Emily White

so i finally got activated for real last weekend, not just a drill. there was a pretty bad storm system that came through our county and the EOC requested ARES support around saturday evening. ive been a member of our local group for about 8 months now and done maybe 4 or 5 training nets and one tabletop exercise but nothing that actually counted for real. i was assigned to a shelter about 6 miles from the EOC and basically my job was just passing welfare traffic and keeping the net control updated on how many people were coming in. sounds simple and it mostly was, but man there were a few moments where things got a little hectic - the repeater we were supposed to use had some kind of issue early on and we had to switch to simplex for about 45 minutes which nobody had really practiced much. i managed okay but i was definitely fumbling around in my logbook more than id like to admit. anyway just wanted to share because i know a lot of folks on here are in ARES or thinking about joining and its one of those things where the drills feel almost too easy until something doesnt go according to plan. the training is worth it though, even when it feels repetitive. anybody else have a first activation story they remember?

haha yeah i remember that feeling, first qso is something else. mine was on 40 meters and i honestly forgot my callsign for a second when the other guy asked. congrats and welcome, it only gets more fun from here. get your general when you can, opens up a ton more bands

dont rule out the driver board yet. i had an 857 with almost the exact same symptoms and it turned out to be Q1017 on the driver board that had gone leaky. finals tested fine actually. the tricky part is you kind of need a signal tracer or at least a scope to follow the RF through the chain otherwise your just guessing at parts. theres a good thread on eham from like 2018 or 2019 that goes through the whole PA troubleshooting flow for the 857, might be worth digging up. yaesu's service manual is decent for this radio thankfully, better than some i've dealt with.

so ive been doing single op contesting for a few years now, mostly SS and CQWW, and ive been reading a lot about SO2R and how the top scores basically require it at this point. im running a K3 as my main rig and was thinking about picking up a used K3S or maybe an IC-7300 as a second radio. the whole two radio thing sounds great in theory but every time i try to wrap my head around the antenna switching and the audio routing my eyes glaze over. my main question i guess is whether the rate improvement is actually significant enough for someone who is not going to be in the top 10 of their category anyway, or is it really only worth it if youre seriously competitive. like im usually somewhere in the middle of the pack in my section. also wondering if anyone uses the microHAM stuff for the SO2R switching or if theres cheaper ways to do it that dont suck any thoughts appreciated, been going back and forth on this for a while

the stock hand mic on the 7300 is honestly just okay, its not terrible but its voiced kind of flat and doesnt have the presence boost you want for SSB where everything above like 2.5k gets cut off anyway. first thing id do is back off the mic gain until your ALC is barely moving on voice peaks, like occasional flickers not pegged. a lot of people run too much mic gain and then the ALC is working constantly which just smashes everything together and sounds muddy on the other end. for the TX eq i use a slight cut around 200-300hz to get rid of the boominess and a gentle boost somewhere around 1.5-2khz for presence, nothing dramatic. the speech processor on the 7300 is actually pretty decent but run it gentle, compression level around 3-4 not cranked up. and yeah use the TX monitor on headphones not speakers because you need to hear what youre actually putting out. once i dialed mine in people started commenting it sounded pretty good so its worth the time messing around in the menus

73 to you too lol. im pretty new myself, got my general last year and the abbreviations tripped me up for a while too. one thing that helped me was just keeping a little cheat sheet next to the radio for the first few months. QRZ is another big one, it means whos calling or whos there, youll hear it constantly when someone is running a pileup. also dont forget RST which isnt a Q code but its how people give signal reports, readability signal tone, usually something like 59 which means perfect. took me forever to figure out what people meant when they said you were a 59

so ive been going to this one for like 4 years now and its honestly one of the better ones in the region, they usually have a decent swap meet section and last year i picked up an old Kenwood TS-430 for basically nothing. just wondering if anyone else from the club is planning to head out there, might try to carpool if theres enough people going from this area

honestly the single yagi and 100w thing isnt gonna cut it for EME, at least not consistently, but youre not as far off as you might think either. the weak signal digital modes really did change the game. guys were working EME on 2m with 4 yagis and a kilowatt back in the CW days just to barely make it, now you can do it with less but you still need more than a single yagi and 100w if you want to actually make contacts rather than just decode someone once in a blue moon. realistically a 2x9 or 2x11 yagi setup with a 500-600w amp would be a starting point worth trying. you wont be loud but you can work the bigger stations. the key thing people underestimate is the preamp, like you absolutely need low noise figure right at the feedpoint, that M2 unit is decent so thats good. feedline loss is the enemy on EME, even a few dB kills you. moon position matters a lot, you want elevation above like 5-10 degrees at minimum, and both stations need the moon visible at the same time obviously. the EME2 and N0UK EME logger databases are how people coordinate skeds, theres also the ON4KST chat which is where a lot of real time coordination happens during activity periods. perigee vs apogee is like a 2dB path difference which doesnt sound like much but when youre already marginal it really matters.

