Amanda Wilson

I ran RemoteRig for years through a 40ms cable connection and found setting the LF delay to match your ping time works well. Start with 120ms delay and fine-tune from there. The local keyer makes all the difference - you'll send perfect CW once dialed in.

so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i still feel weird about when to use the NATO phonetics vs just spelling something out normally. like if someone asks me to confirm my callsign i always do the full thing, alpha bravo whatever, but then sometimes i hear guys on the local repeater just say letters normally and it sounds fine. is there like an actual rule or is it just feel for what the band conditions are like? i dont want to sound like im overdoing it on a clear 2m repeater but also dont want to be that guy who nobody can copy on HF. also is it bad form to mix them, like say some phonetics and then just letters? i feel like ive definitely done that by accident

ok so ive been licensed for about 8 months now and i keep hearing different things about how to confirm contacts. my elmer told me to sign up for LoTW which i did but then someone in a pileup mentioned eQSL and now i see people mailing actual paper cards and i genuinely dont know what the expectation is here. like is there some kind of standard or do you just pick one and go with it? i uploaded my adif from WSJT-X to LoTW and i think it worked but honestly not sure if i did it right because i have like 200 qsos in there and only 12 show as confirmed. is that normal or did i mess something up in the setup. the tqsl thing was confusing to set up and i wasnt sure which station location to use so i just guessed also what do people actually DO with paper qsl cards these days, like do you need them for any awards or is that just kind of a tradition thing at this point

i had almost the exact same setup question last year and went with the vertical mainly because i thought it would be easier to put up. it wasnt, the radials took forever and i ended up with like 12 of them which probably isnt enough. signals are ok but i always wonder if im leaving something on the table. might try a dipole next just to compare

so ive been a tech for about 3 years and just upgraded to general last month, and i always told myself id learn morse even though its not required anymore. got myself a cheap set of paddles off ebay — not sure of the brand honestly, the label is in chinese — and plugged it into my old kenwood and started messing around with the keyer built into the rig. the problem is everything i send sounds like garbage. i can copy probably 10-12 wpm when im listening to slow code practice but when i actually try to send at even 8 wpm it falls apart. letters that should be dits are coming out as dahs and i keep squeezing wrong. im not sure if its the paddles, the keyer settings, or just my hand being dumb. probably my hand honestly. also i keep second guessing myself mid-letter which makes it worse. is this just a thing you have to grind through or is there something specific that helped you guys get past it?

All station components should be grounded to a single point - it's the station that needs grounding, not the antenna. Use a short section of copper plumbing pipe as your single point ground. The station ground is a DC safety ground - any ground wire is a single wire circuit without an equal and opposite conductor.

so ive been trying to figure out if its worth making the drive out to xenia again this year. last time i went was like 2019 and it was a blast but i ended up spending way too much money on random stuff i didnt need. found a really nice old drake r4b for cheap though so i cant complain too much. anyway is anyone else planning on going? our local club is talking about maybe renting a van and doing a group thing which sounds fun but also kind of a nightmare depending on who signs up lol. also if anyone knows if the outdoor flea market vendors are back to full capacity id love to know, last i heard some years it gets thin out there

Excellent points about battery life! The equipment used during the exercise was in a "go kit." Operators used battery power during the exercise as a proof of concept but real-world continuous operation is very different from practice. Adding solar panels to my kit after reading this.

Are you using filtered APRS-IS feeds in your area? Many IGates now use filtered feeds that filter out message traffic unless directed to stations within a given range of that IGate. Message traffic to a visitor will not be delivered unless that person transmits a valid local position report.

Run direct to the battery with proper fusing, no question about it. Do a proper install, power off the battery directly. Do NOT tap into existing vehicle wiring, and for the love of God and all things holy, do NOT use cigarette lighter sockets. Use 10AWG minimum for a 50W radio and install a 20A fuse at the battery.

i just passed my tech last month so this is pretty fresh for me. the thing that helped me most was just doing practice tests over and over on hamStudy until i was consistently getting like 85% or better, then i felt ready. there were a couple questions on the actual exam i didnt recognize but enough felt familiar that i passed no problem. one thing i wish someone told me is that some test sessions have walk-ins and some require you to register ahead of time so check before you just show up somewhere

Check your Contest Setup in N1MM+ Configurer. You also need to ensure that the Contest Setup is configured to include Digital modes (otherwise digital mode contacts will not be given points credit). Common oversight that causes QSOs to log but not score properly.

Many abbreviations were created for Morse code efficiency, and classics like 73 are still universally used across all modes. Even in digital modes, brevity matters for weak signal work. I use TNX, FB, and WX regularly in both CW and digital contacts - they're timeless!

headlamp. seriously. everyone forgets a headlamp. and maybe a small fan if your battery has the headroom for it because sitting in an EOC or a served agency with that rig running gets warm fast and LiFePO4 doesnt love heat as much as people think. also a notepad separate from your logbook just for scratch notes, frequencies someone gives you verbally, that kind of thing. sounds minor until you dont have one.

