Brian Harris

so ive been doing SO2R for a few years now and i feel like im still not getting the rate i should be during the busy hours. like the concept makes sense, you work a station on radio 1, while youre waiting for the exchange you're hunting on radio 2, fine. but in practice when the pileup is deep on radio 1 and youre running 150+ an hour it feels like switching at all just kills momentum. my setup is two K3s, one into a stack of 4el yagis at 60ft, the other into a dipole so the antennas are at least somewhat isolated. audio is mixed with the DVK handling the CQ cycles. the issue is more operational than hardware at this point i think. do you guys actually run SO2R hard during a good run or do you basically just babysit radio 1 until the rate drops? ive heard some guys say they only seriously use radio 2 when they drop below like 80/hr on radio 1 but that seems like leaving a lot on the table during slower periods

yeah ive done almost exactly this with a nano actually. the relay modules from aliexpress are hit or miss on the optocoupler thing — some have them some dont, you can usually tell by looking at the board and seeing if there are little IC chips near the relay inputs. if the inputs go straight to the relay coil driver transistor with no isolation chip in between then you got the cheap version. doesnt mean it wont work but id add a series resistor at minimum on the control lines. for the CI-V stuff the 7300 is pretty easy to poll, theres a ton of arduino libraries already written for it. ive seen guys do it over USB-serial with a cheap ftdi cable and it works great. band voltage from the ACC port is simpler code wise but you have to do the ADC reading and figure out the voltage thresholds yourself which isnt that bad either. as for pi vs arduino for this specific thing — arduino all the way. the pi is overkill and honestly the boot time alone would annoy me. if the power hiccups your pi takes 30 seconds to come back up and your relay is just sitting there doing nothing. arduino wakes up instantly. save the pi for something that actually needs linux.

so ive been using N1MM for a few years now mostly for contests but i also just use it day to day because i never really bothered setting up anything else. it works fine but its kind of overkill when im just logging a few ragchews or some POTA stuff and half the features i dont even know what they do a buddy of mine keeps telling me to try Log4OM and i downloaded it a while back but never really dug into it. the interface looked a bit different and i just went back to N1MM out of habit. does anyone actually run two separate loggers, like N1MM strictly for contests and something like Log4OM for general use? or is that more trouble than its worth keeping two logs synced up also i run WSJT-X on the side for FT8 and i know it can log to both but ive had weirdness before where dupes show up or the freq data doesnt come through right. running an IC-7300 if that matters

yeah part 97.113 is the one your looking for, thats the prohibited transmissions section. the big ones that trip people up are using the radio for business communications (like you cant call your employee and tell them to pick up supplies, that kind of thing), music is out, and you cant transmit if theres any pecuniary interest meaning you cant get paid to do it. the obscene language thing is in there too but honestly for most people just chatting on a repeater none of that stuff really comes up. for a tech on 2m and 70cm you should be fine as long as youre not doing anything weird. the content rules apply to everyone regardless of license class. most common thing i see newer ops mess up isnt really content stuff, its more like forgetting to ID every 10 minutes or using too much power without thinking about it. not saying you are, just thats where people slip up more often in practice.

yeah Q65 has pretty much taken over from JT65B for most EME work now, at least on 2m. the sensitivity is noticeably better and it handles doppler spread more gracefully which matters a lot when youre dealing with the path losses youre dealing with. if you havent already get WSJT-X updated and just spend some time decoding while the moon is up even before you transmit anything, youll start getting a feel for whats coming through. single yagi EME is possible but youre really talking about working the big stations only, guys running 4x4 arrays or dishes. you wont be working other small stations. for 4 yagi minimum to start having more realistic QSO rates. the preamp placement is critical too, right at the feedpoint, not down at the rig, every tenth of a dB matters on this path. noise figure on the preamp needs to be under 0.5 dB ideally, MGF1302 or equivalent type stuff. elevation rotor is not optional unfortunately, the moon moves fast enough in elevation that you lose it quick without one. AR-303 or the green heron stuff works fine, doesnt have to be super fancy. its a rabbit hole for sure but once you make that first contact its hard to go back

