Tower Climber

so i finally did it after putting it off for like two years lol. passed the technician exam yesterday at the library session and got my callsign this morning (FCC was way faster than i expected, like 12 hours?). grabbed my baofeng that ive had sitting in a drawer and programmed in the local repeater and just... keyed up and said my callsign and someone actually came back to me. guy named Bob was on there doing his morning drive and we chatted for maybe 10 minutes about nothing really, weather and how long ive been studying. felt weirdly exciting for just talking on a radio. anyway just wanted to share somewhere, nobody in my family gets why im excited about this

so ive been chasing DX for maybe 6 months now and just started using cluster spotting tools more seriously. mostly using DXwatch in the browser and also checking QRZ's logbook spotting thing when i remember to open it. my question is are these pulling from the same underlying cluster network or are they totally separate feeds because sometimes i see a spot on one and not the other for the same station and its confusing me also is there a phone app that people actually like for this stuff, ive tried a couple that seemed outdated or kept crashing. running android if that matters. just want something i can glance at when im not at the shack

yeah QRP does that to people haha. i remember my first 5w contact and thinking wait that actually worked? now i barely touch the 100w rig except for contests. the 4state kits are nice i have one of their doublet kits for portable but havent done one of their radio kits yet. heard good things though. anyway congrats on the contact, 559 on 500mw to missouri is nothing to sneeze at

yeah did both on mine about 3 years ago. the fan swap is honestly more impactful than the tx mod in terms of day to day usability. i used a noctua 40mm, had to do a tiny bit of trimming on the mounting tab but nothing serious. temps dropped noticeably during long digital sessions, i run wspr and js8call a lot so the duty cycle was really cooking the stock fan. the tx mod on mine has been fine, run it into a separate lowpass for anything outside the ham bands and havent had any issues. just dont be dumb about it and run it barefoot into a random wire or something and you should be ok.

New to HF and this is eye-opening. Rolling off bass and boosting higher tones gives perceived SSB power increase with little intelligibility loss. Is this why some operators sound so much stronger even at similar power levels? Should I be looking at EQ before compression?

Antenna first, always antenna first with QRP. Honestly your 4 watts is fine, the QCX mini is a solid little rig and QRP Labs stuff generally works well out of the box. An attic dipole is going to lose you a significant chunk of signal before it even gets out of the house — insulation, roofing materials, whatever else is up there, it all adds up. If you can get even a simple wire outside and up reasonably high you'll notice a huge difference. Doesn't have to be anything fancy. A lot of QRP operators swear by end-fed halfwaves because theyre easy to deploy and work decent, and with a good tuner you can hit multiple bands. 40m at night is great for QRP, you can get into Europe from the eastern US pretty regularly when conditions cooperate. During the day 20m is probably your best bet for making longer hauls. Just get that antenna outside if you can, seriously, you'll be amazed.

ok so i've been chasing DX for about a year now and i finally decided to actually look into applying for DXCC but honestly the whole thing is more confusing than i expected. like i have a bunch of QSLs from various entities and some are confirmed on LoTW and some are physical cards and i dont really understand how the mixing works when you go to apply. also — and this might be a dumb question — but do WAZ and WAS credits carry over to anything or are they totally separate programs you have to chase independently? i've worked all 50 states at this point and someone at the club mentioned i might already qualify for WAS but i havent done anything about it. is it worth doing WAS before DXCC or does the order matter at all? basically im just trying to figure out the most efficient way to go about this without submitting stuff wrong and having to redo it. any advice from people who've actually done the applications would be great

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech class) and i finally got a baofeng set up to hit the local 2m repeater. i can hear people talking on it just fine but when i key up nobody seems to hear me or respond. did some reading and i think it might be a CTCSS thing? the repeater listing on repeaterbook shows a tone of 100.0 but i honestly dont fully understand what that means or where exactly i program it in. like is it a transmit tone or receive tone or both? i set something in the radio but im not sure i did it right. also a separate question kind of — when people are already mid-conversation on a repeater is it rude to just jump in? i waited for a gap and said my callsign but nobody acknowledged me and i felt a little weird about it. not sure if thats a me problem or just how it works sometimes. anyway any help appreciated, still figuring all this out

oh man i went through this exact same thing when i got my general last year. i ended up just sticking with the QRZ logbook and the spotting thing built into it because i didnt want to learn a whole new program. works well enough for me but i know some guys swear by logging software with cluster built in like Log4OM or DXKeeper which i think can connect to a telnet cluster directly. havent tried it myself but it sounds like it would be cleaner than juggling tabs

