked up the nerve and answered a CQ on 40m. turns out it was a guy about 50 miles away and we had a nice 20 minute chat about antennas and stuff. hands were literally shaking when i keyed up lol but he was super patient with my newbie mistakes feels good to finally be on the air instead of just listening

Absolutely give it a shot! Typically values of 150 and more will ensure good HF band conditions, so at 175 you should have decent propagation. 10m can surprise you - I've worked Europe and South America with just 5 watts and a simple dipole when the flux was in that range. Fire it up around local noon and listen for FT8 or CW activity first to gauge band conditions.

honest answer — yes you'll notice it on HF, but maybe not as much as the specs suggest if your antenna situation has any nearby noise sources. the direct sampling mode on the RTL-SDR is pretty rough, like it works but you're dealing with a lot of spurious stuff and the dynamic range is just not there when a strong broadcast station is nearby i ran an RSP1A for a couple years before it got replaced and the difference on 40m at night with all the broadcast QRM was pretty significant, SDRuno helps too because it integrates properly with the RSP hardware. that said if you're mostly doing casual listening and WSPR decoding the RTL-SDR plus an upconverter like the ham-it-up might actually get you more bang for your buck and you keep the flexibility of using whatever software you want the RSP1B added the notch filters for MW and FM broadcast which is actually genuinely useful if you're anywhere near a strong FM station, my old RSP1A would get crushed by the 100kw FM station about 8 miles from me

Make sure your Winlink account shows recent activity - they want to see you're an active user before approving gateway status. Send some messages via telnet or existing gateways first. Also verify your email request included your name, callsign, and commitment to follow sysop guidelines exactly as stated on their website.

i made that exact jump maybe 18 months ago and dont regret it. the thing that got me was trying to decode some of the weaker utility stations on HF and the RTL just couldnt cut it even with a decent upconverter. that said if youre mostly doing aircraft ADS-B or APRS or stuff up in VHF the RTL-SDR is honestly fine and you wont see much improvement spending more money. one thing nobody mentions enough is that SDRuno takes some getting used to and the UI is kind of a mess compared to SDR#, but once you figure out the layout its actually pretty powerful. theres also a RSP2 and RSP2pro if you want dual antenna ports and some other stuff, but for most people the RSP1A is plenty. my 2 cents anyway