DX Dude

Those "narrow slices" make a huge difference during contests and DX pileups! The Extra segments on 40 and 80 meters especially are where the serious DXers hang out. Less crowded and better propagation characteristics too.

yeah what he said about the power level, i made the same mistake when i started. also -- are you accounting for the inverting transponder? AO-73 is inverting so if you tune UP on the uplink your signal goes DOWN on the downlink. messed me up for like a week before someone told me. means your radio needs to be in LSB on one end and USB on the other or it sounds backwards. some people just flip which mode they're in on the uplink to deal with it.

so ive been on HF for about two years now and i keep getting reports that my audio is either too bassy, kind of muffled, or occasionally someone says i sound like im talking through a tin can. im running an IC-7300 with the stock mic and i havent really touched the EQ settings much beyond bumping the TX bandwidth up a little. i know the 7300 has all those built in tweaks but honestly the menu system kind of intimidates me and i dont want to mess things up worse than they already are. somebody on 40m last week actually asked me if i had a cold because apparently i sounded congested. which, fair enough i guess, but i wasnt sick so clearly somethings off. ive read a bunch of conflicting stuff online about mic gain vs compression and whether you should run any TX EQ at all for SSB. some guys swear by flat response, other guys are cranking midrange boosts. i genuinely have no idea what the right answer is here and i feel like im just guessing at this point. is there like a sensible starting point for this stuff or does it really just come down to tweaking until somebody tells you it sounds good

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair bit of HF DX but someone at the club meeting last month got me really interested in EME and now i cant stop reading about it. the thing is the more i read the more overwhelmed i get because it seems like you either need this massive yagi array or youre just not gonna make any contacts at all. my current setup is a 100w rig and i have a decent sized yard so antenna wise i have some flexibility. i was looking at 2m EME as a starting point since thats where most of the activity seems to be but im not sure if a single long yagi even has a shot at working anyone or if i need to go full dish situation. also whats the deal with JT65 vs the older CW EME contacts, is JT65 pretty much the only realistic mode for smaller stations now? and if anyone has actually made EME contacts i would love to hear what the bare minimum setup looked like on your end.

so I've been a ham for about three years now and finally felt confident enough to volunteer for our county ARES group's simulated emergency test back in October. I was really looking forward to it because I'd been to the training meetings and figured I had a decent handle on things. spoiler: I did not have as good a handle as I thought lol the biggest thing that caught me off guard was just how chaotic the net control situation got when we had multiple stations trying to check in at once. I know the theory, wait for a break, give your callsign, whatever — but in practice when you're actually stressed and people are stepping on each other it's a different animal. I also didn't realize how much battery I was going to burn through. brought one 7ah SLAB thinking that was plenty for a few hours of HT use and was down to like 30% by hour four. nobody told me to bring a backup, or maybe they did and I didn't take it seriously. also the ICS paperwork thing — we had to fill out ICS 213 forms and pass them as formal traffic and honestly I had practiced this exactly zero times beforehand. the EC was patient with me but I could tell I slowed things down. anyway I'm not trying to complain, overall it was a really valuable experience and I signed up for the next one already. just curious if other people had similar "oh no" moments their first time out, or things you wish someone had warned you about going in

yeah same here, though i wonder if some of it is seasonal. band conditions in general have felt kinda off to me lately. i did catch a decent pileup on 40 last thursday around 0100z so its not totally dead but you might just be hitting a lull. try a bit later maybe, i find things pick up after most of the east coast guys go to bed and the west coasters come on.

honestly the biggest thing for me was just accepting that timing is everything and theres no shame in not getting through on the first day. i chased VP6R for like four days before i finally worked them and by the end i had their split patterns basically memorized. sometimes the best move is just waiting until the pile dies down a bit — like trying at 0200 local when half the competing stations have gone to bed. also if you have any antenna at all that can be aimed, even a modest beam, point it and leave it. i see guys on the cluster complaining they can hear the DX fine but can't break through and then mention they're on a dipole. the math just isn't there sometimes and no amount of technique fixes a 6dB disadvantage in a pile of 500 stations

had something almost identical on a friends 7300 last year. turned out to be one of the LPF relay contacts on the 40m filter had corroded enough to add resistance and drop the output. you can actually check this without too much digging if you have a way to scope the signal before and after the filter section. the symptom was almost exactly what you're describing, fine everywhere else, just 40 crapped out. icom used some relays in that era that dont love humidity apparently. before you go too deep into the PA board id definitely check those relay contacts first, its a much easier fix and cheaper too. deoxIT and careful burnishing got the one we fixed back to full output. been running fine since as far as i know.

