Daniel Jackson

so i've been parked on 7.200 for like the past hour just listening and there's barely anything going on tonight. usually this time of year 40m is pretty lively but its just dead quiet except for some distant AM station bleeding in from somewhere. not complaining really, sometimes its nice to just have the radio on in the background while im doing other stuff in the shack. got my old kenwood warming up and a cup of coffee and honestly thats not a bad evening. just curious if anyone else noticed conditions being weird lately or if its just my part of the country

welcome to the dark side haha. yeah once it clicks it really clicks. CQ WW is kind of the superbowl of HF contesting so starting there and doing well barefoot is honestly impressive, most people get humbled their first time Field Day is weird because technically its not scored the same way as a regular contest, its more like a emergency preparedness exercise that turned into a giant party. but its absolutely worth doing with a club especially your first time, the setup chaos and middle of the night operating and bad food is all part of it. some clubs are super serious about the score and some just use it as an excuse to camp and get on the air which is fine too for SOTA thats really its own world, different mindset entirely. youre activating summits to get the contacts rather than just racking up multipliers. some people do both, like theyll activate a summit during a contest weekend to get points going in two directions at once which is clever. check out the WA7BNM contest calendar, its basically the bible for this stuff, covers everything from local sprints to the big international events

so ive been licensed for about 3 years now mostly just did VHF/UHF stuff with a couple handhelds and a cheap chinese dual band mobile but i finally want to get into HF properly. been saving up and im basically down to either the IC-7300 or the FT-991A and i cannot make up my mind. the 991A is appealing because it does VHF and UHF too so theoretically i could use it for everything in one box, but i keep reading that the HF performance on the 7300 is just better overall especially the waterfall which everyone seems to love. my shack is basically just a desk in the corner of my bedroom so space isnt a huge issue but id rather not have five radios eventually either. i dont really care about contesting or anything like that, mostly interested in just making contacts, maybe some digital modes down the road like FT8. has anyone actually run both of these side by side or switched from one to the other? genuinely curious if the 991A HF receive is as good as the 7300 or if thats just a meme at this point

yeah i saw something on the reflector about it, i think its the third weekend of the month but dont quote me on that. our club is supposed to have a table there too, been meaning to unload some stuff ive had sitting in the shack for like two years. if you're going maybe we can carpool, im over off route 40

After reading an interesting article about equipment failures during deployments, I'm rethinking my go-kit philosophy. One flaky connector or blown fuse can shut down your entire station, and in a real disaster, this has serious consequences. Very few go bags include extra batteries, cables, connectors, and fuses based on what I've observed. I'm thinking of adding a 'repair kit' with common failure items. Has anyone implemented something similar? The balance between preparedness and carrying too much gear is tricky. "Two is one and one is none" - but there's also such a thing as being over-prepared.