Kevin Brown

yeah 40 has been weird for me too, though honestly i wonder if a lot of guys just moved to FT8 and we dont notice them anymore because they're not doing phone. i still catch some good pileups late at night around 7.2 or so but you gotta be patient. try around 9 or 10pm local, seems better then at least here in the midwest

yeah the path loss thing is kind of a gut punch the first time you really look at it. i went through the same thing maybe 3 years back. what i ended up doing was building a 2x9el cross yagi setup first just to dip my toes in and i did actually get a handful of contacts that way, all JT65B, all with stations running serious iron on the other end but still it counts. your preamp placement sounds right, feedpoint mounting is the way to go, every foot of coax before the LNA is just adding noise you cant get back. one thing people dont always mention is polarization, if youre running a single linearly polarized yagi youre going to lose contacts to faraday rotation which is constantly shifting the polarization of the signal off the moon. some guys just live with it and wait for the rotation to be favorable, others go to circular or cross-pol. not a dealbreaker at your stage but worth knowing why contacts sometimes just fall apart for no obvious reason.

the koch method is genuinely the way to go in my opinion, thats how i did it and i went from nothing to copying around 15 wpm in maybe 4 or 5 months, though i was pretty consistent with it, like 20-30 minutes most days. the key thing with koch is you learn each character at full speed from the start instead of slowing everything down, which is what a lot of older methods did and it just trains your brain wrong. there are a few apps that do koch properly, lcwo dot net is the one i used most, its free and pretty solid. justa heads up though -- the early weeks feel really discouraging because you feel like you cant copy anything and then something clicks and it gets easier pretty fast after that. as for actual qsos, honestly 7-8 wpm you can probably muddle through a basic exchange on the air, people on 40 meters especially are usually pretty patient with beginners if you put /qrs in there or just send slow yourself. joining the straight key century club is a good way to dip your toes in, lots of guys on there who specifically enjoy slow qsos with new ops

food and water lol. seriously though. I went to my first ARES deployment thinking it would be a few hours and it turned into a 14 hour thing and I had nothing with me. granola bars and a water bottle take up almost no space and you will be SO glad they are there. also a change of clothes or at least an extra layer depending on where you are. on the radio side of things — do you have a way to charge your HT separately from your main battery? and antenna options for VHF/UHF in case your linked repeater is down and you need simplex. a lot of go-kit people focus on HF and forget that most served agency comms are gonna be on VHF locally. not saying your setup is wrong just worth thinking about.

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state wildlife management area near me, been meaning to try it for months and just never got around to it. ended up setting up my KX2 with a linked dipole about 40ft up in a pine tree and ran about 3 hours on 40 and 20m SSB. got maybe 65 QSOs which i think is enough to actually count the reference, pretty stoked about that. couple things im still fuzzy on though. when i log the activation do i need to submit separately to the WWFF database or does it sync somehow from SOTA or ADIF or whatever? i uploaded to ADIF but not sure if thats all there is to it. also i had a few hunters calling me who mentioned they needed the specific reference number for their logs, i had it written down but wasnt sure if i was supposed to announce it more often on air. felt a bit disorganized on that front. overall though it was a really good time, way more relaxed than i expected. nobody was rude, the pileup was manageable, the weather cooperated. thinking about doing another one next month at a national wildlife refuge thats maybe an hour from me. anyway just wanted to share and see if anyone has tips on the logging side of things.

so ive been noticing something strange the past few weeks and wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing the same thing. im usually pretty good at catching the 15m and 17m openings into europe from the midwest but lately its like the bands just completely die right around when they should be peaking. i check the solar flux index every morning and its been sitting in the low 150s which should be decent enough for some good DX but im just not hearing what i expect to hear. had a brief opening last tuesday around 1400z where i worked a couple of EA stations and one DL but then it just folded up within like 20 minutes. used to be able to ride those openings for a couple hours at least. wondering if its the geomagnetic stuff messing things up or if my expectations are just off. the K index has been jumping around a lot too, saw it hit 4 a couple times this week. anybody been seeing similar? or am i just catching bad timing every day

