Kevin Jackson

yeah the inverted passband thing trips everyone up at first. basically on a linear transponder, if you tune your uplink higher in the passband, your downlink signal comes out lower. so doppler correction has to go in opposite directions on the two ends, which is why you really want two vfos or two radios eventually. gpredict does handle the dual doppler correction and it can drive two separate radios via hamlib, one for rx and one for tx, which is the typical setup people use. for mode, most of the linear birds you want LSB on the uplink and you'll hear USB coming down, or the reverse depending on the sat. FO-29 is USB uplink i think but dont quote me, check the amsat freq chart. AO-73 is the one thats only active in eclipse periods too so timing matters there. with a single radio what some people do is use two vfos and manually track doppler by ear which is totally doable on a short pass if you're quick about it, annoying but works fine for learning. the main thing is your signal in the passband is just one of many, the transponder is linear so everyone shares the same chunk of spectrum. so keep your power reasonable or you'll be that guy who desenses the whole passband for everyone else on the pass.

did the same mod on mine a couple years back for similar reasons. no issues at all on normal ham operation afterward, radio didnt even notice. just be careful you dont accidentally bridge anything else when youre in there, the 857 board is pretty dense and i bumped a cap once and had a minor panic attack thinking i killed it. turned out fine but yeah go slow.

marathons are honestly one of the easier activations to start with, good timing on your part. usually they'll have you stationed at a water stop or mile marker and your job is basically just to relay runner status and any medical issues back to net control. most of the time nothing happens and you just check in every 15-20 minutes to say all is well at your position. bring a chair and water because you might be standing around for 3-4 hours. your HT should be fine for something like that but yeah bring the mobile if you have it, some of those course positions can be in low spots and an HT might struggle depending on the repeater. definitely introduce yourself to the EC when you arrive and let them know its your first activation, they'll usually pair newer folks with someone experienced or at least give you a buddy to call if things get confusing. the ICS stuff matters more on bigger deployments honestly, for a marathon its pretty relaxed. you'll do great, just listen to net control and dont key up unless you have traffic or they call you.

yeah the preamp thing is real. i made that mistake for a long time thinking more gain = better copy on the DX but you end up burying yourself in noise and cant hear where theyre actually pulling calls from. kill the preamp, narrow the filter down if your rig supports it, and just listen. i run an IC-7300 so the filtering options are pretty decent but even on older rigs its worth doing whatever you can to clean up the receive. also if youre on CW learn to read partial calls — the DX will often come back with just the last two letters and if you can recognize yours quickly you wont waste time asking for repeats while everyone else piles back on

i was in pretty much the same spot about a year ago and ended up going with the baofeng to start just because i wasnt sure id stick with the hobby and didnt want to spend a lot. it worked fine for what it was but i did eventually upgrade to an FT-65 and yeah the difference in receiver sensitivity alone was worth it. kept the baofeng though, its good for loaning to people at public service events when someone forgets their radio the dual band thing — yes get dual band, you'll want 70cm eventually even if you dont use it right away

yeah this has been bugging me for a while too, not the NCS part specifically but just the whole gap between what people think they know and what actually happens under pressure. i went through a real activation a couple years back (ice storm, county roads were closed for days) and the thing that surprised me most wasnt the radio stuff — it was just how tired everyone got and how decision quality kind of falls off after hour six or seven. like we had perfectly capable operators making weird errors they wouldnt make on a normal day. idk if theres a clean fix for that but i think doing exercises that run longer than a couple hours is underrated. most sims i see are like a 2-3 hour thing on a saturday morning when everyone is fresh and motivated. not really the same as a real event where youre wet and its 2am and you havent eaten properly. just my two cents from that experience, not trying to derail the message format discussion which is also totally valid

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about uploading logs to LoTW and eQSL and also mailing out paper QSL cards and im honestly not sure which ones i actually need to bother with. like is there a standard thing most people do or is it just whatever you feel like? i signed up for LoTW a while back and got the certificate and everything but i havent actually uploaded anything yet because i wasnt sure if my log format was right. im using Log4OM if that matters. and then someone at the club said i should also do eQSL but that seems like a separate thing entirely and now im just kind of paralyzed about the whole thing. also paper QSLs — i designed one and had like 200 printed but havent sent a single one out yet because i dont really understand the bureau system. do i just mail them to the ARRL? sorry if these are dumb questions, its a lot to figure out at once

so ive been messing around with this idea for a while and finally started actually building it. basically i want to use an arduino mega to handle all my antenna switching automatically based on what band the radio is on. i have an IC-7300 and it puts out band data on the USB port so im thinking i can just read that and use relays to switch between my dipole, the vertical, and the 6m yagi. started prototyping on a breadboard last night and the relay logic seems to work fine but im not sure the best way to handle the reed relays vs just regular 5v relays for RF. the RF path itself wont go through the arduino obviously, just the control lines, but still want to make sure im not doing something dumb with the grounding. anyone done something similar? also wondering if a raspberry pi zero would be overkill for this or if theres an advantage to having linux on there instead of bare metal arduino. the IC-7300 CI-V stuff over USB is pretty well documented so thats not the concern, more the hardware side of things honestly