the collins filter swap is legit if you do a lot of SSB, it tightens up the selectivity noticeably especially in crowded band conditions. did it on mine maybe two years ago and it wasnt that hard, just tedious. the difference on 80m phone in the evening when everyones piled in is real, not just placebo. the receive sensitivity thing though i dunno. the 857 front end is what it is and short of a preamp inline i dont think youre getting dramatically better numbers out of it through internal mods. an external preamp like the SP-200 or even one of the cheaper chinese ones can help on 40 specifically but then you gotta be careful not to blow the front end with strong signals. its a tradeoff. honestly for portable use id just run it stock and accept the limitations before i started poking around inside on stuff that might not move the needle much

The theoretical improvement from 16 to 32 quarter-wave radials is about 1 dB, maybe less in real soil conditions. I went from 16 to 24 on my 40m vertical and honestly couldn't measure a significant difference on-air. Save your wire and focus on height instead.

so ive been chasing 3Y/P for what feels like forever and last week during the VK0EK operation i finally figured out what i was doing wrong in pileups. thought id share since i see a lot of guys asking about this and most of the advice out there is either too vague or sounds like it came from a manual written in 1987. the big thing for me was actually listening before transmitting. like really listening. not just keying up the second i hear the DX station finish a QSO. i spent about 20 minutes just watching where the DX was listening — they were running split obviously, listening up maybe 3 to 7, and i noticed they kept coming back to stations a little higher in the spread, not the ones piling on right at the bottom. once i figured that out i moved up and on maybe the 4th or 5th call i got through. felt like cracking a code honestly. also turned off the preamp. had it running because i thought i needed every bit of signal i could get to hear the DX better but the noise floor just made it harder to pick out where the DX was listening. ran barefoot on 100w into a 3 element yagi at 40 feet and that was enough. anyone else have techniques that actually made a difference for them? im curious whether the timing stuff matters as much as everyone says or if its more about finding the right frequency in the spread

so ive been running APRS for about 8 months now and i think i finally have a decent setup but something has been nagging at me for a while. im using a Kenwood TM-D710G with the built in TNC and i have it set to WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i know is pretty standard but im in a fairly rural area about 30 miles from the nearest city and i keep seeing my packets show up on aprs.fi with like 3 or 4 hops sometimes and other times barely anything gets through at all. my question is mostly about the path — should i be using something different out here or is WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 still the right call. ive read some stuff that says WIDE2-2 is better for rural areas because you get more hops but then other stuff says that just creates congestion. i honestly cant tell if my packets are even hitting a fill-in digi or if theyre going straight to a wide digi. is there a way to figure that out just from what aprs.fi shows you also secondary question — the messaging function on the 710 is kind of clunky but does anyone actually use it for real communication or is it mostly just a novelty at this point

depends what band your thinking about too. 144 is probably the most active but needs the biggest antennas. 432 might be easier to get started on since the antennas are smaller but you need more power. i know a few guys doing 1296 eme with just one big dish and having decent luck honestly though if your budget is tight maybe consider starting with aircraft scatter or meteor scatter first. similar propagation concepts but way less demanding on the wallet

so i passed my technician exam on the 14th and been lurking on the local 146.520 simplex frequency just listening for a few days before i worked up the nerve to actually key up. finally did it yesterday, just said my callsign and that i was a new ham looking for a contact. guy came back almost immediately, we talked for maybe 10 minutes about nothing in particular, his antenna setup i think, and honestly i was so nervous i dont even remember half of what he said but it was great. hands were literally shaking a little when i was transmitting which is ridiculous because its just talking on a radio but whatever. anyway just wanted to share because i feel like ive been reading this forum for months leading up to my test and it feels good to finally have something to post about

Some radios, especially if they're not warmed up, might drift slightly in frequency as you operate. Plus your voice sidebands extend beyond your carrier frequency, so operating exactly on the edge could put part of your signal out-of-band.

yeah what he said basically. i'll just add that i was in the same boat when i started and i kind of wish someone had told me to just pick LoTW first and not try to figure everything out at once. i spent like three evenings confused about certificate files and TQSL before i got it working lol. eQSL i set up in like ten minutes by comparison. also some DX stations will only confirm one way so having both does actually come in handy eventually. but for 2m contacts honestly most people just use LoTW or sometimes nothing at all, the card culture is more of a thing with HF and DX chasing

