Daniel Taylor

APRS messaging is honestly kind of hit or miss depending on network conditions and yeah the path matters a lot. WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 is fine and pretty standard but the real question is whether the digipeaters in your area are running IGate as well. if theres no IGate in range then messaging to someone whos connected via the internet side just wont work at all, the packet stays RF-only and never touches APRS-IS.
also worth checking if the other guy had message capable firmware or if hes just running a tracker. some setups beacon fine but dont actually have message ack turned on. the TM-D710G should be doing acks automatically but ive seen weird configs where that got turned off somehow.
try messaging someone you know for sure is running a full igate setup and see if that changes anything. also aprs.fi will show you the raw packets if you look at the station info, can tell you a lot about whats actually hitting the network

so ive been running the 7300 for about three years now and honestly its been a great radio, no real complaints. but ive been eyeing the 7610 for a while and the dual watch / dual receiver thing keeps calling to me especially during contests when i want to monitor a second band without swapping vfos constantly. the panadapter on the 7300 is already pretty solid so im not upgrading for that.
my main operating is ssb and some digital, occasionally cw but im not a hardcore cw guy. i run a hex beam at 35 feet and a 40m dipole in the attic which yeah i know isnt ideal. anyway the question is basically does the second receiver actually change how you operate day to day or is it one of those things that sounds cool and then you dont really use it. i cant demo one anywhere near me so asking here instead

yeah the chameleon MPAS is nice but honestly for ARES work where speed matters i think the efhw route the other guy mentioned is hard to beat. i use a 49:1 unun i wound myself and just a roll of wire, total cost maybe 15 bucks in parts and its been more reliable than anything i bought prebuilt.
on the power thing — have you looked at solar at all? im not saying go full off grid prepper mode but even a 100w panel feeding your lifepo4 during the day can basically eliminate the battery capacity problem if the sun cooperates. obviously useless at night or under heavy overcast but for a lot of the activations i do its enough to keep the battery topped off while im operating

I've had a fan dipole up for about two years now, 40 and 20 only because my yard just doesn't have room for long enough supports to do the fan spread on more bands without the ends drooping down into the fence. The noise floor thing you mentioned — totally agree, it was the first thing I noticed compared to my old vertical. I'm in a pretty suburban location so any reduction in pickup of local noise makes a real difference.
One thing I'd add is that the feedpoint connection is worth spending some time on. My first attempt I just twisted the element wires together at the center insulator and taped everything up and it worked fine until some moisture got in over a winter and I started getting weird intermittent swr readings. Redid it with proper solder connections and a bit of self-amalgamating tape and havent had a problem since. Probably obvious but worth mentioning since its one of those things thats easy to half-do when youre excited to get the antenna in the air and just want to test it.

so i've been wanting to do QRP for probably two years now and kept putting it off because i wasnt sure where to start. finally just ordered a QCX mini kit from QRP Labs back in the spring and spent a weekend putting it together. my soldering is mediocre at best but i got through it with only one cold joint that i had to go back and fix.
anyway the thing works and i made my first contact on 40m running 5 watts into a end fed half wave i threw up in the backyard. the other station was in ohio, im in new england, and he gave me a 579 which honestly i wasnt expecting at all. i kind of sat there for a second before responding because i was so surprised it actually worked.
the efficiency thing is what really got me hooked. my whole setup draws maybe 800mA at 12v when transmitting so i can run it off a small lipo for hours. took it out to a park last saturday with just a backpack, a folding chair, and a wire antenna i tossed over a tree branch and worked three stations in about an hour and a half. one guy in florida which seemed insane to me for 5 watts.
anyone else here doing a lot of portable QRP? curious what antennas people are actually using out in the field because im not sure my end fed setup is as efficient as it could be. also wondering if the QCX is worth upgrading to something like an X6100 or a KX2 eventually or if i should just stick with the simple stuff for now.

so i've been licensed about 8 months now, mostly just listening and lurking on local repeaters, but i finally started jumping into some simplex contacts and last week something happened that kind of threw me off and i've been thinking about it since.
i was about 10 minutes into a ragchew with a guy a few counties over and somebody broke in with just their callsign. i wasnt sure what to do — like do i stop mid-sentence and let them in? do i finish my thought first? i ended up sort of stumbling over my words and then gave my call and let the other station in but it felt really awkward and the other guy i was talking to kind of just disappeared after that.
also just generally wondering about when you're SUPPOSED to give your callsign. i know it's every 10 minutes and at the end of a contact but does that 10 minute clock reset every time you transmit or only when you actually give your ID? i've gotten three different answers from three different people on this and im just confused at what point

wait the arrl is changing the vanity callsign fees? i just applied for one like two months ago, do you know if that affects people who already have theirs or is it just new applications going forward? sorry if this is kind of off topic but now im worried i need to do something

WSJT-X has a setting to log directly via UDP to whatever your main logger is, if Log4OM supports that port it should just work without the ADIF shuffle. i think Log4OM does support it but i havent actually tried it myself so dont quote me on that

end fed halfwave on a mast will serve you a lot better than the buddipole for 40/80 in my experience, especially if youre trying to cover regional nets. buddipole is great for travel but its a compromise and you'll feel it on 80. if you have room to run a wire out, even a sloper off a 31 foot mast gets you way more signal. just my two cents on the antenna side of things.
on the power i cant really compare those two generators directly but i do know the eu2200 has a parallel kit if you ever need more capacity down the road, might be a factor depending on where your group wants to take things.

WSJT-X has a setting to log directly via UDP to whatever your main logger is, if Log4OM supports that port it should just work without the ADIF shuffle. i think Log4OM does support it but i havent actually tried it myself so dont quote me on that