Lisa Park

so ive been running my FT-7900 in my F-150 for about 8 months now and the antenna situation has just been kind of a mess honestly. right now i have a mag mount on the roof which works fine i guess but im worried about the paint over time and also it slides around a little when i hit the highway, never actually fallen off but it makes me nervous. been looking at the lip mount options but my truck has one of those plastic bed covers and im not sure how that affects things. also thinking about drilling into the cab but my wife would kill me so thats probably not happening. just wondering what other mobile folks have done especially if you have a truck. im on 2m mostly but also hit the 70cm machines occasionally so ideally something that works for both.

so we finally got our county ARES group to do a full scale exercise last saturday. scenario was a major river flooding that took out the main EOC and we had to stand up a backup site about 3 miles away using only portable equipment. i've been pushing for this for about two years so i was pretty invested in how it went. short version: it did not go as smoothly as i expected and honestly that was kind of the point but some of the problems were ones we really should have caught earlier. the biggest issue was nobody had actually tested the go-kits in probably 18 months and two of the five HF rigs had dead internal batteries and one antenna tuner just flat out wouldnt initialize. we had plenty of radios but the paperwork — the ICS forms, the message templates — none of that was current and a couple of the newer members had never even seen a ICS-213 before in a real context. also and this is something i keep thinking about: we had great RF coverage but zero plan for how to hand off messages between the backup EOC and the hospital liaison. like we could talk to everyone but there was no actual information flow structure. net control was kind of just winging it. anyone else done drills like this and found stuff that surprised you? curious what other groups are doing to actually stress-test their procedures not just their equipment

this is really good to hear, im working on getting into my county's ARES group right now and stuff like this is helpful. i didnt know about the ICS courses being that important, i'll look those up. are those the fema ones online? i think i saw something about that on the arrl site but wasnt sure if they were required or just recommended

one thing that helped me a lot was getting a buddy a couple miles away to give me an honest signal report while i tweaked things in real time. like actually have him tell you what changed when you adjust mic gain or the EQ, not just asking on a net where people usually just say you sound fine because they dont want to make it awkward. found out i had way too much compression and it was causing that pumping sound on my audio that i couldnt hear on my end at all.

so ive been licensed for about three months now (general class) and people keep telling me i should get on the local nets and also some of the bigger HF ones but honestly i still dont really understand how it works. like do you just tune to the frequency and wait? or is there some specific thing you say when you check in? i tried to listen to the tuesday night 2m net our club runs but i got nervous and just listened the whole time without actually checking in also i saw something about a special event station on qrz for some historic lighthouse thing coming up and it said you could check in or make contact for a certificate. is that a completely different thing from a regular net or kind of the same idea? sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to figure out the on-air stuff because i feel like i mostly just sit here with a working radio and dont actually use it

not dumb questions at all, everyone starts somewhere. ok so the short version is just go for your Technician first, thats the entry level and it gets you on VHF and UHF which is where most local activity is anyway. the General and Extra open up HF privileges which is the longer distance stuff, but dont worry about that yet. for studying honestly just use HamStudy.org, its free and it drills you on the actual question pool that shows up on the real exam. the way it works is the test questions are all published in advance so youre literally studying the exact questions youll see. some people feel weird about that but thats just how it is. i used that site and passed first try with room to spare. the exam is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass so its not impossible if you put in a few evenings of practice. look up a local ham radio club too because a lot of them run license exam sessions and some even do free classes for new people.

we ran almost the exact same setup for a simulated emergency exercise last fall, ic-7300 and a 100ah battleborn with a small renogy panel. worked fine but we were lucky it was sunny most of the day. the generator thing — just bring it and don't feel bad running it. nobody at an exercise cares. what killed us wasn't power it was coax — one of our pl-259s developed an intermittent connection sometime mid-morning and we spent like two hours thinking it was an rfi problem from the genny before someone finally just swapped the feedline. so yeah. bring spare coax and connectors, seriously.