My first local hamfest is coming up next month (RARSfest in North Carolina), and I'm pretty excited but not sure what to expect. I've got my General and about $300 burning a hole in my pocket. Any tips for a hamfest newbie? Should I bring cash? Are the used gear prices usually reasonable? I'm mainly interested in HF stuff but open to anything that catches my eye.

dude same, did this last thursday. fell asleep with the headphones on lmao. woke up to some guy calling cq dx at like 2am and i was so out of it i almost answered him on the wrong vfo

yeah what the other guy said about two-way igates is spot on. also double check your UNPROTO path on the D710 — theres kind of a buried setting where the message path can be set separately from your beacon path on some firmware versions, i got bit by that once where my beacons were going out fine but messages were using some weird default. its worth going through the APRS menu again just to verify everything is set the same. also are you getting ANY acks at all, even delayed ones? sometimes it works eventually just really slowly depending on how busy the digis are.

the audio latency thing with RemoteHams is real and it kind of depends a lot on what codec settings youre using. if youre on the default settings it tends to buffer more than it needs to. i dropped my buffer down pretty aggressively and it helped but you do get some occasional glitching when the connection hiccups. for ragchewing its workable but you have to kind of mentally adjust — i tell people im on a remote and most of them get it. the 20 up on the remote end might actually be your bottleneck depending on how many audio channels and how much of the SDR spectrum youre trying to push back. if youre pulling a wide SDR slice across the link that eats bandwidth fast. try narrowing your SDR display width and see if the audio path gets any cleaner, worked for me when i was on a similar setup with a 7610 remote.

I had the exact same problem with my UV-5R! Your radio must transmit the correct tone along with your voice signal or the repeater won't retransmit. Double-check you're using the input frequency too, not just the output.

not a dumb question at all, everyone goes through this. so the short version is CTCSS is a subaudible tone your radio transmits along with your voice — you cant hear it but the repeater's receiver is listening for it. if the repeater doesn't hear that specific tone it just ignores your signal, which is exactly what you're experiencing. it was originally designed to prevent the repeater from keying up on noise or interference from other signals on the same frequency, but yeah there's sometimes also a social element where a repeater club uses it to keep casual passers-through from just randomly using their machine. DCS is a different system, it uses a digital code instead of an audio tone but serves basically the same purpose. most of the time around here you'll see CTCSS, DCS is less common on local repeaters but not rare either. for your baofeng specifically you want to go into the menu and find the T-CTCS setting (that's for transmit tone) and make sure it matches what repeaterbook shows for that repeater. there's also an R-CTCS for receive but you usually dont need to set that unless you specifically want to squelch incoming signals. just double check youre setting the transmit one. once you get that sorted it should open right up. good luck

congrats on the first activation, 67 QSOs is a great start especially on a new program. for the log upload you want to go to wwff.cc and submit your ADIF there, make sure your ADIF has the WWFF reference in the right field or it wont parse correctly, ive seen people trip over that one. some logging programs handle it automatically but others you have to add it manually. the POTA overlap thing — yeah some parks are dual listed which is handy because you can upload the same log to both programs and get credit for both activations at once. not all references overlap though, just depends on whether the land is also in the POTA database. and yeah if you work another activator who is also activating a WWFF reference at the same time, that counts as a P2P contact and both of you get a little flag on the log, its not double points exactly but its tracked separately and chaser-hunters like seeing those.

so anyway i went through almost the exact same thing when i first got on the air, the baofeng menus are genuinely terrible and i spent like two evenings figuring out why nobody could hear me. turned out i had the offset going the wrong direction lol. once i fixed that and got the tone set right it was fine. one thing i'd add is that some repeaters are also linked to other systems, like echolink or IRLP or sometimes a whole network of repeaters that are all connected together. if your local one is linked then when you transmit you're potentially going out to a bunch of other repeaters at once which is kind of cool but also means you want to be a little thoughtful about tying up the system. usually there's a courtesy tone or a short beep after someone finishes talking, wait for that before you key up.

i went through this exact same thing last year. what finally clicked for me was the Morse Mania app, i used it on my phone during lunch breaks and stuff. its got the Koch method built in and it kind of gamifies it a little which helped me stay consistent. the thing nobody tells you is that consistency matters way more than how long you practice in one sitting, like 15 minutes every day will get you further than 2 hours on a saturday and then nothing for a week. also there are some youtube videos by a guy called the CW academy i think, or maybe its just CW ops who runs it, but they have actual structured courses with instructors and practice partners which sounds pretty great if you want something more structured than just an app. i havent done the full course myself but ive heard good things on here before.

Finally upgrading from my Technician license setup to General class and need advice on HF transceivers under $1500. Considering the IC-7300 at around $1070, but also seeing good things about the newer Xiegu models and some Yaesu options. Based on more than 120 responses, the usual transceiver suspects led the pack of the most-used rigs for Field Day 2024: Icom IC-7300 HF Plus 50 MHz Transceiver and the Icom IC-7300, available for around $1,069.95, connects to a computer without an external interface. Primary use will be ragchewing on 20m and 40m with some digital modes like FT8. Not interested in contesting at this point. What would you recommend for a solid first HF rig that won't break the bank?

congrats on the first one, 44 QSOs is exactly the threshold yep, you got it. for the logging question — in the US you'd be uploading to USFF which then feeds into the global WWFF database, so you dont really need to do both separately. just get it into the USFF system and it propagates up. the adif upload process is pretty straightforward once you've done it once. as for the time limit, theres no hard cutoff that im aware of but the sooner the better just so chasers can get credit. ive waited a couple weeks before when life got busy and nobody came after me with a pitchfork. just log into the WWFF logbook portal and follow the steps, took me maybe 10 minutes the first time. welcome to the addiction by the way, ive done probably 30 activations at this point and still get a kick out of every one