Kenneth Lopez

The data supports both views honestly. Another big trend is more women getting into ham radio. It used to be mostly men, but now, more women are getting involved. They bring new ideas, views, and creativity. This helps the hobby grow and develop. We're definitely seeing more diversity even if overall numbers fluctuate.

yeah the 847 can be a bit fiddly with Gpredict for this. the key thing is you need to have the rig set up so Gpredict sees it as two separate devices in the interface — one for the uplink freq and one for the downlink. there's a setting in the radio interfaces section where you can define the 847 twice, once for VFO-A and once for VFO-B, and then assign one as your rx and one as your tx in the satellite config. if you only set it up once it'll just chase the downlink and your uplink wanders all over the passband which sounds like what you were experiencing. also worth knowing that AO-7 has an inverting transponder so as you tune your uplink higher your downlink goes lower, Gpredict should handle that automatically once you have the right transponder data loaded but double check the passband limits are correct in the satellites.dat or wherever you have it configured. took me an embarrassingly long time to figure all this out when i first started

so i've been lurking on this forum for a while and finally bit the bullet and built my first QRP rig from scratch. went with the classic Pixie kit because everyone says start simple, and yeah i get it now. took me about two evenings to put together, third evening to figure out why it wasnt transmitting (cold solder joint on the crystal, classic me) anyway got it on 40m and made my first contact with a guy about 300 miles away running maybe 500mw. i was absolutely floored. ive been licensed for two years and mostly just used a baofeng and my club's repeater so this felt like a completely different hobby honestly. the signal report wasnt great, 57 i think, but it was a real contact on a rig i built myself and that still feels kind of surreal now im already thinking about what to build next. ive been looking at the QCX mini but the price jump feels significant compared to the pixie kit. is it worth it or should i look at something else for portable ops? i do a lot of hiking and want something that can run off a small lipo pack without me having to carry a car battery up a mountain

so ive been licensed for about 4 months now and i keep hearing and seeing all these abbreviations and codes thrown around, like QSO and QTH and QRM and i kind of know what some of them mean from context but then someone on the repeater last week said something was QRT and i had no idea if that was good or bad lol. also on digital modes like FT8 theres even more shorthand flying around and half the time im not sure whats actually being communicated vs whats just protocol stuff the software handles automatically is there like a master list somewhere or do people just kind of pick these up over time? and are there Q codes that are mostly CW/morse things that you wouldnt really use in voice? feel like i should know this stuff better by now

so ive been running a mag mount on my truck for about two years now, diamond SG7900 dual band, and honestly its been fine but i keep reading that a proper NMO through-the-roof mount is way better for ground plane and radiation angle and all that. the mag mount does slide around a little when i go through a car wash and i did scratch the roof once which was annoying. the thing is im not sure i want to drill a 3/4 inch hole in a truck i still owe payments on, plus i dont totally understand what the real world difference would be on 2m and 70cm. like would i actually notice it on the repeater or is this one of those marginal gains things that only matters on paper. my commute is about 40 miles each way and i hit a few spots where the signal gets iffy through some hills. anyone actually switched from mag to NMO and noticed a real difference, or am i overthinking this

Just got my Tech license and want to dive into QRP. Looking at building the QRPLabs QCX+ as my first kit. Any advice on maximizing efficiency? I keep reading about antenna matching being critical - is an SWR meter essential? Also wondering about battery selection for portable ops. Want to make sure I don't waste precious watts anywhere in the system!

so i finally made it out to a local ARES meeting after meaning to go for like six months. been a ham for about two years now (general class) and kept seeing it mentioned on here and figured it was time. overall really cool experience, people were super welcoming and the EC seemed really knowledgeable. but i came away with a few things im not sure about. they mentioned something about ICS and NIMS training being required before you can actually activate with them, and i guess there are specific FEMA online courses you have to do? IS-100, IS-200, something like that? i started looking it up when i got home but wasnt totally clear on which ones are actually mandatory vs just recommended for ARES specifically versus like if you want to work with the county emergency manager directly. also they talked about a weekly net they run on the local repeater for check-ins and i guess that counts toward your "participation" for the year. does that actually matter much for activations or is it more of a formality to keep the roster active. my schedule is kind of unpredictable with work so im wondering how strict most groups are about that stuff. anyway it was a good time. they had someone demo their go-kit setup which was pretty neat, had a yaesu FT-857 running off a battery with a rollup jpole. made me want to put something together of my own eventually.

im kind of in the same boat as you actually, been at it for about 3 months now. what helped me was just listening to a lot of W1AW code practice recordings, they have them on the ARRL site and you can download the audio files. i would just listen in the car on the way to work not even trying hard to copy, just getting my ear used to the rhythm of it. probably doesnt work for everyone but i felt like it helped before i started actually drilling letters. still cant copy much above maybe 8 wpm but its starting to click a little

SOTA is actually pretty different from the contest stuff, its more of an activation program where you take a radio up a summit and make contacts from there. its not really a competition in the same way, more of a personal challenge type thing. super fun though if you like hiking. i got into it before i ever did a real contest and it taught me a lot about operating portable and making quick contacts which actually helped when i finally tried Field Day. for your actual question though yeah the 7300 and a wire will do just fine for pretty much any HF contest. dont overthink the antenna situation.