Im pretty new to this whole logging software rabbit hole so take this with a grain of salt but i ran into a similar thing when i was setting up WSJT-X and Log4OM together. there's a setting in Log4OM under the UDP server config where you can basically tell it to accept or reject incoming log entries and i think if N1MM is also broadcasting on the same port things can definitely collide. i dont do contesting yet so i cant speak to the N1MM side but the WSJT-X to Log4OM pipe has been working fine for me once i got the port numbers sorted out. the default is 2237 i think but i had to change mine because something else on my PC was using it.

went through it last spring after being a general for like six years, kept putting it off for the same reasons you're describing. honestly the exam wasnt as bad as i expected but you do have to actually study, the question pool is big and some of the math on things like reactance and impedance matching will get you if you just try to brute force memorize without understanding whats going on. i used the hamstudy site and just drilled questions every night for about 6 weeks. as for whether the theory is useful — kind of? understanding transmission lines better has genuinely helped me troubleshoot antenna stuff and i feel like i actually get whats happening when i read about antenna tuner operation now instead of just nodding along. the extra segments on 40 and 75 meters do get you away from some of the congestion if you operate CW or certain digital modes. whether thats worth it depends on what you do i guess. for me it was more about wanting to actually understand the hobby better than just chasing the license for its own sake.

oh man special event stations are so fun once you get into them, i got completely obsessed for a while and was chasing every one i could find. there was one for a lighthouse event last summer and the pile-ups were crazy, took me like 45 minutes to get through on 17m. totally worth it though. for nets i mostly do CW nets now because im trying to get my speed up, there are some slow-speed ones that are super welcoming if you're still building confidence with code. the FISTS club has some good ones. but yeah the sunday evening thing is very real, theres something nice about having a regular schedule to look forward to

so ive been messing around with this idea for a while now and finally started actually building it out. basically i want to use an arduino uno to handle automatic CW keying based on some sensor input — im setting up a little weather station and thought it would be cool if it could just beacon out the temp and pressure every few minutes on its own without me having to babysit it. the keying part isnt too bad, i just have a transistor switching the key line on my IC-7300 and the arduino pulls the base low to key it. works fine on the bench. the issue im running into is timing — the dit/dah ratio gets a little weird at higher WPM and i think its because im using delay() which i know is bad practice but im still kind of learning this stuff. been looking at using millis() instead but havent fully wrapped my head around it yet. the other thing i want to do eventually is swap in a raspberry pi zero so i can pull weather data off an API and format it automatically but that feels like overkill for now. anyone done something similar or have thoughts on the timing issue? does the iambic stuff get complicated to implement from scratch

the SWR rising toward the high end of 40 is pretty normal for a straight dipole, especially if its cut for the low end or CW portion. nothing wrong with your feedpoint probably. the 468 formula is a starting point and actual resonance depends on height above ground, what its near, wire type, all that. i usually cut long and trim, gives you room to work with. self-amalgamating tape is fine for weatherproofing as long as you stretched it properly and got good overlap. where it tends to fail is if moisture got in before you taped it or if the connector itself wasnt sealed around the shell. coax seal putty over top of the tape is cheap insurance if you're worried about it. fan dipoles work great, done a few of them. the elements do interact a bit so you usually end up trimming each leg slightly shorter than you'd expect from the formula alone. just takes a bit of fiddling but nothing too painful. worth doing if you want 20m without dealing with the tuner.

Consider the FT-991A with SatPC32 if budget is tight. The IC-9700 is superior but the 991A can do full duplex satellite work quite well. Just make sure your tracking software supports the rig's CAT commands for linear transponders.

yeah what he said about the boundaries, its basically trust based. i think the rules just say you need to be within the boundary of the designated park unit, so as long as you were actually inside the park you're fine. also just a tip for your two-fer idea — the POTA website has a map where you can look up park locations and a lot of times you can find parks that share a border or are basically adjacent. some areas have state forests right next to state parks and stuff like that. makes for an easy same-day double activation without a ton of driving.

