Daniel Garcia

oh man spain at 4 watts is awesome, thats the whole reason i got into qrp honestly. i built a mountain topper a while back and had similar shutdown issues until i realized i was just running it too hard duty cycle wise, like doing long overs in ssb. if youre running cw it shouldnt be as bad but ssb with voice can really stress those little rigs. anyway welcome to the rabbit hole haha, once you start chasing contacts at low power its kind of addicting

Planning my first SOTA activation next weekend and struggling with antenna deployment. I've got an IC-705 and EFHW but not sure about the best way to get the wire up on a summit without trees. Been watching YouTube videos but would love to hear from operators who've actually done this. Should I invest in a telescoping mast or are there simpler solutions? The summit I'm targeting is pretty exposed with no nearby trees.

omg yes same here, im still pretty new to HF like only been on about 8 months but even i can tell somethings different lately. i worked my first ever ZL station last week which was huge for me and then literally the day after i could barely reach the east coast from here in colorado. my elmer told me to just keep a log of the solar flux and K index alongside my contacts and after a few months it starts to make more sense. havent been doing it long enough to see patterns yet but it sounds like even experienced people find it unpredictable so i feel a little better about being confused lol

I started EME on 70cm with similar power levels and had good success. WSJT should be set up for JT65b mode, and you should turn on equipment about an hour before scheduled Moonrise. The key is precise timing and understanding the exchange procedures - study the JT65 EME protocols carefully before attempting your first contact.

so we ran a pretty involved simulated disaster exercise last Saturday, scenario was a major earthquake hitting the region, infrastructure down, hospitals overwhelmed, the usual. I've been doing ARES stuff for maybe four years now and I thought I had a pretty good handle on things but honestly this drill humbled me a little bit. biggest thing I learned is that we assumed way too much about who would show up and with what equipment. two of our key operators didn't have their go-bags stocked the way they thought they did, one guy showed up with a dead HT battery and no spares, and we spent like the first 20 minutes just sorting out who had what capability. in a real event that 20 minutes could actually matter. the net control piece was also rough early on. our primary NC operator did great but when we simulated him becoming unavailable (which, realistically, could happen) the backup had a hard time taking over the log format mid-exercise. we didn't drill that handoff enough clearly. curious if anyone else has done similar exercises, tabletop or full field deployment sims. what's your group learned the hard way that changed how you prep? we're already talking about a follow-up drill focused specifically on the ICS forms and message handling but I'd love to hear what other groups have found useful.

man i just started looking into QRP myself and this is kind of inspiring, i had no idea you could fit a whole HF setup in a backpack. what battery are you running with it? thats the part that always seems to get heavy fast from what ive read

yeah the Q codes are one of those things that seem overwhelming at first and then six months later you're using them without even thinking about it. one i didnt see mentioned above is QSY which means changing frequency, youll hear that a lot especially during contests or if theres a pileup situation. also QRP technically means low power operation, under 5 watts, theres a whole subculture around that if you ever get into it. the abbreviations beyond Q codes are their own thing too, like ur is your, es is and, de is from, pse is please, tnx or tks is thanks. mostly CW stuff but people say them on phone too sometimes just out of habit. honestly just get on the air and lurk for a bit, youll pick it up faster than reading any list

yeah what he said about the id rules is right. one thing i'll add is that the arrl has a pretty readable breakdown of part 97 on their website, way easier than reading the actual CFR text which is kind of dense. helped me a lot when i was studying for my upgrade to extra. the third party traffic stuff is its own rabbit hole honestly, especially if you ever want to pass messages to someone in another country because not every country has a third party agreement with the US. probably not something you need to worry about right away but worth knowing exists

nice work on the thermal compound, i always forget to do that kind of preventive stuff until something actually goes wrong. whats the temp difference you're seeing approximately, like in terms of the heat on the case or are you measuring the finals directly?

yeah the buddipole can be kind of tedious to retune, i went through a phase with one and eventually just went back to a simple wire. efhw with a 49:1 is hard to beat for quick deployment, i can have mine up in under 10 minutes if i have a decent tree nearby and the swr is usually good enough to not even need the tuner on most bands. you do need a little counterpoise or at least make sure your coax length isnt fighting you. one thing about the generator vs battery debate nobody mentions — if you're doing emcomm specifically, some EOC coordinators actually prefer you have a generator because they want to see sustained capability over many hours without relying on you to have charged your batteries beforehand. i get the weight argument but depending on your role in the activation it might matter. just something to think about, not saying bring it every time.

