Kevin Jackson

so i finally took the plunge and built one of those youkits clones from a kit i ordered off qrz classifieds like six months ago, been sitting on my bench forever. took it out to the state park saturday with a buddipole and a 3ah lipo i had from an old drone project.
managed to get three contacts on 20m running about 4 watts, one of them was in spain which i was honestly shocked about. but i had a few weird things happen, signal reports were all over the place and at one point the rig just kind of... stopped transmitting mid qso. came back fine after i cycled the power but that was a little nerve wracking.
is that a thermal thing? temps were around 85 degrees out and i had it sitting on the picnic table in direct sun like an idiot. also wondering if anyone has tips for squeezing more efficiency out of these little rigs, i feel like im leaving watts on the table somewhere. antenna matching maybe? my swr was reading about 1.8:1 on most of the band.

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 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.

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.

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