Christopher Davis

i cant speak to the 570 comparison specifically but i picked up a 7300 about 18 months ago as my first real HF rig after starting on a little QRP setup and the learning curve on the touchscreen took maybe a week before it felt natural. one thing nobody mentioned to me beforehand was that the fan can be audible depending on your shack setup, not a dealbreaker but if you do phone and you have a sensitive mic setup in a quiet room its worth knowing. mine sits behind me and its fine.

ive been doing this about a year and honestly AO-91 was my learning satellite too. one thing that helped me way more than i expected was just listening to a full pass without even trying to transmit. just track it, keep the signal peaked, get used to how fast things move. because when youre new you're trying to physically aim the antenna AND tune AND talk AND not panic and its too much at once. the pass is over before you figure out whats wrong. also 73 degrees is a pretty high elevation pass which sounds great but it moves across the sky really fast near the peak, like surprisingly fast. some people actually find lower passes easier to work when youre starting out because theres more time. anyway keep at it, took me four or five attempts before i actually made a contact

yeah the 44 QSO requirement is the standard for a valid activation, thats been the number for a while now. and yes you can absolutely use HAMRS or any logger that spits out a clean ADIF, just make sure youre logging the WWFF reference in the correct field or you might have to edit the file before uploading. i think its the SIG and SIG_INFO fields if i remember right, worth double checking on the WWFF website before you go out. one thing i'd say from experience — announce your activation on the WWFF spots page ahead of time if you can, even just the day before. you'll get way more chasers tuning in and reaching 44 goes faster than you'd think especially if you hit a decent frequency on 40m. good luck out there, first activation is always a good time

so ive been licensed about 4 months now and when i get on HF i try to use alpha bravo charlie etc but sometimes i hear guys just saying random words for letters like they'll say something like "N for Nancy" or "T for Texas" and im not sure if thats actually allowed or just an old habit or what. my elmer told me to just stick with NATO but i dont want to come across as the phonetics police either. is there like an actual rule about this or is it just convention

so i've only had my general for about four months and i've been trying to get comfortable on HF, mostly just listening and occasionally checking into the local traffic net on 40m. last night there was a frequency that seemed clear to me so i called CQ a few times and then this guy came back pretty annoyed saying i'd been transmitting right on top of a slow speed CW net that apparently meets there every tuesday. i honestly had no idea, i listened for maybe 30 seconds and heard nothing. i apologized and moved but i still feel kinda bad about it. is there a way to know where nets meet ahead of time? i looked around and found some stuff about the ARRL net directory but im not sure how comprehensive that is. also the guy was pretty short with me which i get, i would be annoyed too probably, but is there like an expected way to handle that situation when it happens? do you just move immediately, do you say something? i kind of panicked and just went QRT for the night which was probably not the best move either.

yeah jumping bands is totally normal and honestly a good move, especially if 20m is starting to fade or you just want to rack up more contacts. some activators will even hit 40, 20, 15 and maybe 17 in one outing depending on conditions and time of day. nothing wrong with working whatever band has hunters on it. and yes the multiple park thing is definitely real — if two park units share a boundary or overlap you can count contacts toward both as long as you log them correctly in the POTA system. some guys plan whole routes specifically to hit 3 or 4 parks in a day, its called a POTA safari i think, or some people just call it a multi-park day. just make sure when you upload your log you have the right park reference on each contact or it gets messy. the POTA website has decent docs on this but the activator Facebook group is honestly where i learned most of it just from reading other peoples trip reports. sounds like a solid first activation, 18 contacts with a KX2 and a wire is a great start.

so i finally worked up the nerve to check into the local 2m net last tuesday after having my tech license for like 4 months. i've been listening to it for a while just to get a feel for things but i figured i should actually participate at some point. anyway the net control called for check-ins and i just keyed up and said my callsign and it was fine but afterward i realized i had no idea if i was supposed to say anything else, like location or that i had traffic or whatever. the guy running it just acknowledged me and moved on so i guess it was okay but i felt like i was missing something. also when there were two people who keyed up at the same time it got all garbled and the net control asked them to repeat and i could not figure out from context who was supposed to go first. is there like a standard way that gets sorted out or does it depend on the net? i feel like ive been operating in a vacuum and just kind of guessing at everything.

yeah what he said about N1MM is right, get that going ahead of time. also I'd mention — if you havent already — look up the CQ WW logging software guide on the CQ WW website, they have pretty decent instructions for first timers. one thing I wish someone told me before my first big contest is to take breaks. sounds obvious but I went like 14 hours straight my first CQ WW and by hour 10 I was making dumb mistakes in the exchange and my ears were shot. pace yourself. also if conditions tank on 20 meters try dropping down to 40 in the evening, usually comes alive real nice once the sun goes down. have fun with it, it's addicting

oh the 40m nets are great once you get used to the fading and the QRM which honestly never fully goes away but you learn to work around it. i'd look up the ARRL Net Directory online, they list pretty much everything by frequency and day. the NTS traffic nets run like clockwork and the net controls are usually happy to have new checkins, some of them have been doing it for 20 or 30 years. for special event stations yeah most of them do send a certificate or QSL, sometimes both, you usually just need to send a SASE or request it via their website. worked a lighthouse one last summer and got a really nice printed certificate a few weeks later. they're a fun excuse to make contacts when you're not really in contest mode but still want something to chase. just check the ARRL and the special event station page, they list whats coming up usually a few weeks in advance.