so ive been running single op assisted for the past few sweepstakes and keep seeing guys in the top 10 claiming SO2R and honestly wondering if its worth trying to set that up for my station. right now im running an IC-7300 into a trapped vertical for 40/80 and a yagi up at 45ft for 15/20/10. not exactly a killer setup but its what i have. the rate thing is what gets me — i feel like i spend so much time hunting for mults on one band that my run frequency goes dead and then i lose the run anyway. like last november i had a solid 20m run going for maybe 45 minutes and then chased a couple section mults on 40 and when i came back my frequency was gone and i spent 20 mins finding a new one. cost me probably 30-40 Qs easy. would a second radio even help in that scenario or is the issue just operator discipline? i genuinely cant tell if my problem is the setup or just me being impatient. running QRP isnt an option im already at 100w and dont have an amp yet.

honest answer, if you're hitting 800-900 QSOs and feeling like you've plateaued, SO2R will help but it's probably not the first thing i'd fix. the biggest rate killers at that level are usually inefficient CQ timing, not knowing when to abandon a run frequency and move, and yeah the S&P ratio thing you mentioned. a lot of guys run way too long on a dead freq when they should be moving or flipping to S&P to pick up mults. that said i've been doing SO2R for maybe 6 years now and once it clicks it really does change things. but it took me a solid year of contests before i stopped fumbling the band switching and actually gained rate from it instead of losing it. the bandpass filters are non-negotiable btw, dont even try it without them, i blew out a front end on my secondary rig early on because i got lazy about that. if i were you id spend one or two contests really focused on logging efficiency and deciding faster. record yourself operating and listen back, it's painful but useful. then revisit SO2R once the single radio stuff feels automatic.

the BY-1 is a solid paddle, good choice for a first one. i went through almost the exact same thing when i switched and honestly i just kept the straight key on the desk for a while and used whichever felt right for whatever i was doing. no rule says you have to commit fully right away. also check your paddle tension and gap settings — the BY-1 has pretty good adjustability and if the gaps are too wide it makes the transition even harder because you're working too hard to actuate it

yeah the cluster thing can be a mess, you're not imagining it. QRZ pulls from a selection of cluster nodes but DXwatch aggregates from a wider network so you'll definitely see differences depending on what nodes each one is connected to at any given time. the age of spots is the big killer for me, i always sort by time and ignore anything more than like 20-30 minutes old unless it's a real rare one where i want to know the last heard frequency at least. one thing that helped me a lot was just picking one or two tools and sticking with them rather than having three browser tabs open getting confused. i mostly use DXwatch filtered to my bands and regions of interest, and then i use the DX summit site as a backup sometimes. the QRZ integration is convenient if youre already looking up a call but i wouldnt rely on it as your main spotting source. also check if your logging software has a built in telnet cluster connection, that cuts out the web middleman entirely and the spots come in much faster.

so we finally got enough people together to do a proper tabletop-turned-actual drill for our county ARES group and honestly it was way more humbling than i expected. we ran a scenario where the EOC had lost all commercial power and landlines and we had to establish comms between the EOC, three shelters, and the hospital. sounds simple on paper right the first thing that fell apart was just knowing who was supposed to be where. we had a net control at the EOC but two people showed up at the wrong shelter and one guy didnt even know there was a drill happening because the email went to his spam. so right off the bat we had gaps in coverage we didnt plan for. second thing — and this one really stung — was that our backup power situation at the EOC wasnt actually tested before the drill. the generator kicked on fine but the radio connected to it had a grounding issue that was causing all kinds of noise and our net control could barely copy anything from the shelters on 2m. we ended up switching to a handheld which worked but that shouldnt have been the solution ya know overall though i think it was really valuable. we learned more in 4 hours than we had in months of just talking about emcomm at meetings. anyone else done something similar recently? curious what scenarios other groups are using and what caught you off guard

so i finally pulled the trigger on a FT-7900 for my truck and ive been going back and forth on where to mount the antenna for probably two weeks now. right now im leaning toward a lip mount on the rear hatch but my buddy keeps telling me i should do a NMO through the roof and just deal with the hole. he's probably right but man, drilling a hole in a 2019 truck feels wrong for what its worth im mostly gonna be using it for local 2m repeaters and maybe some simplex when im out hiking and want to monitor from the parking lot. nothing crazy. but i still want a decent signal and not have the cab eating half my RF anyone done a lip mount on a pickup or SUV and been happy with it? or is roof NMO really that much better that its worth the commitment. also still havent figured out where to run the coax inside, the firewall grommets on these newer trucks are kind of a nightmare