okay so ive been trying to get Winlink Express working for probably three weeks now and im losing my mind a little. i got the software installed fine and i can connect to the Winlink network over the internet (telnet) no problem, but the whole point was to do this over RF so i can actually use it during an emergency or when im out portable. my setup is a 2m radio (Kenwood TM-V71A) hooked up to a Signalink USB for the audio and PTT. i configured the AX.25 packet stuff in Winlink Express and pointed it at VaraFM which i also have installed. the gateway in my area shows up in the RMS list, its about 22 miles away. when i try to connect it just sits there saying connecting and then times out. i can hear the gateway beacon periodically so i know the frequency is right. not sure if its a Vara license thing (i have the free version) or if my audio levels are totally off or what. i did go through the soundcard calibration in Vara and it looked okay to me but honestly i dont fully understand what im looking at. anybody dealt with this before?

yeah it takes a while, not gonna sugarcoat it. the first few contests i ran SO2R i actually had lower scores than my single radio efforts because the cognitive load just tanked my accuracy. what helped me was basically treating the second radio like a totally passive thing for the first hour or two of a contest — just run on radio 1, let radio 2 sit on a promising mult frequency you already found, and only touch it when you've got a natural gap in the pileup. dont try to actively S&P on both simultaneously until it becomes muscle memory. footswitch setup matters a lot. i have mine configured so one press locks audio to the active TX radio and i drilled that into my hands before i ever got on the air with it. the other thing is your macro timing — if your exchanges are sloppy or too long you're giving yourself less dead time to work the second radio. tighten up the macros, cut the unnecessary words, every second counts when you're trying to sneak in a S&P contact between run QSOs.

I'm pretty new to HF, just got my general a few months ago and set up a modest wire antenna situation in the backyard. should I be trying 10 meters right now to take advantage of this? I have an FT-991A and I kind of assumed 10m wasn't really worth it based on what I read before I got licensed but everyone keeps talking about it being open and now I'm second guessing myself. what times of day are best to check

yeah what he said about the active low thing, ran into exact same problem with a relay board i bought last year. took me way too long to figure that out lol. just handle it in the script. one thing id add — make sure you have some kind of interlock logic so it cant switch the antenna while youre transmitting. had a friend fry a relay doing exactly that during a contest. might be worth reading the PTT line or ALC or something to make sure the relay only moves when youre in receive. just a thought

i dont know maybe its just me but it feels like theres this weird split happening where you got the old timers who want everything to stay the same and then theres all these new people coming in through things like FT8 and starlink and whatever and neither group really talks to the other much. been licensed since 97 and i still love it but my local club meetings feel like a whole different world than what i see online. anyway not trying to start drama just curious if others are noticing this or if its just my area

the intermod thing is the real issue and yeah you do need hardware, theres no getting around it. at minimum you want bandpass filters on both radios before you even think about transmitting simultaneously. the 4O3A or Dunestar filters are what most people run, the 4O3A stuff is pricier but the insertion loss is lower which matters when you're already fighting for every db. if your dipoles are on different bands and reasonably separated physically you'll be in better shape than guys trying to run two verticals 20 feet apart. on the rate question - honestly for sweepstakes specifically SO2R is maybe not where i'd start because SS is as much about mults as raw rate. what i'd look at first is your run vs S&P ratio and whether you're leaving the run freq too often to chase mults. a lot of guys kill their rate doing that. SO2R helps because you can S&P on radio 2 while you're CQing on radio 1 and not give up the run freq at all, but you need to be able to mentally split your attention and that takes actual practice, like months of operating that way before a big contest.

not a dumb question at all, honestly EME is one of those modes where the barrier feels way higher than it actually is once you understand whats going on. your setup isnt bad for a start, two stacked M2 yagis and 200w will get you on the board with JT65B for sure, you just have to be realistic about who you can work. single yagi stations on the other end are probably out of reach but guys running 4 or 8 yagis with a kilowatt, yeah you can do that the path loss number is scary but JT65 effectively gives you something like 25-28 dB coding gain over SSB so its really not the same calculation it used to be in the analog days. add a good low noise preamp at the mast head and that makes a real difference, something with a noise figure under 0.5 dB ideally. the 9700 is fine for the IF, its got good dynamic range. main thing honestly is just pointing the antenna accurately, you need to be tracking the moon properly and a lot of people underestimate how critical that is. look at Nova for Windows or similar for tracking software and make sure your az/el rotators are actually accurate because a degree or two of pointing error at 144 MHz hurts first thing id do is just get on 144.120 during a big EME contest weekend and listen. you might be surprised what you can decode even with what you have now

