Brian Harris

ha yeah the first one is always a bit of a disaster, dont sweat it. i forgot my coax adapter on my second activation and had to pack everything back down without making a single contact, that was a fun drive home. the random wire will treat you better once you get a feel for throwing it. some people use a fishing rod or a slingshot to get it up faster, might be worth looking into if youre doing more summits

yeah you've basically got it right. LoTW is the gold standard if you're chasing DXCC or any of the ARRL awards, thats what actually counts for those. eQSL is its own thing and some people swear by it but it wont count toward official ARRL awards unless they accept that particular award credit which most of the big ones dont. a lot of folks use eQSL just because they enjoy having the digital cards, theyre kinda fun to collect honestly. for uploading to LoTW you pretty much just export your log in ADIF format from whatever logging software youre using, run it through TQSL to sign it with your certificate, and upload. if you're using something like Log4OM or WSJT-X with a decent logging setup it can sometimes do it almost automatically. dont stress about doing anything special to the log beforehand, just make sure your callsign and the dates are right. and yeah physical cards are still very much a thing. some DX stations only confirm via bureau cards, and for certain rare ones the card itself is kind of a trophy. i still send cards for any really memorable QSOs or when someone sends me one first. the bureau is slow but cheap, direct mail costs more but you get the card in a few weeks usually. totally up to you whether you bother but dont feel like you have to do it for every contact

so ive been a General for about 3 years now and i keep putting off the Amateur Extra exam because honestly the math stuff scared me off. i did fine on the Technician and General without really digging too deep into the theory but from what i hear Extra is a whole different animal. like the stuff about filter design and transmission line theory and all that... is it actually as hard as people make it out to be or am i overthinking it. i guess my main question is how much of the actual math do you need to understand vs just memorizing the answer pool. also is it even worth it at this point, i mostly do HF work on the general segments and i dont really do a lot of contesting or DX where the Extra segments would matter that much. just kind of on the fence

so i passed my technician exam about 3 weeks ago and ive been trying to figure out exactly what i'm allowed to operate on. i know i have VHF/UHF privileges pretty much across the board but the HF stuff is where it gets confusing for me. i was reading Part 97 and there's stuff about phone privileges on 10 meters and some CW segments on other bands but honestly the way its written makes my head spin a little. my main question is like... if someone invites me to join a net on 40 meters are they just assuming i have a general or higher license? because i thought techs had basically nothing on 40m except maybe some CW sub-band i read about somewhere. also is there anything in Part 97 that specifically says i have to ID every 10 minutes or is that one of those things people say but isnt exactly how the rule reads. sorry if this is a dumb question, just trying to not accidentally break any rules while im still figuring this out

So ive been messing with Winlink for a few weeks now and i think i have the basic concept down but the actual setup is giving me fits. Running Winlink Express on a Windows 10 box, got a Signalink USB hooked to my IC-7300, and im trying to connect through one of the local RMS gateways on 2m. The gateway shows up in the list and i can see it beacon but when i actually try to initiate a session it gets like halfway through the handshake and just drops. Sometimes it says "channel busy" and sometimes it just times out with no real error. Ive gone through the Winlink Express settings probably four times and i cant figure out what im doing wrong. My audio levels look okay in the waterfall, the Signalink TX light comes on, but the session just doesnt complete. The gateway is only like 8 miles away so path shouldnt be the problem. Is there something with the Vara FM setup that im probably missing? i did update to the latest Vara FM version but maybe i configured something wrong in the modem settings. Any ideas before i give up and just go HF.

so ive been running an RTL-SDR v3 with SDR# for maybe eight or nine months now and honestly its been pretty great for getting into this stuff. mostly doing wide scan monitoring, some aircraft stuff with dump1090, and occasionally trying to pull in some HF with the direct sampling mode. the HF direct sampling thing works but its... rough. lots of noise, images all over the place, and anything below like 5 MHz is kind of a mess unless conditions are really good. anyway i keep seeing people talk up the SDRplay RSP1A and the price point isnt insane, its what, $110 or so. supposedly the front end is way better and the 12-bit ADC makes a difference on crowded bands. but then i also see people saying just get a HackRF if you want to actually transmit eventually. i dont really care about transmitting right now, just want better receive performance especially on HF. has anyone actually compared the two side by side or made this jump? wondering if its worth it or if im just chasing marginal gains and should spend that money on a better antenna instead