js8call is legit but yeah the activity is spotty depending on time of day and band. i check 14.078 on 20m in the evenings and there's usually a handful of stations, not the wall-to-wall decodes you get on ft8 but enough to have actual back and forth. the store-and-forward relay stuff is kinda neat too if youre into emcomm type stuff at all. honestly for casual ragchewing on digital i still end up on PSK31 sometimes just cause it feels more natural typing in real time vs the structured ft8 exchange. but if your goal is weak signal work and you want some actual content in the QSO then js8call is the closest thing to having both. give it a shot, software is free and it wont mess with your WSJT-X setup, they run on different freqs.

so i finally did it after putting it off for like two years. passed my technician exam at the library and got my callsign in the FCC database within a couple days which was faster than i expected honestly. borrowed my neighbor's HT to get started and yesterday morning i keyed up on the local 2m repeater and just said my callsign and someone came back to me almost immediately. i was so nervous i forgot half of what i wanted to say lol. the guy on the other end was super patient though and we talked for maybe 10 minutes about nothing in particular, he asked me how i was doing, what got me into ham radio, the usual i guess. anyway just wanted to post somewhere because i feel like nobody in my real life understands why this is a big deal to me

Absolutely normal! We've all been there. Making your first contact can be nerve-wracking, but following good etiquette will make you confident. Start simple - just ask for a radio check. Most hams love helping new operators.

yeah the timing thing is huge and most people never figure it out. i ran a small DXpedition to a semi-rare entity a few years back (nothing crazy, just a needed one for a lot of NA stations) and watching the pileup from the other side was honestly eye opening. you could hear the same calls just blasting away nonstop and they were actually hurting themselves. the op literally cannot pull your call out if you're transmitting over the tail of his previous qso. on cw the good ops will work by the book — split, listening up 2 or up 5, sometimes they go QSX and shift — and if you actually know cw well enough to copy what's happening you can time it almost exactly. ssb pileups are more chaotic because people dont wait, someone always starts calling early and then everyone else piles on. on ssb i actually found working a pileup from the dx end to be genuinely stressful in a way cw wasnt. one more thing — if you're running barefoot and the pileup is massive, sometimes just accepting you wont get it day one and waiting for the pileup to thin out after a few days is smarter than burning hours. the DXpeditions that matter usually run 10-14 days and by day 4 or 5 the rate usually drops a lot.

Koch method is the way to go, at least thats what worked for me and a lot of people i know. the basic idea is you start with just two characters at full speed — like 20wpm — and you just listen until you can copy them reliably, then you add a third, then a fourth and so on. the whole point is your brain learns the sound of each letter as a whole thing rather than counting dits and dahs which will absolutely wreck you later when you try to go faster. for software i used lcwo.net which is free and browser based, does Koch straight out of the box. just set the character speed to like 20wpm and the overall speed lower at first (farnsworth spacing they call it) so you have time to think between characters. i spent probably 20 minutes a day for a few months and got to where i could actually pull calls out of a pileup. it takes longer than people think but dont get discouraged when E and T and S all start sounding the same at first, that goes away also just listening to actual qso's on the air even when you cant copy much yet helps more than people give it credit for

yeah the band edge thing tripped me up too when i upgraded. basically the issue is that 7.300 is where the ITU allocation ends and if your carrier is at 7.300 your upper sideband is actually going past it which puts part of your signal outside the band. so the FCC considers your suppressed carrier frequency but still, most rigs when you tune to 7.300 and transmit USB you are already partly out of bounds. i just keep a mental note to not go above like 7.298 to be safe. same thing applies on the low end of any band, its not just 40m

Welcome to WWFF, it's a great program and honestly has a really nice international community around it. To answer your questions - yes you can absolutely activate for both POTA and WWFF at the same time as long as the location qualifies for both, lots of people do this and you just upload the same log to each program separately. The WWFF threshold is 44 QSOs same as POTA so you're probably already used to chasing that number. For logging, WWFF uses their own database at wwff.cc and you'll want to register there if you havent already. You can upload an ADIF file after the activation. The site is a bit clunky I wont lie but once you figure it out it's straightforward. Make sure your log has the reference number in there - it should be in the WWFF_REF field or you can add it manually depending on what logging software you use. I use HAMRS in the field and it handles POTA natively but I usually just edit the ADIF a bit before uploading to WWFF. Good luck with the activation, the KX2 is perfect for this kind of thing