Just installed it yesterday and the performance improvements are noticeable, especially with complex flowgraphs. The new type-safe APIs make development much cleaner too. Still working through some of the migration from GR 3.x but the documentation is solid.

so ive been messing with my audio setup for a few months now trying to get a cleaner signal on SSB and honestly theres so much contradictory advice out there i dont even know where to start. some guys say compress the hell out of it, some say barely touch the mic gain, some say EQ is everything. my rig is a kenwood and the stock mic that came with it sounds pretty mediocre on a good day. what ive noticed is that most of the advice online assumes youre running some kind of fancy external audio chain and i just want to get decent audio without spending another few hundred bucks. ive tried bumping the mic gain up and the ALC seems to be bouncing all over the place which i know isnt great. backing it off helps but then people say im too quiet. i also tried talking closer to the mic which helped a little but its kind of awkward. anyone actually dialed this in and can tell me what settings actually made a real difference? like real world, not the manual version of the answer

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (tech class) and I've just been using my buddy's baofeng to get started but i think its time to get my own radio. problem is every time i start looking i get completely lost. theres so many options and everyone online seems to have a strong opinion one way or another. mainly i want something for local repeaters and maybe taking hiking with me. dont really need anything crazy. budget is probably somewhere around $50-150 but i could stretch it a bit if something is really worth it. ive heard the yaesu FT-60 comes up a lot and also the wouxun stuff? not sure if the extra money is worth it over just grabbing another baofeng honestly. what would you guys do

so ive been noticing for the past few weeks that 10m and 12m have been doing some really strange things. like some days ill be calling CQ and getting absolutely nothing, then the next afternoon out of nowhere ill work 15 or 20 stations in europe and south america back to back before the band just... dies again. its like someone flipped a switch. checked the solar flux index and its been bouncing around a lot, somewhere in the 150s to 180s range depending on the day, but the K index has also been spiking up randomly which i think is killing things when it goes above 3 or 4. im still pretty new to understanding all this honestly. been licensed about 18 months now and i feel like i sort of get the basics of how solar activity affects HF but the day to day variation still throws me off. is there a good resource or tool people actually use to predict when a band is going to open up? ive tried a couple different sites but i cant always tell which numbers to pay attention to. appreciate any help

We recommend that members complete free online FEMA courses IS-100 and IS-700. SKYWARN training is also encouraged. But honestly, check with your local group first - some are more relaxed about timing. The important thing is you're interested in helping! Don't let the paperwork scare you off.

so ive been running FT8 for about a year now and i love it for the DX chase but honestly it gets kind of hollow after a while. you exchange signal reports and grid squares and thats... it. i started poking around JS8Call because someone at the club mentioned it lets you actually type back and forth in something resembling a real QSO and i set it up last weekend but the waterfall looks totally dead on 40m at the times im operating (usually late afternoon, maybe 5-7pm local) is JS8Call just not very populated compared to FT8 or am i doing something wrong with the frequency? i was sitting on 7.078 which i thought was the JS8 calling freq but maybe thats wrong. also my decode rate seems lower than FT8 even accounting for the slower mode — not sure if thats a soundcard issue or just how it is. running an IC-7300 into a dipole, nothing fancy i still fire up WSJT-X for FT8 when i want to work a new grid but would really like to find something with a bit more... substance i guess. even PSK31 back in the day felt more like a real contact than modern FT8 grinding

nice work, im still working up the nerve to do my first activation lol. been hunting from home for a few months and it looks so stressful trying to manage a pile up by yourself. did you pre-announce it on the POTA activations page before you went out or did you just show up and spot yourself on the day?

the listening thing is huge and most people just dont do it. ive watched guys on the cluster see a spot pop up and immediately start calling without even tuning to the frequency first. like they havent even heard the DX station yet. the VFO split trick where you really map out the range he's working takes patience but it pays off. the partial call thing is debated a lot but i do think theres something to it in certain conditions, especially on 15 and 10 when the pileup is just a wall of RF. the DX op catches a fragment and if your suffix is distinctive enough it can lock on. that said ive heard DX ops on expeditions say they actually prefer full calls because partials just create confusion and they end up asking for fills anyway, so maybe it depends on the operator on the other end. QRP in a pileup is rough, not gonna sugarcoat it. i run QRP portable sometimes and the only way it works is if you have a really good antenna, like a yagi or at minimum a dipole cut for that band and up high. 5 watts into a compromised antenna in a pileup is just not gonna happen most of the time. 100w is honestly workable if your timing is good and the antenna isnt terrible.

ok so i decided i want to get my technician license and i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website but honestly its just kind of overwhelming. theres like 400+ questions in there and i dont really know if i should just memorize all of them or actually try to understand the material. a friend told me to just use ham study or some app and grind through it but another guy at my local club said thats a bad idea and youll forget everything right after the exam. i dunno who to listen to. also some of the math questions about ohms law and stuff, do those actually show up a lot on the real test or can i kind of skip those for now