Tech is honestly plenty to get started, most local ARES groups operate heavily on VHF/UHF which is fully within your priveleges. I've been with our county ARES group for about six years now and the majority of our activations are on 2m simplex or our local repeater network — no HF needed at all for most of it. Where HF becomes useful is for longer haul stuff or when you're working with state-level nets, but that's usually handled by the operators who've been around a while anyway. AUXCOMM is kind of a broader term, it basically refers to any auxiliary communications support for public safety — ARES falls under that umbrella in most places but AUXCOMM is more of a FEMA/government framework thing. Your EC would be the best person to explain how your specific group fits into it because it varies a lot by county and state. Just go to a few more meetings and do the IS-100 and IS-700 courses on the FEMA site, those are usually required before you can actually activate and they're free and not too long.

i did my first EME qso about two years ago on 144, was running 4x10el DK7ZB yagis in an H-frame with an IC-9700 and maybe 300w at the antenna. honestly the hardest part wasnt the hardware it was the operating, getting used to watching the waterfall and understanding the JT65B sequencing took me longer than i expected. first qso was with a station in Japan and i sat there for like 5 minutes just staring at the screen before it hit me what had just happened. one thing worth knowing is there are dedicated EME contests on the calendar, the ARRL EME contest runs in the fall and thats a good time to get on because activity is way up and even modest stations have a better chance of making contacts. theres also the online EME chat systems like MMMonVHF and the WSJT moonbounce chat that let you schedule skeds in advance which helps a lot when youre just getting started and dont have a massive station. scheduling a sked with someone who has a big antenna pointed your way is way easier than cold calling on random echos

im basically in the same boat as you, did my second activation last month and still figuring stuff out. the antenna thing is real, i spent way too long messing with my end fed last time and by the time i was actually on the air i only had like 45 minutes before i had to pack up. i keep telling myself im gonna do a dry run in the backyard before the next one but havent gotten around to it lol. did you use the POTA app to log or just paper? i started with paper and then trying to upload later was kind of a pain so now i just use an app on my phone.

okay so i just upgraded to general last month and im still trying to wrap my head around the frequency allocations. like i know generals get more privileges but every chart i look at seems slightly different and i dont fully understand where the band edges are and why i shouldnt transmit right at them. my elmer told me to stay away from the very edges of my allocation but didnt really explain why, something about filter rolloff or adjacent channel stuff? and then theres the whole thing about the ARRL band plan versus what the FCC actually says you're legally allowed to do and those arent the same thing apparently? im mostly interested in SSB on 40m, just ragchewing nothing fancy. so like 7.175 to 7.300 is where generals can do phone right, but should i just avoid the bottom of that range entirely or what

I got my first EME qso last winter with 4x9el M2 yagis and about 800w at the feedpoint after losses, so it definitely can be done without a massive array. took a lot of patience and i had to be picky about who i called, mostly went after the big stations in EU that were putting out strong signals. WSJT-X and JT65B is what everyone uses, make sure your system clock is synced properly thats actually really important and a lot of posts i see from people troubleshooting are just a clock sync issue. honestly the hardest part for me was getting the elevation rotor sorted out, i was just doing horizontal stuff before and adding elevation to track the moon across the sky was more of a project than i expected mechanically. the software side is fine, there are several good programs for moon tracking that interface with the rotors.

yeah the hamlib thing is a common headache with gpredict. first thing id check is whether youre using the right rig number for the 818 — its not always obvious and if you picked the wrong one it might connect without throwing an error but not actually change freq. also make sure you have the right baud rate set on the radio itself in the menu, ft-818 defaults are a little weird iirc. for the doppler on linear birds, gpredict does handle uplink and downlink separately if you configure both in the transponder settings. theres a transponder list you can edit and you want to make sure the uplink and downlink frequencies and the inversion flag are set correctly for AO-73. the passband is inverting so LSB up and USB down or the other way around depending on how you look at it. if you have that backwards youll chase your tail the whole pass. honestly the easiest way to find yourself is to transmit a short carrier and listen for it on the downlink before a real pass so you can see where youre actually showing up. just dont hold the carrier too long cause youll walk all over other stations.