so ive been a ham for about 3 years now, mostly just doing local repeater stuff and a little HF on weekends, but after watching what happened with the storms last spring I started thinking I really need to get my emergency kit sorted out properly. like actually usable, not just a pile of stuff in a bag. right now I have a Yaesu FT-60 and a little Baofeng as backup, a 12ah LiFePO4 battery, some coax, and a roll-up J-pole I made from ladder line. stuffed most of it in a backpack but honestly its kind of a mess in there and I wouldnt want to try setting it up in the dark under pressure. I guess my question is more about the organization side of things — do you guys use hard cases, those pelican type things, or just good bags? and is there stuff I keep forgetting that you only figure out after you actually deploy somewhere? I feel like theres always that one thing you left out. also not sure if I should bother with HF capability in the go kit or if thats overkill for most ARES activations. my county group mostly does VHF/UHF stuff but I dunno

so ive been licensed for about 3 months now and i keep hearing people talk about checking into nets and i finally decided to try it last week. found a local 2m net that meets every tuesday at 7pm and i just... sat there with my radio on and honestly had no idea when to jump in or what to say when the net control called for check-ins. i think i missed my window like twice because i waited too long and then someone else was already talking. eventually i just said my callsign and the net control came back to me and got my info but i felt like such a mess the whole time. is there like a standard thing you're supposed to say when you check in? i just said my callsign and my name and location but the guy before me gave like a whole signal report and mentioned if he had traffic and i had no idea what that meant also how do you find out about special event stations, i saw something about a W1AW operation coming up and want to try to work it but dont really know how those work either

oh man yes, totally get this. some nights 40 is just wall to wall garbage and i end up drifting over to 80 where at least the local nets are going on. theres a tuesday night rag chew net a couple counties over i stumbled onto a few weeks back, nothing fancy just a few old timers talking about weather and grandkids but its weirdly nice background noise while im tinkering. your wife would probably still think its nuts lol but yeah theres definitely a comfort thing to it.

this is actually really helpful to read, im fairly new to ARES and havent been through a full exercise yet, just a couple of the smaller nets. the part about nobody knowing who the backup net control was is something i wouldnt have even thought about as a potential problem. im gonna ask our EC about how that's handled before the next one we do.

yeah the FCC system is not exactly user friendly lol. so the way it works is you file a vanity application through the ULS and you can list up to 25 callsigns in order of preference. the system then goes through a 18 day waiting period — you had the right number — and at the end of that window whoever applied for the same call gets thrown into a kind of lottery if there are multiple applicants, otherwise you just get it. it used to be strictly sequential but they changed that a while back. as for license class restrictions, yes they do apply. as a general you cant get a 1x2 or 2x1 format callsign, those are reserved for extras. generals can get 1x3 or 2x2 format calls depending on your district. so like W5ABC would be fine for a general but something like W5AB wouldnt be available to you. there are sites like ae7q.com that are way better than the FCC site for searching whats available and tracking applications, i'd start there honestly. makes the whole thing much less headache inducing.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been using an app called Ham Morse and its pretty good but i keep getting distracted and skipping days which is probably my whole problem lol. one thing that helped me was just listening to slow CW on the air even before i could copy it, like just having it on in the background while im doing other stuff. not sure if thats scientifically the right thing to do but it feels like it helped me get comfortable with how it actually sounds vs the app. anyway still very much a work in progress over here so dont take my advice too seriously

Setting up for emergency communications drills and having serious RFI problems with my Champion 2000W inverter generator. Generators are efficient but create too much interference for reliable radio operations in the field. The noise floor jumps 20dB across HF bands when running, making weak signal work impossible. Have tried ferrite chokes on AC and DC leads with minimal improvement. Home Depot or Lowes generators (the cheap ones) are not well regulated and can damage your equipment. What specific generator models work well for ham radio field operations? Considering switching to solar power, which almost always works well in keeping batteries topped up as primary with generator backup only for battery charging.

honestly the exam itself is very passable with just pool memorization, thats the truth. i did it in maybe 6 weeks studying on hamstudy.org every night for like 20 minutes. but heres the thing — i actually found myself wanting to understand the stuff rather than just memorize it because some of those questions dont make any sense unless you get the concept behind them. the impedance matching stuff especially, once it clicked it clicked and then a bunch of other questions just fell into place. the extra band privileges are real by the way. on 20m cw i work out of the extra segment pretty often and yeah its noticeably less chaotic. whether thats worth the study time is up to you but i dont think its nearly as hard as people make it sound. took me longer to find a test session than it did to feel ready for the test.

the inverting transponder thing tripped me up for like 3 passes before it clicked. also are you accounting for the fact that you need to hear yourself before you can work anyone -- some people jump straight to calling CQ and they havent even confirmed their signal is getting through the bird yet. wasted a lot of my early passes doing exactly that lol

oh man i was so nervous my first net check-in too lol. i actually wrote out what i was going to say on a notepad beforehand which sounds dumb but it helped. the net control on our local net was super patient about it. you'll be fine honestly people on these things are not judging you at all. the national park special event stations are really fun i worked a couple last summer. just google the callsign they announce and it usually comes up on QRZ with all the details including what bands they're operating. sometimes they post a spot on the DX clusters too so that makes it even easier to find them.