I've built both versions. The SRA-1 mixer has slightly better IMD performance but requires careful transformer winding. For first build, go with the 4053 version - much easier to troubleshoot and still excellent results for QRP work.

yeah the non-standard thing drives me a little crazy not gonna lie, ive heard people use all kinds of random words and half the time its fine but then you get someone who says something like "norway" for N and "nicaragua" for N and you're just like... pick one. the whole reason NATO phonetics exist is so everyone's using the same system and theres no ambiguity. on HF especially when youre dealing with a station thats barely above the noise floor, hearing "november" vs some random word can genuinely make a difference that said dont stress too much about it on local VHF stuff, nobody really cares that much there

yeah it's almost entirely a skill thing honestly, the first few passes are basically just chaos and then it starts to click. the inversed passband trips everyone up at first — if you tune your uplink up, your downlink moves down, so you have to get that muscle memory going before it becomes natural. the hand-tracking yagi thing is rough but totally doable for low passes, people have worked satellites with a handheld and a rubber duck so dont let that discourage you. the bigger issue for me when i was starting out was not pre-setting my downlink before the pass even started. like you want to find your own signal before the satellite crests the horizon, even if its just on a beacon or noise floor, so you're not scrambling at AOS. for the doppler — gpredict with hamlib should be handling it but you have to make sure the rig control is actually connected and responding. i had a whole situation where i thought it was working but the com port wasn't configured right and my radio was just sitting there static while gpredict thought it was tuning. check your rig control window in gpredict and see if the frequency display there is actually changing during a pass, that'll tell you if the link is live. AO-73 is a good choice, passband isn't huge but activity is decent. give it like 5 or 6 passes before you judge whether it's working, the learning curve is steep but short

same boat as you about a year ago, now im at 134 entities confirmed on LoTW and still going. the paper QSL thing works fine just takes longer and costs a bit when you submit. one thing i wish someone told me earlier — start uploading to LoTW right now if you haven't already, even your old logs. some of those stations you worked casually might already be on there and you'd get matches you didn't expect. i found like 8 confirmations just from ragchew contacts i never thought would count for anything

not weird at all man, thats basically how i got into the hobby in the first place. had a shortwave receiver before i ever got licensed and would just do exactly that. 40m evenings are great for it, you get a real mix of people. sometimes ill catch a net i didnt know existed and just follow along for a while before i even look up what it is the garden conversation thing is so real lol. half the time the most interesting stuff isnt the dx or the contest activity its just two old timers talking about nothing for an hour. theres a couple guys i hear regularly on 7.250 or so and ive never called in but i feel like i know them at this point

Just got my Technician license last month and I've been listening on the local repeater (KC4ABC). Everyone sounds so professional and knows what they're doing. I know my callsign, I've practiced the phonetic alphabet, but every time I go to press the PTT button I just freeze up! Has anyone else experienced this? My radio is programmed correctly and I can hear the repeater just fine. I guess I'm worried about saying something wrong or sounding like a total newbie.

so ive been doing POTA for about a year now and someone at the club meeting last week mentioned WWFF and honestly i had no idea it was even a thing. did some reading on the wwff.us site and it seems pretty similar but the reference system is different and there seem to be way more categories for the parks and nature areas which is kind of cool actually. theres a state forest about 20 minutes from me that apparently has a WWFF reference (KFF something, i think) and i want to try an activation there next month when the weather gets a bit better. my question is basically — is there anything specific to WWFF that i should know going in that wouldnt apply to POTA? like logging is the same right, just adif upload? and do i still need 10 contacts minimum or is that a POTA thing only also not sure if the callsign format changes or if i just operate normally. probably overthinking this

ok so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people mention LoTW and eQSL and also just regular paper cards and i honestly dont fully understand how all of this works together or if you even need all three. like do most people do all of them or just pick one? i set up a LoTW account a few weeks ago and i think i uploaded my logs but i have no idea if i did it right because nothing shows up as confirmed yet. i went through the whole TQSL certificate thing which was kind of a pain but i got through it. eQSL i havent even touched yet. and then paper cards — i joined the ARRL so i can use their buro i think? but i havnt actually sent any cards out yet. its a bit overwhelming honestly, like i just wanna know what the actual workflow is that most hams use day to day. do you upload after every qso or just batch it once in a while? any help appreciated, still figuring all this out

congrats on the first qso. once you get hf privileges you'll see what nerves really feel like trying to break a pileup haha. enjoy the local repeaters for now, good way to learn the ropes before things get complicated