so ive been messing with Winlink for about three weeks now and i finally got Vara FM working on 2m through a local RMS gateway, at least i think i did. the connection handshake completes and Winlink Express shows the session as connected but when i compose a message and hit send it just sits in the outbox forever. no error, no transfer, just nothing. my setup is an IC-9700 into a SignaLink USB, vara fm set to the right audio levels i think, and im hitting W3XYZ-10 which is about 12 miles away and usually has good activity. ive seen other people connect to it on the winlink map so i know the gateway is up. im wondering if its an audio level thing or maybe i have the TNC mode set wrong in Express. also not sure if i need to do anything special in the message handling settings to get it to actually push the message during the session or if it does that automatically once you're connected. probably something dumb im missing.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general) and people keep telling me i should try some of the big contests but honestly the whole thing feels kind of overwhelming. like i looked at the CQ WW rules and my eyes glazed over pretty fast. i understand the basic idea of making contacts and logging points but theres all this stuff about zones and multipliers and i dont really get how it all fits together. i did do Field Day with my club back in june which was a blast honestly, that was my first taste of really operating under pressure and i got hooked. but that felt more relaxed because there were experienced guys around to help. doing something like CQ WW on my own feels different. is it worth jumping into CQ WW SSB this fall even if i dont really know what im doing? or should i start with something smaller first. also someone mentioned SOTA activations count toward some contests or something? i might be confusing things. anyway just looking for a reality check i guess

i was in basically the exact same spot about a year ago and ended up going with a Yaesu FT-4XR which was like $60 at the time. its not fancy but it feels way more solid than the baofengs i tried at the club and the receiver is noticeably less noisy on weak signals. for just hitting repeaters its been perfect honestly. the APRS thing though — most basic HTs dont do APRS natively, youd need something like the FT3D or the Kenwood TH-D74 for that built in, and those are way more expensive. you can do APRS with a cheap HT if you get an external TNC or use your phone with an audio cable but thats kind of a whole extra thing to figure out later

had something similar on mine a while back, turned out to be the finals starting to go. not completely dead but thermally intermittent — they'd get warm and the bias would drift. the giveaway for me was it happened more often the longer i transmitted, like after 30-40 seconds of solid carrier it'd drop out but a short over was fine. does yours do it more on longer overs or is it random regardless of how long youve been keyed? also worth checking the connection on the PA board itself, theres a ribbon cable in there that can work itself loose especially if the radio moved around at all. icom's service manual is floating around online and the PA section is pretty well documented. if you're not comfortable digging in, a lot of repair shops can scope the bias voltage while its transmitting and that'll tell you pretty quick if the transistors are on their way out.

so ive been putting off learning CW for about three years now and i finally just ordered a cheap set of paddles off amazon and hooked them up to my radio. the radio has a built in keyer which is great i guess but im totally lost on the iambic modes. theres mode A and mode B and ive read about both and honestly i still dont fully get the difference in practice when im actually trying to send something. right now im just doing basic letters and its going okay but my dits and dahs feel really uneven. i set the weight to like 50 which i think is default and the speed is at 13 wpm which feels comfortable for now. is there anything i should tweak early on or should i just leave everything at default and focus on the muscle memory first? also does paddle brand actually matter this early or am i overthinking the gear thing

so ive been trying to get into DXing more seriously over the past few months and everyone keeps telling me to watch the cluster spots but honestly im still a bit confused about the workflow. like i have QRZ pulled up on one tab and DXwatch on another and sometimes i see a spot on DXwatch for something interesting and by the time i tune there the signal is already gone or i cant even hear it at all is there a delay on these things? or am i just too slow? i'm running a pretty modest setup, ic-7300 into a g5rv up about 30 feet so its not like im going to hear everything but it seems like some of these spots disappear really fast. also on QRZ i saw there was a logbook integration thing and im not sure if thats supposed to tie into spotting somehow or if thats totally separate any tips from folks who actually use this stuff regularly would be great. dont want to be chasing phantom signals all day haha

hamstudy is fine but dont overlook the ARRL technician manual if you actually want to understand whats going on vs just passing. i see a lot of new hams come through who crammed for the test and then get on the air and dont know why their SWR is high or what a repeater offset even means. not trying to be harsh about it, everyone starts somewhere, but there's a difference between having the ticket and knowing how to use it. the exam questions come straight from a published pool so yeah technically you can memorize your way through it, the pool is public and hamstudy pulls from it directly. but if electronics isnt foreign to you it wont take long to actually understand the material which makes everything after the test easier. also look up if there's a local club near you, a lot of them do free licensing classes and having an elmer in the room who can answer questions in real time is worth more than any study app imo