yeah ive done something similar though not with a Flex specifically. the thing about trying to layer AllStar on top of RemoteHams is you end up with two separate audio paths and they dont really know about each other, so you get weird ducking issues and if someones transmitting through AllStar the RemoteHams client doesnt necessarily see PTT state correctly. i spent a good weekend on that exact problem. what ended up working for me was just picking one or the other depending on the use case. for rig control and SDR access i stay in RemoteHams, and for the linking/repeater stuff i have a completely separate node thats not touching the flex at all. not elegant but it stopped the headaches. if your goal is genuinely shared remote SDR access for other hams, you might also look at what WebSDR or OpenWebRX can do — they sidestep the RemoteHams auth stuff entirely and are easier for casual listeners to just jump on without installing anything

so ive been messing with Winlink Express for a few weeks now and i finally got it connecting to a local RMS gateway on 2m packet but the problem is it keeps dropping mid-session, like ill get the connect handshake and it starts pulling the message list and then just dies. Sometimes it completes but maybe 1 out of every 4 tries actually finishes and i can send or receive anything. Running a TNC-X into an old Kenwood TM-261 and i know the radio is fine because i can hit the repeater no problem. Im wondering if its a timing issue or maybe my TNC settings are off. The gateway im hitting is only about 12 miles away so path shouldnt be the issue. Tried adjusting TXDELAY in the TNC but honestly im not sure what value im supposed to be at, ive seen people say anywhere from 200ms to 500ms and thats a pretty wide range. Also a side question - for HF winlink is Vara FM or Vara HF going to give me better results on 40m for connecting to a Winlink CMS through a Telnet gateway vs direct RF? I know telnet kind of defeats the purpose but im still learning the message handling side before i go pure RF.

Most new hams don't have a lot of money, so the cheaper radios are a good start to get on the air until you save enough to upgrade. Just expect it might get warm during long conversations and you may need to replace it eventually.

Welcome to the hobby. Electrical theory tripped me up on the exam too, I think I guessed on half the Ohm's law stuff and still squeaked through. The repeater crowd in most areas is pretty decent once they get to know you. Stick around on 2m for a bit before you go down the HF rabbit hole, it gets expensive fast down there, just saying from experience.

JS8Call is definitely more alive in the evenings in my experience, especially 40m after dark when the band opens up regionally. during the day i find 20m a bit better for it. the userbase is smaller than FT8 obviously but the people who are on tend to actually want to chat which is kind of refreshing. i had a 20 minute back and forth with a guy in Colorado last week about antenna modeling software of all things, try doing that in FT8 lol. the relay/store-forward stuff works better than i expected too. i sent a message one night that eventually got relayed through 3 stations and delivered to someone in New Mexico who i couldnt hear at all. took maybe 15 minutes but it worked. its a different mindset than chasing DX or filling a log, more like you're just... hanging out on the band. PSK31 i havent touched in a few years honestly, feels like it kind of faded out when FT8 took over. shame really because it was a good balance of weak signal capability and actual readable text at reasonable speeds

okay so first thing, no morse code requirement anymore, they dropped that years ago so dont worry about that. technician is definitely where you want to start, ignore whoever told you to skip to general, you'll thank yourself for building up the knowledge in order. the question pools are all publicly available which is kind of nice because the actual test questions come straight from that pool, no surprises. hamstudy.org is honestly all you need to pass the technician exam, just do practice tests over and over until you're consistently hitting 85% or better and you'll be fine. the real test is 35 questions and you need 26 right to pass. some people like the ARRL technician book if they want something more in depth but i passed just using hamstudy without buying anything. there's also hamradioprep which some people swear by but i never used it personally. find a local club too because they usually run VE sessions pretty regularly and sometimes they do license classes that walk you through everything. worth checking the ARRL website to find clubs near you.

I ran a HackRF for about two years before picking up an RSP2 and honestly the difference in receive quality is pretty noticeable. the HackRF noise floor is rough, especially on HF, like you'll pick stuff up but you're fighting the hardware the whole time. for pure monitoring the SDRplay gear is just in a different league that said the TX capability on the HackRF is genuinely useful if you ever want to mess with things like replaying signals or doing any kind of RF testing — not talking about anything illegal just like testing your own gear, checking antenna patterns, that sort of thing. if you have any interest in that side of things then it kinda justifies the compromises on receive for your use case though — weather sats, WSPR monitoring, general HF and VHF stuff — id lean RSP1A. SDRuno has gotten way better than it used to be and the hardware just performs. you can always grab a HackRF down the road if you want TX, they hold their value okay on the used market anyway

so ive been running a Tram 1185 dual band on a trunk lip mount for about two years now and its been fine, decent signals into the local repeaters, no real complaints. but a buddy of mine keeps telling me i should just go mag mount on the roof and be done with it. his argument is the ground plane on a trunk lip is garbage compared to a full roof mount. thing is i dont really want to mess with drilling or anything permanent and the mag mount seems like itd scratch up the roof over time if i leave it on there. plus i commute on the highway and honestly a little worried about it at 75mph even with a good magnet. have had a whip antenna on a mag mount fly off a different vehicle years ago, wasnt fun. anyway the question is does the ground plane difference actually matter enough to hear in practice, like on 2m, or is this one of those theoretical things that only shows up on a spectrum analyzer? currently running a 50w rig so its not like im at qrp levels where every db counts.