N1MM+ is basically the standard for serious contesting, it's free and handles CQ WW really well with all the multiplier tracking built in. Log4OM is more of an everyday logging program and while you can contest with it, most people running high rates use N1MM. give yourself a day to set it up before the contest weekend though because there's a bit of a learning curve with the interface, nothing crazy but youll want to have it figured out before youre trying to copy callsigns at 100 per hour as for Field Day vs CQ WW — they're pretty different animals. Field Day is more of an event than a pure contest, lots of casual operating and the exchange is simple. CQ WW has a proper exchange with signal report and CQ zone which you need to know going in. but honestly the best thing you can do is just operate. even if you only make 50 contacts the whole weekend you'll learn more in those two days than months of regular operating. dont stress the score, just have fun with it

we ran almost this exact setup at a simulated emergency test last fall, ic-7300 off a bioenno 100ah lifepo4 with a jackite pole and EFHW. ran 7 hours no problem, battery was at like 60% when we packed up. only thing i'd add is bring a small panel if the exercise is in daylight, even a 50w panel can offset your receive current and basically make the battery last forever for that kind of ops tempo. one thing that bit us — noise from a nearby vendor's generator at the park. had S7 noise across 40m for a couple hours in the afternoon. nothing you can do about that really but worth having a plan to move the antenna feedpoint if you can, putting some distance between you and whatever else is running there.

ok so ive been licensed for about 3 months now (Tech) and ive been trying to get on the local 2m repeater. i programmed the offset and everything but nobody ever seems to hear me. finally figured out there was a CTCSS tone required which i didnt know about at first, found it listed on the repeaterbook page as 100.0 Hz. programmed that in and now the repeater opens up when i key up but im still not sure im doing it right. like when i transmit the squelch tail is there but nobody responds. is that normal? do people just not monitor it that much or am i supposed to say something specific when i first get on? i dont really know the etiquette for breaking into a repeater. back when i was studying for the exam it kind of glossed over the actual practical stuff of how you join a conversation or announce yourself. also theres another repeater nearby that shows a different tone, 127.3, and when i tried that one it just squelched open and stayed open and made a weird noise. not sure what that was about. any help appreciated

im kind of in the same boat as you, just started thinking about this seriously after my county had a big flooding situation and they were asking for ham volunteers and I realized I wasnt really ready to just show up and be useful. one thing I kept seeing mentioned in the ARRL emcomm stuff was having some kind of written log of what equipment is in your kit and serial numbers, mostly for insurance reasons I guess but also just so you can do a quick check before a deployment to make sure nothings grown legs and walked off. probably overkill for most people but seemed smart. also does your battery setup have a way to monitor voltage without pulling out a multimeter? I got a little inline watt meter thing off amazon for like 12 bucks and its been really handy for knowing where my battery is at a glance.

congrats on getting out there, W6/NC-192 is a decent one. I've chased that summit a couple times from home. if you ever post your activation on SOTAwatch next time I'll try to spot you and get in the log - always good to have chasers lined up when youre scrambling to hit 4.

im in almost the exact same boat, been licensed about a year and just started messing with DX chasing a few months ago. one app i found that helps on the phone side is DX Toolbox, it has cluster spots built in and you can tap a callsign and get some basic info without jumping to a browser. its not perfect and sometimes the data feels a little thin compared to just looking someone up on qrz directly but for a quick check while im at the radio its pretty handy. the stale spots drove me crazy at first too. i still get fooled sometimes, tune to a frequency and hear nothing or just a pile of people calling into dead air. i think thats just part of the learning curve honestly

so ive had my ts-590sg for going on 6 years now and honestly its been rock solid, no complaints really. but ive been eyeing the ic-7300 for a while and just wondering if anyone has actually made that switch and whether it felt like a meaningful upgrade or just kind of lateral. i mostly do ssb on 40 and 20, some occasional 10m when the band cooperates, and i dabble in ft8 but im not super serious about digital modes. the main thing pulling me toward the icom is the built-in waterfall display because right now im running an sdr dongle on the side just to get that visual which feels kind of janky. but i dunno, the kenwood receiver always felt really clean to me and im not sure id want to give that up. anyone run both at some point? or even just have opinions on whether the 7300s rx holds up compared to the 590. not in a huge rush to do anything, just kind of turning it over in my head. shack is pretty simple, just the radio into an ldk autotuner and out to a g5rv up about 30 feet.