Honestly for your first antenna just throw up the dipole and be done with it. You can spend months agonizing over this stuff and not have any antenna at all. An inverted-V off a central support works great if you can get the apex up 30-35 feet, and yeah 40m is where you want to be for your first few months of HF, lot of activity day and night. The vertical low-angle argument is real but it only matters if you're actually chasing DX consistently and know what you're doing. For making contacts and learning the band a dipole is just fine. Clay soil is good for a vertical but you're right that the radial system is a whole project on its own. Get the dipole up, work some stations, then decide if you want to go down the vertical rabbit hole later.

ok so i just got my technician license a couple months ago and ive been reading through part 97 trying to figure out exactly what im allowed to do. its honestly pretty confusing. like i get that i have HF privileges on 10m above a certain frequency and obviously VHF/UHF stuff but the part thats throwing me off is the stuff about third party communications and what counts as business communications. my brother wants me to relay a message to someone at a hamfest about picking up some equipment he wants to buy. is that allowed? it feels like it might be crossing into business use territory but i genuinely dont know where the line is. and also does it matter if money changes hands or just the intent? i tried googling this and got like 5 different answers

So ive been messing around with remote station control for a few months now and finally got a decent setup going with RemoteHams but im running into some weirdness that i cant quite figure out. The SDR side of things works pretty well most of the time — im using an RTL-SDR dongle on the remote end just to monitor the band while my main rig handles the actual TX, feeds through the RRC-1258 boxes. Works okay but every now and then the audio path just... drops. Not the whole connection, just the audio. PTT still keys the rig, i can see the ALC moving on the meter i have a webcam pointed at, but no receive audio comes back. Cycling the connection usually fixes it but thats obviously not ideal especially if im in the middle of a QSO or something. Also been looking at integrating this with EchoLink or maybe IRLP for some internet linking stuff, not sure if thats overcomplicating things. Anyone run a hybrid setup where they do both real HF remote and also have VHF/UHF linking going on the same box? curious if there are resource conflicts or if the networking just gets messy. My upstream bandwidth isnt amazing, like 15 Mbps up at the remote site, should be enough but maybe thats part of the audio drop issue too? Idk. Running a Kenwood TS-590SG as the main rig if that matters.

this is making me want to actually finish the kit thats been sitting on my workbench for like four months lol. i got intimidated after i messed up one of the toroids and just kind of... set it down. maybe i should just try rewinding it and push through

so i just passed my technician exam last week and im trying to figure out what my first handheld should be. everyone i talk to says something different and its honestly kind of overwhelming. i was looking at the baofeng UV-5R because its cheap and i see it everywhere but then someone at the club told me to just save up for a yaesu or kenwood and not bother with the cheap stuff. i dont really know what id even be using it for yet — probably just local repeaters and maybe some APRS stuff down the road if i get into that. budget is maybe $150-200 but i could stretch it a bit if something is really worth it. is the baofeng thing actually that bad or is it fine for getting started

ok so i just upgraded to general last month and im trying to figure out where i can actually transmit on 40 meters. ive been reading the band plan stuff on the arrl website but honestly its kind of confusing because theres the actual FCC allocation and then theres like the "gentlemans agreement" stuff that everyone seems to follow but isnt actually law? like i get that phone starts at 7.175 but ive heard people say you shouldnt operate right at the band edge because of sideband splatter or something. how much margin do i need to leave and is there a difference between what the rules say and what people actually do in practice

yeah the window thing trips a lot of people up. so basically within each application window — which i believe is 30 days for most callsign groups — all the applications that come in are treated equally, its not like whoever hits submit first wins. after the window closes the FCC runs the batch and if theres only one applicant for a particular call you get it, if theres multiple people wanting the same one it goes to whoever has the highest license class first, and then if thats still tied i think it goes by the date you were first licensed. so being licensed longer can actually help you as for the fee yeah they added a $35 application fee a couple years ago, applies to vanity apps too. you pay through the FCC system when you file. and no waiting period that im aware of, you can apply as soon as your license is in the ULS database. just make sure your current call is showing active before you apply or it gets weird AE7 calls and some of the shorter 1x2 and 2x1 formats in popular districts can be pretty competitive so just go in with realistic expectations but its definitely worth trying for something that means something to you