the 7610 is a different animal from the 7300, dual watch, better dynamic range, its not really a fair comparison price wise but if you stretch the budget its closer to what your 590 does in terms of handling a busy band. i made the jump last year and havent looked back but i also do more serious contesting than you described so maybe overkill for your use case. what does your antenna situation look like, sometimes thats where the real difference shows up anyway

i went through this same thing a few months ago when i got licensed. the sequential call showed up in the ULS database like 3 days after my exam session was uploaded which was faster than i expected. i ended up liking my assigned call fine so i never did the vanity thing but i looked into it. AE7 something if anyone's curious lol one thing nobody told me early on -- you can look up what calls are available using tools like AE7Q's website which is way better than trying to navigate the FCC site directly. might be worth bookmarking now even if you wait a while before actually applying for anything

the RemoteHams platform does support full TX if the host station has it configured that way — the SDR remote part is more for stations that want to offer receive-only access or maybe they're running an SDR frontend like an RSP or similar and just want to share that. if the host has an actual transceiver connected and has enabled TX you can transmit, but obviously you need to be in control and have arrangements with the station owner or it's your own station. the internet linking question is kind of a different beast. you're basically talking about something more like Echolink or AllStar territory there. RemoteHams isn't really designed for repeater linking, it's more point to point remote control of a specific station. if you wanna link your 2m repeater you'd want to look at AllStar or even just a cheap pi running app_rpt. i have both running and they really dont overlap much in how i use them.

so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and just got my general last month, first real HF rig is a used FT-891 i picked up locally. been trying to figure out the whole cluster spotting thing because everyone keeps saying to use it to find DX but honestly the whole setup is a little confusing to me still. right now i have QRZ pulled up in one tab and DXwatch in another and im kind of just manually checking back and forth. someone in my local club mentioned i should be using a proper logging program that connects to a cluster directly but i dont even know where to start with that. like does DXwatch pull from the same spots as what WSJT-X sees or are they totally separate networks? and is there an app that just kind of ties all this together without me having to have 17 tabs open also on QRZ when i look up a call it shows recent spots at the bottom, is that pulling live data or is it like delayed? just trying to understand how all the pieces fit together before i dive deeper into chasing DX properly

been practicing morse for about 6 months now and im stuck at around 10wpm. started from nothing and got to 5 pretty quick but now its like hitting a wall. ive been using lcwo and some phone apps but feels like im not making any progress lately. want to get to at least 15-20 for general upgrade and maybe some contests eventually. anyone else go through this plateau thing? what did you do to break through

so ive been wanting to build my own dipole for 40m for a while now and finally just went for it last weekend. used some 14 gauge stranded wire i had laying around from an old extension cord project, cut each leg to roughly 33.5 feet based on the 468/f formula. fed it with some RG-8X i had left over from a previous install. my question is about the feedpoint connection — i just twisted the wire around the SO-239 center pin and the shield tabs and used some electrical tape over it. SWR came out around 1.8:1 at 7.150 which honestly i thought was pretty decent for a first try but im getting some RF in the shack, touching the mic gives me a little buzz. i figure its a common mode current thing but not totally sure. should i be running a choke balun right at the feedpoint? i read some stuff about winding coax around a PVC pipe form but wasnt sure how many turns or what diameter to use. the antenna is kind of a sloper right now because one end is higher than the other by maybe 8 feet, not sure if that changes the math much. running about 100w into it on a IC-7300.

so ive been using Log4OM for general logging for a while now and honestly i really like it for day to day stuff, the interface is pretty clean once you get used to it and the integration with clublog and qrz works well enough. but every time contest season rolls around i feel like im fighting it. ran the state qso party last weekend and the rate meter was doing weird things, not updating right or something, and i kept losing track of multipliers because the display just isnt set up the way my brain works during a pile up i guess. couple guys at the club keep telling me to just use N1MM for contests and go back to Log4OM for regular logging, import the adif after. which i get but feels clunky. anyone actually running that kind of split workflow and does it cause problems with dupes or anything when you merge the logs back together. also wondering how WSJT-X fits into this because i do a fair amount of FT8 on the side and right now i have it logging to Log4OM directly via udp and that works fine but im not sure how that would interact if N1MM is also open during a contest weekend. like would they fight over the port or something

oh also dont stress too much about the operating side of it, honestly the hunters are really patient with newer activators. i completely blanked on my exchange the first time and just kind of stumbled through it and everyone was cool about it. just make sure you say the park reference number clearly when people ask, some hunters are going for specific parks and want to confirm they got the right one logged. one thing i wish someone had told me — bring more battery than you think you need and maybe a backup antenna option. i snapped my wire trying to throw it over a branch and spent 45 minutes fixing it instead of operating lol. good luck Saturday