the CMS is basically the central mail server that lives on the internet side, and the RMS gateways are the radio-accessible entry points that talk to it. so when you connect to an RMS gateway over HF, that gateway has an internet connection and it forwards your message to the CMS which then routes it like normal email. you never actually talk directly to the CMS over radio, the RMS is always in between. that part tripped me up too when i started. for the hanging at handshake thing, first thing id check is your audio levels. with the IC-7300 over USB you want to make sure youre not overdriving the input — theres a setting in Winlink Express under the VARA HF session where you can see the ALC and if that's slamming you're gonna have a bad time. also make sure the radio is in USB-D mode not just USB, the D mode bypasses some of the processing and makes a big difference. and double check your dial frequency matches what the gateway is listed at, VARA HF has pretty tight tolerances compared to older modes.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for about 6 weeks now. im using an app called Morse Mania which i think is fine for the very basics but i switched to just listening to actual QSOs on like 40m at night with slow speed stations. theres a frequency i forget the exact one where they specifically do slow code practice transmissions, someone on here probably knows what im thinking of. anyway hearing real callsigns and real exchanges somehow made it feel more real than practice tones and i feel like it helped me. i still cant copy much but its coming along i think

this is actually really helpful to read because im pretty new and i didnt even know 10m could do that. i thought it was mostly just a daytime band for like regional stuff. does the solar flux number tell you which bands will be open or is it more of a general indication? i have a technician license so i can get on parts of 10m and ive been wanting to try some dx but wasnt sure when to even listen. sorry if thats a dumb question

the generator noise thing is real and it depends a lot on which genny and how you handle grounding and bonding. we had the same problem until someone in our group started bonding the genny frame to a ground rod at the site and running everything through a common ground bus. made a noticeable difference, maybe 1-2 S units on 40m. still not perfect but usable. the honda EU2200i is supposedly cleaner than the knockoffs due to the inverter design but ive never done a direct comparison on the air. that said for 12-14 hours with the loads you're describing i'd honestly consider a hybrid approach — a modest generator to keep a bank of LiFePO4 topped off rather than running the rigs directly off it. keeps the switching noise out of the RF path and gives you battery backup if the genny has issues. we did something like this at a RACES activation last summer with a 2000W inverter genny and two 100Ah battleborn batteries and it worked pretty well, just kept the genny load light and let it float the batteries most of the time.

omg same, i was completely not ready for how good it got last saturday. im also pretty new and had only ever really had luck on 40m at night so 10m just sitting there wide open in the afternoon felt almost wrong lol. worked my first ever European station and just kind of stared at the log for a minute like did that actually just happen. my antenna situation is pretty terrible honestly, just a random wire thing i threw up in the backyard, so if i can make contacts imagine what people with real antennas are doing.

yeah i was in the same boat when i started, the CTCSS stuff confused me for a while too. transmit only is correct, you dont need it on receive unless the repeater specifically says so which is pretty rare. one thing i'll add — some repeaters are linked to other repeaters or to Echolink or IRLP or whatever, so sometimes what sounds like a small local group is actually a bunch of people from different states or even countries all connected together. just something to be aware of if you hear weird callsigns or people signing from far away. doesnt change the etiquette really but its kinda cool once you realize whats going on

the battery thing you mentioned is so real. i did my first real activation (not a drill, actual wind storm event) a couple years back and even i forgot to top off my spare pack the morning of. ended up borrowing a cable from someone else to charge off their car. not ideal. now i literally have a go-bag checklist taped inside the lid and battery check is the first item. havent done multi-agency stuff but id love to hear more if your group ends up doing it.

yeah 20m in the morning can be rough depending on where you are, i usually just start on 40 and move up once the band opens. also 4 contacts is 4 contacts man, activation is an activation. i did one last fall with a buddistick on a ridge and barely squeaked by with 5 contacts after like an hour. the KX2 is a great little radio for this stuff though, ive been thinking about picking one up myself

so i finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest about 45 minutes from my house. ive been eyeing it on the map for a while after reading about other peoples activations on here and figured id give it a shot. been doing POTA for about a year so i had a rough idea of what to expect but WWFF feels a bit different somehow, like more emphasis on the actual nature reference and logging it properly with the KFF or WWFF reference number. anyway i set up my end fed halfwave in a pine tree and ran about 40w on 40m and got 32 contacts in about two hours which im pretty happy with for a first attempt. the pileup wasnt crazy or anything but steady enough to keep me busy. my question is about the log submission — do i submit to both the WWFF global database AND the national program separately or is it one or the other? ive been reading the website and i swear it says different things in different places. also is there a minimum contact requirement for an activation to count or is any number fine

i did mine about 18 months ago and honestly the exam itself is very passable if you just grind the question pool. hamstudy.org was basically all i used, maybe 3 weeks of doing practice tests every night before bed and i passed with a comfortable margin. you dont need to actually understand what a smith chart is doing to answer the question correctly, if you know what i mean. that said i will say some of the theory stuff clicked for me along the way and i ended up actually interested in it. the stuff about transmission lines and standing waves started making sense in a way it hadnt before and now i actually think about that stuff when im doing antenna work. so there was some unexpected value there. but no you definitely dont need an engineering degree, people way less technically inclined than you or me pass this thing all the time. as for whether the privileges matter for ragchewing specifically, yeah the extra segments on 75 and 40 are noticeably quieter on busy nights. not always, but often enough that its nice to have the option.