honestly the question pool method still works for Extra, same as General. i wont lie to you, there are some questions where if you dont have at least a rough idea of whats going on you'll mix up the answers because a couple of them are really close together and designed to trip you up if youre just pattern matching. stuff like the reactance and impedance calculations, if you understand even the basics of what j means in a complex impedance you'll be fine. but i passed it studying maybe 6 weeks with HamStudy and a copy of the ARRL Extra Class License Manual. the manual explains things pretty well even if you dont have an engineering background. the privileges are worth it in my opinion, not just the band edges but also being able to act as VE for all license classes which comes in handy if you get involved with your local club's testing sessions.

so ive been messing around with an arduino mega for a few months now and i finally got to the point where i think i can actually do something useful with it for the shack. the idea is pretty straightforward — i want it to read which band my radio is on via the band data output on the back of my IC-7300 and then automatically switch my antenna relay box to the right antenna without me having to remember to do it manually. the 7300 puts out BCD band data on a mini DIN connector which is actually pretty well documented, so reading that part with the arduino should be doable. im more fuzzy on the relay side of things. im planning to use some SRD-05VDC-SL-C relays i grabbed off amazon, they should handle the RF switching fine for HF at least. but i keep reading conflicting stuff about whether i need opto-isolation between the arduino and the relay module or if the cheap relay boards already have that built in. has anyone actually built something like this? curious what pitfalls i ran into before i start frying things. also thinking about adding a small OLED display to show which antenna is selected but that might be scope creep at this point

yeah the ADIF sync thing between WSJT-X and anything else is kind of a known headache. what i do is set WSJT-X to log to its own file and then at the end of the day i import manually into Log4OM rather than relying on the UDP broadcast stuff. the real-time logging via UDP sounds great in theory but ive had it drop entries when the cpu gets busy during a pile-up and then you're chasing down missing contacts anyway for contests i just use N1MM and dont even try to merge it into Log4OM until after the contest period ends and i've submitted the Cabrillo. then i just do a manual ADIF import and check for dupes. its an extra step but honestly less aggravating than fighting the auto-sync. Log4OM's dupe checking is decent enough that it catches most of the overlap if you have it set right for the band and mode.

short answer: yes absolutely worth it, but you have to be realistic about the learning curve. when i first tried it i was so focused on managing the second radio that my run rate on the primary actually dropped for the first couple contests, which was demoralizing. the trick that helped me most was not trying to S&P on radio 2 constantly — just use it opportunistically. big pileup on your run freq, band 1 is dead for 20 seconds, flip attention to radio 2 and grab a mult or a quick S&P contact and come back. dont try to maintain two simultaneous runs until you really have the muscle memory down. on the filter thing — dont skip it. i tried running with just some band separation and my 100w on 15 was getting into my 40m rx bad enough that i was missing calls. bandpass filters arent cheap but you can DIY a set or find used ones and it makes the difference between frustrating and actually functional. the 4O3A or Array Solutions stuff works great if you have the budget. station complexity is real but once its set up and documented its not that bad — the operating skill part takes way longer to develop than the hardware part honestly.

the plateau around 13-15 wpm is basically a rite of passage, almost everyone hits it there. what got me through it was switching from LCWO to just listening to actual QSOs on 40 meters with a receiver and trying to copy without any pressure. no grade, no score, just real traffic. the thing about generated practice code is you subconsiously know the rhythm is going to be perfect and clean, real ops are sloppy and that actually forces your brain to work harder and adapt faster. took me probably another 2 months of doing that alongside my regular LCWO sessions before i was sitting comfortably at 18-20wpm. also one thing -- are you still trying to think of letters or are you hearing whole words? because if youre still going letter by letter at 14wpm thats probably your bottleneck right there. once words start coming as single sounds instead of sequences of dits and dahs it changes everything.

the memorization approach works fine for passing the test but i'll say from experience you might regret it later when you're actually on the air and have no idea why your SWR is doing what its doing or whatever. I used the ARRL Ham Radio License Manual and yeah its a bit dry in places but it actually explains how propagation works, why you need a license at certain power levels, all that. took me maybe 3 weeks reading a chapter here and there. that said i also used hamstudy alongside it to make sure i was hitting the actual question formats. the math questions on the exam are genuinely easy once you see a few examples, dont let that part stress you out