4 contacts is all you need so mission accomplished. wind is the worst for antennas, ive had my whole setup come down mid-activation before. the kx2 is a solid choice for that kind of thing, i run one too and the built in tuner handles a lot of junk wire configurations surprisngly well

yeah what he said about the battery test, do that first before anything else. i spent a whole weekend re-routing traces on a VFO build chasing hum and it turned out to be my bench supply the whole time, felt pretty dumb about it honestly. one other thing to check -- are your audio grounds and your RF grounds all coming back to a single point? on DC receivers especially ive seen people run into trouble when the audio return path is kind of floating around looking for ground and it picks up all kinds of junk. star grounding on these things makes a real difference even when the layout looks fine on paper

im kind of in the same boat as you, been at it maybe two months now. one thing that helped me a lot was just using the keyer to send random letters and then trying to copy what i sent, feels a bit silly but it actually works. also G4FON and lcwo.net are both really good for practice if you havent already found them. 13 wpm is a solid starting point, some people say learn fast from the beginning but honestly i dont think it matters that much just be consistent

had almost this exact same problem last year, turned out my firewall was blocking something in Winlink Express and the session would partially complete then just die. i know that sounds weird for a radio thing but the software does phone home during sessions and if that call fails it can behave strangely. probably not your issue but worth checking the Winlink event log in the program itself, not just the session log — theres more detail in there about whats actually happening on the software side.

yeah they can be overwhelming at first but you pick em up pretty fast once you start operating regularly. the ones youll hear constantly are QSL (confirmed/acknowledge), QRM (interference from other stations), QRN (static/natural noise), QSO (a contact or conversation), QTH (your location), QRZ (whos calling), and QSB (signal fading). theres also QRP which means low power operation, and that ones got a whole culture around it honestly. ARRL has a decent list on their site if you want the full thing, but i wouldnt bother memorizing all of them, some are super obscure and you might go your whole life without hearing QUB or whatever. just learn the common ones and the rest will fill in naturally. also half the time on phone people just say them out loud like actual words which is a little weird when you first hear it but you get used to it

yeah the radial thing is where people always cut corners including me. i put up a quarterwave vertical for 40 a couple years back with like 8 radials and it was okay but nothing special. eventually laid down 32 radials and it was noticeably better on both rx and tx. still picked up more local noise than my dipole does but for working europe in the early evening it was hard to beat. i'd say just do the inverted-V first since its cheaper and easier to experiment with, get on the air, and then if you catch the vertical bug later you can always add it as a second antenna and a/b them yourself.

not a dumb question at all, this trips up a lot of newly upgraded generals. so the actual FCC allocation for general on 40m phone is 7.175 to 7.300 MHz, that part is law. but the band edge thing is a real concern because your signal has sidebands — if you're running USB and you park yourself right at 7.300 you're probably splattering above that into the extra portion or beyond, which can cause all kinds of grief. most people just stay a few kHz inside the edge as a buffer, like dont tune up at 7.298 and call it close enough. the ARRL band plan is a good reference but understand that its a recommendation not a rule except where the FCC part 97 actually spells it out. the FCC rules are what matter legally, band plans are just kind of the community agreeing to be organized about things.

okay so I just got my General ticket last week and I have this sequential callsign that the FCC assigned me, its like a KD9 something or other. A friend at my local club keeps talking about getting a vanity call and I guess I always assumed you could just kinda pick any call you wanted as long as it wasnt taken. But now I'm reading stuff online and it seems way more complicated than that? Like there are rules about what format you're allowed to apply for based on your license class? I tried reading the FCC rules but honestly it just made my head spin. Can a General class just apply for any 1x3 call or are those only for Extras? And how does the sequential process even work — does the FCC just hand them out in order or is there some queue thing happening. Sorry if this is a super basic question I just want to make sure I understand it before I go filling out forms and getting rejected

yeah sounds like a coverage issue more than a config problem honestly. if the only digi in range is a WIDE1-1 fill-in, those typically dont have an igate attached, they just relay to hopefully reach a WIDE2 capable digi that does have igate coverage nearby. 30 miles from the nearest igate in a rural area is rough, there just might not be enough infrastructure to reliably get you on the internet side. one thing worth checking is whether that fill-in digi is even set up correctly — some of those are cobbled together by random hams and might have weird path filtering. you could try SSn-N path instead and see if anything changes but honestly if there's no igate in range you're kind of stuck. have you looked at the RF coverage map on aprs.fi or the receiver sites on that page to see where the nearest actual igate is pointing?