im actually planning to go, its only like 45 min from me. never been to one before so not really sure what to expect tbh. do people actually negotiate prices or is it more like set prices on everything

same boat as you were a while back, i was confused by all of this too. what finally clicked for me was thinking of them as just different systems that dont really talk to each other. LoTW is the ARRL's system and its the gold standard for their awards. eQSL is separate and has its own awards. paper cards are for ARRL awards too if you mail them in through a card checker or bureau. the bureau thing is worth knowing about btw — your local ARRL section usually has an incoming and outgoing QSL bureau and its like pennies per card compared to direct mailing. takes forever to arrive but if you're not in a hurry its a nice way to swap cards without spending a fortune on postage, especially for DX

congrats man, that first QSO nervousness is completely real. i remeber sitting with the mic for like 20 minutes before I finally keyed up on a net back in 2019. you get over it fast though once you realize most folks on the repeaters are just happy to have someone to talk to. welcome to the hobby, upgrade to general when you get a chance, HF opens up a whole different world

congrats on the first one, that feeling when you hit your 4th contact is pretty great right? For the logging question honestly most people just do whatever works for them, I use HAMRS too and yeah i just shove the summit ref in the notes. Some folks use a separate spreadsheet just for SOTA. As long as its on SOTAdata thats really all that matters for the points and records. On the points thing — the value you see on the summit page is the points you award to chasers, your activator points are separate. If you click over to your activator log on the dashboard you should see what you actually earned. Most summits in that range are 2 points for the activator I think but it depends on the prominence. Might be worth double checking the summit entry on the SOTA mapping project, it shows the full breakdown.

honestly the rate dropoff you're describing sounds pretty normal for single band running behavior, the low hanging fruit gets worked and then you're either hunting for new mults or waiting for propagation to shift. SO2R can help but its a pretty significant jump in complexity and if your rate problem is mostly technique then two radios wont magically fix it. the thing that helped me most before i ever touched a second radio was just being more aggressive about when to switch from running to S&P and back. a lot of guys stay on a run frequency way too long when the rate has cratered and they'd do better just cruising the band for mults and then finding a new run freq. also if youre not logging dupes immediately and watching your dupe rate you might be wasting time on stations you already worked. the 7300 is plenty of radio for this, its really more about the operating rhythm. that said if you do eventually want to try SO2R on the cheap, pairing the 7300 with something like an old TS-570 or even a 590 and running them into a good antenna switch isnt crazy money. but id honestly focus on squeezing more out of one radio first, theres probably 20-30 more Q's per hour available to you just from cleaner operating habits

no hard rule in part 97 that says you must use NATO phonetics specifically, its just convention and the reason its convention is because it actually works — those words were chosen specifically because they're distinct sounding across different accents and bad propagation. the "A for apple" stuff you hear is fine in a casual ragchew but if youre doing a contest or trying to pass a callsign through static and QRM youll really appreciate having words that dont sound like each other. i had a guy once give me his call with "S for sugar" and i heard it as "F for sugar" which made zero sense and we went back and forth three times. just learn the NATO ones and use them, it becomes automatic pretty fast.

so ive been doing a lot of hilltop portable ops lately mostly on 2m and 70cm, usually trying to hit repeaters 60-80 miles out or just work simplex with buddies across the valley. right now im lugging a 5/8 wave mag mount on a small ground plane i cobbled together but honestly the results have been kind of inconsistent and i cant tell if its my radio, the feedline, or just the antenna being the weak link. been looking at either building a 5 element yagi for 2m or just buying one of those diamond or comet dual band collinears that are like 4-5 feet long. the yagi obviously wins on gain in one direction but then i have to point the thing and it gets annoying when people are calling from different directions. the collinear seems more practical for a portable setup but im wondering how much gain im actually giving up in a real world situation not just on paper. anyone done back to back comparisons on a hilltop? and yeah i know the answer is probably 'just build both and try' but curious what others have found before i start cutting elements

so ive been messing around with a generic RTL-SDR V3 dongle for about six months now, mostly just scanning trunked P25 systems locally and doing some aircraft ADS-B stuff with dump1090. it works fine for that honestly. but ive been eyeing the SDRplay RSP1A and people keep saying its a massive improvement and i cant tell if thats just people justifying their own purchase or if it actually matters. main things i do: wideband scanning, some HF with the direct sampling mod on the RTL, and ive been trying to get into decoding some weak signal stuff on lower HF bands. the RTL handles HF but its pretty mediocre, lots of noise floor issues and the dynamic range is kind of garbage when theres a strong AM broadcast station anywhere near what im trying to listen to. like last night i was trying to pull in something around 7 MHz and the 50kW AM station on 710 was just trashing everything in the neighborhood. is the RSP1A actually noticeably better for that kind of thing or should i just save up and jump straight to a HackRF or something. i know the HackRF is transmit capable too but im not sure i need that, just want better receive.