so ive been sitting on this idea for a while and finally started messing around with it last weekend. basically i have a 4 port coax switch (the manual kind, nothing fancy) and im trying to figure out if i can drive the relays off an arduino uno so i can switch antennas from the shack PC instead of walking over to the shelf every time. i've got some basic arduino experience from a few years ago, made a keyer once that kind of worked, and i know enough to not blow up a pin with too much current. my plan is to use a relay board, the 4 channel ones you can get off amazon for like $8, and just trigger each relay with a digital output pin through a simple transistor stage or maybe just direct if the relay board has the optocouplers built in. the part im not sure about is the software side. i was thinking a raspberry pi zero w might actually be better for this because then i could just hit it over wifi from any computer in the house or even my phone and not have to mess with USB serial every time. has anyone gone down this road? curious if theres a simpler approach im missing or if this is basically the right way to do it.

congrats on the first one, that feeling after you get your 4 and qualify it is pretty addictive honestly. to answer your question about spotting — theres no hard rule about waiting but a lot of activators will spot themselves and then give it maybe 60 seconds or so before starting to call, just to let chasers get set up. doesnt have to be exact, just a little courtesy thing. some guys spot and go immediately and its fine, chasers are usually pretty quick. for the summit reference the best thing to do is just pull up the SOTA mapping page and zoom in on the actual peak before you leave home. if you zoom in enough it'll show the reference right on the dot for that summit and you can cross check it against the database. also worth saving the reference in your phone before you head out, i keep a little note with the ref, the activation zone elevation, and nearest parking. saves a lot of second guessing once youre up there and tired.

so ive been running a basic mag mount dual band whip on the truck for about two years now and it works fine for hitting the local repeaters but ive been thinking about upgrading to something a bit more serious. was looking at the Comet CA-2x4SR or maybe the Tram 1185 with a proper NMO through-hole mount on the roof. mainly use it for linking into the local IRLP node and occasionally some simplex chat when im out on long drives. my question is whether the gain difference between a 3dB whip and say a 6dBi collinear actually makes a noticeable real-world difference on 2 meters or is it mostly just marginal. i know on paper it looks good but the takeoff angle thing on high gain collinears always makes me second guess it. especially around here where the terrain isnt exactly flat. anyone actually done this swap and noticed a meaningful difference or am i overthinking it

your setup is workable, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. single yagi EME on 2m with Q65 is totally a thing now, ive worked guys running less than you with small antennas since Q65 became popular. the mode is just incredibly sensitive compared to JT65, like 3-4 dB more or something in that range depending on the submode, and for EME that matters a lot. that said you will have more luck pointing at stations with big arrays at first just because they can hear you even if you struggle to decode them initially. VK3UM calc is still totally fine, a lot of guys also use PY2BS's EME system or just pull data straight into WSJT-X which handles a lot of the timing stuff for you automatically now. scheduling is mostly done through the EME2 logger on ping jockey yeah, and also just on the 2m EME reflector email list which sounds old fashioned but people actually use it constantly. moon noise measurements are a good sanity check for your whole rx chain too before you start trying to make contacts, worth doing.

so ive been chasing 3Y0 and a few other rare ones for a while now and last weekend there was a pretty solid FT5 operation that had an absolutely insane pileup going, like 3-4 khz wide on 17m, took me almost 2 hours before i finally got through. wanted to share what actually worked for me since i see a lot of bad advice floating around about this stuff. first thing that made the biggest difference was actually listening way more than transmitting. sounds obvious but seriously most guys in a pileup are just hammering their callsign over and over and not paying attention to where the DX is actually listening. i spent probably 20 minutes just watching the split before i even keyed up, figured out he was working stations ending in numbers 1 through 4 mostly, and he was consistently pulling people from about 3 up. so i parked myself at 3.3 up and just waited for a lull. the other thing that helped was timing. a lot of ops will have a rhythm to how they come back, like theres a pause after they get a complete exchange and before they call QRZ again, and if you can nail that window with a single clean callsign transmission youre way more likely to get picked out of the noise. sending your call twice or three times just muddies things up and the DX op is trying to pull partial calls anyway. also running about 500w into my 4el yagi probably didnt hurt. but i genuinely think the operating technique mattered more than the power, ive seen guys with kilowatts just clobber each other and never get through. anyone else have stuff that works consistently for them?