the 7610 second receiver is the thing that gets overlooked imo. being able to have 20m and 40m open at the same time and actually monitor both without switching back and forth — that changed how i operate more than i expected. but yeah if your not doing much contesting its harder to make the case for the price. i use mine for some light SO2R and the ergonomics of having everything in one box vs running two radios is nice. that said the 7300 is genuinely not a step down from most radios in its price class, icom did something right with that one.

yeah there's no hard rule saying you HAVE to use NATO phonetics every single time, its more of a best practice thing especially when conditions are rough or theres any chance of confusion. on a clear local repeater with nobody stepping on each other you can usually just rattle off your callsign as letters and everyone gets it fine. but if youre doing HF or anything where the signal is marginal, phonetics save a lot of back and forth. the London vs Lima thing — yeah that happens, some older ops learned a different phonetic alphabet before NATO got standardized and they just never fully switched over. you'll also hear Whiskey vs Washington, or some guys who make up their own for whatever reason. it can be annoying when youre trying to copy a callsign and youre not sure if they said November or something else starting with N. stick to NATO and youll be fine, most people will understand you anywhere in the world which is kind of the whole point of standardizing it in the first place.

the math works out pretty close honestly. if you're averaging 10 amps draw and you've got 100ah usable (assuming lithium so basically the full capacity unlike lead acid) thats theoretically 10 hours at that rate. but you'll want to stay above 20% or so to keep the battery healthy long term so realistically call it 80ah usable which gets you 8 hours. so yeah a cloudy day with no solar contribution and you're cutting it close for 12 hours. i'd either grab a second 100ah battery — they're not that heavy if it's LiFePO4 — or just accept the generator is going to run a couple hours. the eu2200i is quiet enough that it really isnt that big a deal, i've run mine at field day and people forget its even there after a few minutes. on the antenna, ditch the buddipole for this one. linked dipole on the spiderpole is going to outperform it on 40 and 80 and setup is way faster once you've cut the links right. just make sure your feedline is good — i've seen people bring great antennas and then use RG-58 with sketchy connectors and wonder why their signal reports are bad.

oh man i remember this exact frustration, went through it myself maybe two years ago. the mushy sound is almost always a combo of things — paddle tension too tight, iambic mode when you're not ready for it, and honestly just muscle memory that hasnt developed yet. first thing i'd do is back the tension way off, lighter than you think you need, your hand will thank you after an hour of practice. and yeah stay off squeeze keying for now, go into mode A or even just single lever mode if your MFJ supports it. squeeze keying feels cool but it'll mess with your timing until your hands really know what theyre doing. also 8-12 wpm might actually be too slow for building good rhythm. a lot of elmers will tell you to practice at the speed you want to eventually operate at and just copy whatever you can. sounds crazy but it works. the Koch method is worth looking into if you havent already.

I use the manufacturer software for my Yaesu radios and CHIRP for everything else. The firmware update capability on newer models means you can get bug fixes and new features over time. For contest work, I reprogram my HTs before every major event with the specific frequencies and zones I'll need.

the eu2200i is genuinely worth having in the truck even if you dont always run it. i brought mine to a 12 hour public service event last summer and ended up not needing it because we staged near a building with an outlet, but having it there took all the anxiety out of the day. that said for a standard exercise if youre worried about noise just parallel a second 100ah lifepo4 and use the genny as backup only. two of those in parallel with even a modest solar panel on a clear day will carry you through most realistic scenarios without ever touching the generator. on the antenna thing — i switched from the buddipole to a chameleon hybrid micro a couple years ago and setup time dropped a lot. the emcomm III is fine but its more of a wire antenna situation which means finding trees or a mast, the hybrid micro goes on a speaker stand tripod and im on 40 in maybe 8 minutes. efficiency isnt quite as good as a full dipole but for emcomm work youre usually working regional so it doesnt matter much