Kevin Anderson

yeah the rx coverage opening up was the main reason i did it on mine tbh, i use it as kind of a shack receiver when im not actually transmitting. did you do anything to the squelch sensitivity while you were in there? i feel like the VHF squelch on mine has always been a little finicky and im not sure if thats a known thing or just my unit.

congrats on the build and the first qrp contact, that feeling never really gets old. 579 on 5 watts into ohio is solid, you picked a good time to get on 40m.
to answer your question yeah band conditions and timing matter way more when youre running qrp, like it magnifies everything. i tend to stick to 40 and 20 mostly, 17m can be really good too when the band cooperates. early morning and late afternoon on 40 is usually where i find the most success for domestic stuff. and if you ever get into digital modes like ft8 the qrp thing almost becomes a non-issue, ive worked europe on 2.5 watts plenty of times.
for the antenna honestly for portable use a simple linked dipole is hard to beat, you can roll it up in a bag and its just more predictable than an EFHW in my experience. that said a lot of people swear by the end fed half wave with a 49:1 unun and they work fine too, just more fussy about the feedpoint height sometimes. try both if you can, wire is cheap.

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and i think i finally have something worth sharing, or at least worth getting feedback on before i go too much further down the rabbit hole
basically i got tired of manually adjusting my yagi when im trying to track satellites and i had a pi4 just sitting in a drawer doing nothing so i figured why not. wrote a python script that pulls az/el data from gpredict via the rotctld interface and feeds it out through a GPIO expander board to an H-bridge i salvaged off an old printer motor controller. the rotator itself is a homebrew thing i built like 5 years ago with a windshield wiper motor, nothing fancy
it actually works pretty well but im having this weird issue where occasionally the az will overshoot by like 10-15 degrees and then hunt back and forth a couple times before settling. my feedback pot is a 10-turn bourns unit so i dont think its resolution, more like my PID loop isnt tuned right or maybe the motor is just too fast for the control loop to keep up with. anyone done something similar and dealt with the hunting issue
also thinking about adding an arduino nano as a dedicated ADC front end for the pot since the pi's GPIO is all digital obviously, right now im using an MCP3208 over SPI which works but feels a little clunky in the code

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into the local 2m net last tuesday and it went okay i guess but i kept second guessing myself the whole time. like when the net control asked for any further traffic i wasnt sure if i was supposed to say something or just wait. ended up just saying my callsign again and saying nothing further which felt weird. also i wasnt sure how long to wait before transmitting after they call for check-ins — i jumped in at the same time as another guy twice and we doubled up. net control was really nice about it but still felt embarrassing.
is there like a general rule for how long to pause before you key up? and is it rude to just check in and say nothing further every week or is there an expectation that you actually bring traffic or a comment or something? i dont want to be that guy who just checks in to pad the count but i also dont always have something to say

yeah the ALC thing is huge and i dont think enough people understand what its actually doing. its not a signal strength meter, its telling you when the radio is pulling back your power to prevent distortion and if its sitting pegged the whole time youre basically running reduced power AND getting bad audio. worst of both worlds
one thing i'd add — get someone to give you an honest audio report, not just a signal report. most people will just say you sound fine because they dont want to be rude but if you ask specifically like hey does my audio sound clean or is there anything off, youll get more useful feedback. i had a buddy tell me i had a low hum i couldnt even hear on my end, turned out to be a ground loop from my logging computer. never would have found it otherwise
also the bandwidth setting on your radio if it has one. running 2.8 or 3khz for a ragchew is fine but some guys have their TX filter set too narrow and wonder why they sound thin and tinny. the radio's TX EQ if it has one is worth spending an afternoon with too, boosting a little presence around 2-3kHz can really help cut through on a noisy band

yeah that gap between training and a real activation is real and i dont think there's any way around it honestly. i've been involved with ARES for maybe 12 years now and i still tell new members that the SET exercises are great for muscle memory on procedures but they can't simulate the ambient chaos of an actual EOC with real stress and real served agency staff who have no idea what we do or why we're there.
the traffic surge thing you described is super common. what i do now is keep a simple log sheet right in front of me and just write down requests as they come in, numbered, so i dont lose track when things pile up. sounds obvious but in the moment it helps a lot. and yeah, the go bag with food and water and a change of clothes is not optional, that's a lesson everyone learns the hard way at least once. sounds like you handled it well though, the fact that you were self-aware about the radiogram formatting means you were paying attention to the right stuff.