so ive been using WSJT-X for FT8 and it logs to its own file which i then import into Log4OM and that works fine most of the time but last weekend i tried doing a CW contest and everyone kept telling me N1MM is basically mandatory for serious contesting and i get that but now im juggling like three different logs and trying to figure out how to keep them all synced up without things getting duplicated or lost my main question i guess is does anyone actually run N1MM as their primary logger even outside of contests or is it really just a contest-only thing. the interface kind of intimidates me honestly, all those windows everywhere. Log4OM feels way more comfortable for day to day stuff but if i have to switch every time there's a contest that seems annoying. and then theres the WSJT-X side of things which sort of does its own thing regardless anyone figured out a clean workflow here or am i overcomplicating this

i went through this exact thing like 8 months ago when i got my ticket. ended up keeping my sequential call for a while then applied for a vanity once i upgraded to general. the FCC vanity system is a little clunky but not terrible once you figure out where everything is in ULS. one thing i didnt realize at first — if the callsign you want is held by someone who recently passed away or let their license expire theres sometimes a holding period before it becomes available again, i think its 2 years after expiration? could be off on that. so if theres a specific call you have your eye on that belonged to a silent key you might have to wait a bit. theres a site called AE7Q that tracks call availability and its super useful for checking if something is available or when it might open up

this is actually really good timing for this post because i literally just got my tech license last month and have been trying to figure out what HF radio to save up for. i cant afford the 7610 but the 7300 seems like the sweet spot everyone recommends. if theres something new coming out though should i wait? or is that one of those things where you wait forever and something is always around the corner lol

so i finally got around to building a proper 40m dipole instead of using that crappy random wire ive had strung up for the past two years. cut it to roughly 66 feet total using the 468/f formula, fed it with some RG-8X i had lying around and a SO-239 chassis connector i pulled off an old dummy load enclosure. center insulator is just a piece of pvc pipe with a couple holes drilled through and some cord to support the coax. heres my issue though — when i measured with my antenna analyzer before i got it up in the air i was getting a pretty clean resonance right around 7.1 MHz, SWR was like 1.3:1 which i was happy with. but once i got it up (its an inverted V, apex at about 30 feet off a tree with the ends closer to 10 feet), the resonance shifted down to like 6.85 or so and now the SWR at 7.1 is more like 2.8:1. i know the inverted V config shortens the effective electrical length a bit but i thought it went the other way... like it gets shorter electrically not longer? or am i wrong about that. my buddy said just trim it but i want to understand whats actually happening before i start cutting. also the coax is running along the ground for most of its length to the shack window which is maybe 80 feet of feedline. doesnt seem like that should matter but figured id mention it.

so ive been messing around with this for a few weeks now and i think im finally getting somewhere. basically what i wanted was something that would automatically log contacts to cloudlog whenever i key up, pull from my IC-7300's CI-V interface, and also flip a relay to cut power to my amp if the SWR spikes past a threshold i set. seemed simple enough on paper. the pi zero W is handling the serial comms fine, i got pyserial talking to the radio no problem, and i can read frequency, mode, all that. the relay part is working too — just a little 5v relay board from amazon wired to GPIO 17, nothing fancy. the issue im running into is timing. like if i poll the radio too fast it seems to confuse the CI-V and i get garbage back sometimes. slowing the poll down to like 500ms helps but then theres a lag before the relay trips which kind of defeats the purpose for the SWR protection thing. also tried doing it with an arduino nano first but keeping a wifi connection stable on an arduino is kind of a pain unless you throw an ESP8266 at it, which then becomes its own project. the pi just makes more sense for anything that needs to talk to the internet i think. anyway curious if anyone else has gone down this rabbit hole and whether there's a smarter way to handle the polling timing issue.

dont sweat it, literally everyone does the fast callsign thing the first few times. i checked into a traffic net once and completely forgot to say whether i had traffic or not and just went silent like an idiot. net control was super patient about it though. the guy stepping on net control is kind of a separate thing, could be he doesnt realize his radio has a weird delay or his squelch tail is long or something. not always on purpose. though sometimes it is lol

yeah the battery thing gets everyone eventually. we had almost the exact same issue during a winlink drill we ran a couple winters back — operators who swore their setup was good and then couldn't sustain even modest HF digital traffic for more than an hour or two. what we started doing after that is requiring every operator to do a timed battery rundown test at home before any activation or exercise and just report their results to the EC. nothing formal, just hey i ran my station for three hours on battery, here's roughly what i drew and how the voltage held up. it got people actually paying attention to their power situation instead of assuming everything was fine. on the priority traffic thing, we've had decent luck with a really simple laminated card that lives in the go kit with the net control script. just three tiers, emergency, priority, routine, with a one sentence description of each. sounds dumb but when you're tired or stressed your brain really does just want a thing to look at. the best muscle memory drill we found was doing short 30 minute tabletops on simplex where net control has to deal with overlapping check-ins — you can do that from your kitchen basically.