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i still feel kind of awkward about this. like i know the NATO phonetics, alpha bravo charlie etc, but i never really know when youre supposed to use them vs just talking normally. like if someone asks my name do i say my actual name or spell it out phonetically? and what about the callsign, do you always phonetically spell every single callsign every single time you transmit or just sometimes i asked a guy at my club and he kind of shrugged and said just do what feels right which wasnt super helpful. i hear some people on 40m doing it one way and then other people doing it completely different so im genuinely confused about what the actual convention is

im kind of in the same boat as you, just started paying more attention to the clusters maybe two months ago. one thing that helped me was the DX Summit website, its been around forever i think and a lot of the old timers seem to trust it. not sure how it compares to DXwatch technically but the interface is simple which i like when im still figuring things out. havent found a great android app yet tbh, most of them feel kind of clunky. let me know if you find something good

so i finally did my first SOTA activation last weekend, W4V/SH-001, nothing crazy but it was my first time hauling gear up a hill and actually making contacts from a summit. brought my KX2 and a homebrew linked dipole, took me forever to get the antenna up because wind was ridiculous. made 4 contacts on 40m and 2 on 20m which i guess qualifies but barely lol. the whole thing felt chaotic compared to operating from home but in a good way i think. spotted myself on SOTAwatch and that helped a lot, had a small pileup which was wild to experience for the first time. gonna do it again for sure but maybe pick a calmer day next time

So ive been trying to get Winlink going for a few weeks now and i think im close but not sure i fully understand the gateway side of things. Running Vara HF on a IC-7300 and i can see the RMS stations in the list, some are showing green some are grey and i dont really know what determines that. Like is grey just out of range or is the station offline or what? Also when i connect and send a message, does it go through the RMS and then out to the internet to the Winlink servers, or is it cached locally on the gateway and forwarded later? Reason i ask is i sent a test email to my gmail three days ago and it never showed up, but i got a delivery receipt on the radio side. The connection looked clean, no errors in the Vara log, so im not sure where it broke down. And separate question maybe - if i want to run my own RMS gateway someday, is that a separate software thing or is it all within the Winlink Express install? Ive seen mentions of RMS Relay and RMS Trimode but i cant figure out from the docs which one i actually need for HF.

yeah what he said, also dont forget to eat something and bring water lol. sounds obvious but ive seen people so focused on the radio stuff they forget they're standing in a field for 6 hours. being hungry and tired makes everything harder and your brain does weird things when youre running on fumes trying to remember proper message format at the same time. one thing i always do at the start of any event or activation is just do a quick radio check with net control before anything gets busy, just to confirm im actually hitting the repeater cleanly from wherever they've stationed me. saves a lot of headache later if you find out early that you need to reposition or swap to a different antenna. good luck

Welcome to the hobby! The most common issue newcomers face is not programming the CTCSS tone properly, even when the repeater responds. Try this: go into your Baofeng menu and make sure tone encode is ON for transmit. The fact that you're getting the kerchunk means your frequency and offset are correct.

yeah the LoTW certificate thing tripped me up too when i first started, if you uploaded your log and nothing showed as confirmed it might just mean the other stations havent uploaded their logs yet. confirmations only happen when both sides upload, so sometimes you wait weeks or even months. check under your QSO list and see if anything shows a little checkmark or says matched, if youre seeing records at all then youre probably fine also one thing nobody told me — you need to make sure your log has the right date/time in UTC not local time or the matching algorithm gets confused. learned that the hard way after like 200 contacts that never matched lol

New to ham radio and feeling overwhelmed by the 10 sub-elements in the Technician question pool. Which ones should I prioritize in my study schedule? I have about 3 weeks to prepare and want to use my time efficiently. Are there certain sub-elements that are easier to memorize versus others that need deeper understanding?

so i finally stopped making excuses and just went out to the state park yesterday with my kx2 and a random wire thrown up in a tree. figured id probably struggle to get 10 contacts and call it a day but ended up with 43 in about 2 hours which blew my mind. mostly 40m with a few on 20 when the band opened up around noon. the hardest part was honestly just finding a good spot to set up where i wasnt in everyones way and had decent tree branches to throw the wire over. a family kept walking by looking at me like i was doing something illegal lol. anyway if anyones been on the fence about trying POTA just do it, the hunters are incredibly patient and a lot of them will slow down for you if your exchange is a little rough at first