47 on your first activation is really solid, dont sweat the pile up management stuff that just comes with reps. the main thing i tell people is dont be afraid to just take control of the frequency, if it gets messy you can say QRZ once and just wait a second before calling the next station. hunters are generally pretty patient especially with new activators, most of them have been doing it long enough to know.
one thing that helped me a lot was switching from logging on my phone to a small paper log when it gets really busy, then i upload to adif later. i know it sounds backwards but when youre in the middle of a pile having one less screen to worry about frees up a lot of mental bandwidth. hamrs is great but sometimes simple is better when youre learning.
also if 40 gets really heavy try jumping up to 17 or even 15 if conditions allow, sometimes a thinner pile on a higher band is way easier to work through and you still rack up the contacts pretty quick

As someone new to radio mods, this is intimidating! Should I even attempt a MARS mod on my first HF rig, or is this something to leave to professionals? I'm comfortable with basic electronics but have never opened up a modern transceiver before.

curious what your upstream bandwidth looks like at the rural site. ive found that a lot of these sync/drift issues people blame on software are actually just asymmetric bandwidth doing weird things to the streams — especially if youre on a rural connection that might be satellite or older DSL where upload is really constrained. the SDR stream is pretty greedy compared to just voice audio and if theyre competing for the same upload pipe things get messy fast.
also not sure if you tried this but theres a guy on the RemoteHams forums who posted a config a while back for running the IC-7300 USB in a way that uses the radios own panadapter data instead of a separate SDR and apparently it cleans things up considerably. cant remember his callsign but worth digging through the threads over there if you havent already.

curious what your upstream bandwidth looks like at the rural site. ive found that a lot of these sync/drift issues people blame on software are actually just asymmetric bandwidth doing weird things to the streams — especially if youre on a rural connection that might be satellite or older DSL where upload is really constrained. the SDR stream is pretty greedy compared to just voice audio and if theyre competing for the same upload pipe things get messy fast.
also not sure if you tried this but theres a guy on the RemoteHams forums who posted a config a while back for running the IC-7300 USB in a way that uses the radios own panadapter data instead of a separate SDR and apparently it cleans things up considerably. cant remember his callsign but worth digging through the threads over there if you havent already.

im also pretty new to WWFF and just wanted to say this is encouraging to hear. ive been nervous to try an activation because im not sure i can get enough contacts but 44 sounds doable even for me. wait you said 47 sorry. anyway good to know the car thing is ok because i was worried about that same situation, i dont always want to be sitting in the wet lol

welcome to the rabbit hole ha. honestly 100w and a vertical is totally fine to get started, you wont be winning any plaques but youll make contacts and thats really the point your first time out. i did my first CQ WW with an end fed and a barefoot 100w rig and still managed a few hundred QSOs over the weekend.
for logging definitely grab N1MM Logger Plus, its free and basically the standard for HF contesting. takes a little while to get set up but there are youtube videos that walk through it and the multiplier tracking is all automatic which makes life a lot easier. paper logging for something like CQ WW would drive you crazy, the dupe checking alone is worth it.
as for SOTA and contests they are kind of separate worlds, SOTA activations dont really feed into the major HF contests directly but there are SOTA specific events and some people chase summits during things like ARRL November sweepstakes for the fun of it. if you want to ease into things maybe try the ARRL DX contest first, the exchange is simpler than CQ WW and there are slightly fewer moving parts. just get on and call people, dont worry about rate or score your first time, just learn the flow of it