yeah the dipole orientation thing bugged me for a long time until someone explained that at typical NVIS angles on 40m the pattern is way more forgiving than the textbook figure-8 makes it seem. if youre doing NVIS to hit an EOC a few hundred miles away the polarization and orientation matters less than you think, most of the signal is going almost straight up anyway. where it really bites you is if you need a low angle shot, like if the EOC is 800+ miles out and youre trying to use skip. then yeah a vertical or getting the dipole oriented right would matter more. for what its worth i ran into almost the exact same genny noise problem at a RACES drill a couple years back. ended up wrapping the power cord through a big clamp-on ferrite a few times right where it entered the tent and that made a noticeable difference on top of what a choke on the coax was doing. might be worth trying a few in series if you havent already.

so ive been meaning to do this for probably two years now and after the storms we had last month that knocked out power for like four days i finally got serious about it. right now i have a Yaesu FT-817ND which i know isnt the most powerful thing but its what i have, and im pairing it with a 20ah lifepo4 battery i picked up last spring. got a random wire antenna i can throw up in a tree, some coax, a few connectors. the thing is i dont really know what else should go in the bag. like i have the radio stuff covered i think but what about the non-radio stuff? someone at the club meeting mentioned having a laminated card with local repeater frequencies and ARES net info but beyond that im kind of drawing a blank. also not sure what kind of bag/case people are actually using in the field, mine is just a duffel right now and thats probably not ideal if its raining. any suggestions from people who have actually deployed these things would be really helpful, not looking for the perfect setup just something that actually works when things go sideways

yeah the Koch method is probably the most recommended approach these days and honestly its the one i wish id used when i started instead of just memorizing dots and dashes visually which is a trap you do not want to fall into. the whole idea is you learn each character at full speed from the beginning, like 20wpm or whatever, but you space them way out so you have time to think. the point is your brain learns to hear the rhythm of each letter as a sound pattern instead of counting dits and dahs which will absolutely wreck you when you try to copy anything at real speeds later there's a free program called LCWO dot net that does this whole method online, you just work through the characters one at a time and it tracks your progress. also the app Just Learn Morse Code on PC is good. some people like the Morse Toad app on phone for drilling on the go. honestly just pick one and stick with it every single day even if its only ten or fifteen minutes, consistency matters way more than cramming for an hour once a week and yes people absolutely still use CW, on HF its everywhere especially on the lower parts of the bands, and some folks will tell you signals get through on CW when phone is totally buried in the noise which is true. worth learning if you're curious about it

yeah the math doesnt really capture it. ive run both from hilltop sites and honestly the yagi wins every time for weak signal SSB work, but only if you can point it. the thing people forget is that most of your interesting contacts on 2m tropo are going to come from a fairly predictable direction based on your geography — if youre on a ridge line you probably already know which path opens up most often. a fixed yagi pointed at your best path isnt as limiting as it sounds. that said i had a 6el on a fixed mount for about two years and i definitely missed a few openings that were happening off the back or sides. it's a tradeoff. if you can do even a simple manual rotator setup with a bearing indicator it changes everything. doesnt have to be fancy, ive seen guys use a tv rotator with a potentiometer and a cheap voltmeter as the indicator and it works fine for VHF where you dont need super precise pointing. the collinear is fine for FM and general use but for SSB weak signal work you really want that forward gain. 5.5 dBi vs even a modest yagi is a noticeable difference on marginal paths.

tbh the whole RemoteHams platform has always been a bit temperamental with third party SDR hardware in my experience. i went a totally different direction and just set up an OpenWebRX instance on a separate Pi at the shack and linked that separately, then use the RRC-1258 just for the rig control and audio. more moving parts but each thing is doing one job and its way easier to troubleshoot when something breaks. the bandwidth question really depends on the codec settings, ive seen people run it surprisingly lean but then the latency gets bad and CW becomes unusable. 25 up is plenty if you keep the SDR stream narrow and use one of the compressed audio modes.