Stephanie Clark

yeah that timeout thing is almost certainly your problem. a lot of consumer routers will kill UDP sessions that look idle even if they technically arent and RemoteHams uses UDP for the audio stream if i recall correctly. look in your router settings for something like UDP session timeout or NAT timeout and bump it up, some routers have it set to like 30 seconds by default which is absurd. if you cant find it in the GUI you might need to look at flashing DD-WRT or something if the hardware supports it. also worth checking whether your ISP is doing any traffic shaping on that connection. 50/10 cable sounds fine on paper but a lot of cable providers will throttle or deprioritize certain kinds of sustained UDP traffic, especially in the evenings. ive seen this kill remote audio in a really intermittent way exactly like what youre describing.

so i finally got around to building a direct conversion receiver for 40m, been wanting to do this for like two years and just kept putting it off. used the NE602 as the mixer/oscillator and its actually working way better than i expected for a first attempt. picking up SSB signals no problem, can hear CW fine too. the issue im running into is the audio stage is kinda hissy and there's this low frequency rumble that i cant seem to get rid of. i've got an LM386 in there for the final audio amp which i know isnt the most elegant solution but it was what i had on hand. ive tried bypassing various points with caps and moving wires around but nothing really seems to help the hiss much. the rumble gets worse when i touch the enclosure which makes me think grounding maybe? the whole thing is built on a piece of perfboard in an old project box, not exactly ideal for RF stuff. also the VFO drifts quite a bit when it first powers up, like maybe 2-3 kHz over the first 10-15 minutes before it settles down. i assume thats thermal drift from the oscillator? the coil is wound on a piece of PVC which i've read is not great thermally. wondering if i'd be better off rewinding on a toroid or just living with the warmup drift for now since its not the end of the world for casual listening. anyone been down this road with the 602 and LM386 combo? curious what people did about the audio noise specifically

I've got a similar setup but I went with a pi 4 2gb because I got tired of fighting the zero's limitations. cloudlog is actually surprisingly lightweight once you're running it locally, the logging part never really stressed anything. my wsjt-x still runs on a windows machine though because I just got tired of dealing with audio on linux, every distro update seemed to break something with pulseaudio and I gave up honestly. the split approach you're describing is probably the sane call. let the little machine do what it's good at.

10 QSOs is the minimum to count as a valid activation, yeah. you'll get them faster than you think once you're spotted — hunters are always watching the clusters and theyll pile on pretty quick especially if conditions are decent. self spotting once youre set up is totally fine, most people do it that way. if cell service is sketchy just try to get a spot out before you lose signal, or ask someone on frequency to spot you. theres also the POTA app which sometimes works better than the website on slow data. one thing i wish someone told me — bring more water than you think you need and dont underestimate how long the setup takes when youre doing it for the first time in an unfamiliar spot. i budgeted 20 minutes my first time and it took almost an hour messing with the antenna. once youve done it a few times youll get a system down. have fun with it, first activations are memorable

check the RF power setting in the menu like the other guy said, that trips people up constantly. also worth doing is going into the diagnostics and running the internal checks if you havent already, the 7300 has a decent self-test mode that might throw a flag at something. one more thing — what antenna or dummy load are you testing into? just want to rule out an impedance thing before assuming its the radio. had a guy in my club convinced his radio was broken for two weeks and it was a bad PL connector on his coax the whole time. SWR was spiking and the protection was pulling power back. the 7300 is pretty aggressive about protecting itself from a bad load.

the chirp is almost definitely a keying issue yeah. if youre hard keying the oscillator directly thats gonna cause exactly what your describing — the crystal takes a moment to stabilize under load and you get that frequency wobble at the start of each element. the classic fix is to key the PA stage instead and let the oscillator run continuously. if you want to keep keying the osc for some reason you can add a small delay circuit but honestly its more hassle than its worth. also check if your supply voltage is drooping when you key. even a small sag on the oscillator B+ will pull the frequency a bit. ive seen this cause chirp on otherwise solid rigs, took me forever to figure out the first time. a good bypass cap right at the oscillator and a separate regulated rail for that stage usually sorts it out.

so basically yeah you've got the right idea. LoTW is the one that counts for DXCC and most of the big ARRL awards, the confirmations you get there have actual weight behind them. when both operators upload their logs and the contact details match up within a certain tolerance it just confirms automatically, you dont have to do anything extra. just keep uploading your logs regularly and the confirmations trickle in over time. eQSL is more of a community thing, lots of people use it and its good for some awards but the big dx awards generally dont accept it. i use both honestly. eQSL has that authenticity verified status which matters for some things but a lot of casual operators just use it to share a nice looking card design without worrying about the awards side of it. paper cards i still love them personally. i dont send them for every contact but for anything special, a new country, a nice pile-up i finally cracked, or if someone sends me one first i always respond. the bureau is slow, like really slow, sometimes a year or more, but direct mail is faster if you include a self addressed envelope and some green stamps or an IRC depending where the other station is. dont give up on paper cards, getting one in the mailbox still feels different than a digital confirmation somehow.

So I finally did my first WWFF activation last weekend at a state forest near me (KFF reference) and honestly it went way better than I thought it would. I was super nervous about the whole thing because I'd only done a handful of POTA activations before and wasn't sure how different the WWFF side would be. Set up my little endfed on a squid pole, ran about 25 watts on 40m and picked up 20m later in the afternoon when 40 started dying. Got my 44 contacts which I know is the minimum for a valid activation but now I'm reading that for WWFF the logging requirements might be a little different than what I'm used to with POTA? Like do I need to upload to a specific system or does the ADIF from POTA Hunter work fine? I logged everything in paper first then transferred it but I want to make sure it actually counts. Also noticed a few hunters were asking for my grid square which I wasn't really prepared for, is that something WWFF activators usually give out or is that more of a general thing people ask regardless. The park itself was gorgeous by the way, saw a couple of deer right next to my setup which felt very on-brand for flora and fauna haha.

had something similar on my 7300 a while back, turned out to be the ACC connector itself had a slightly bent pin that was making intermittent contact with the ground line. the radio was seeing the PTT line drop for like a millisecond and that was enough. i only found it because i wiggled the cable while keyed up and could reproduce it pretty reliably once i knew to look there. worth trying to key up with the ACC cable completely unplugged and use the mic PTT instead, just to eliminate that whole circuit. if it doesnt drop out that way then youre probably looking at the connector or the footswitch cable somewhere. those braided footswitch cables can develop internal breaks that are basically invisible from outside.

So ive been on HF for about two years now mostly doing digital modes but lately ive been getting into phone operation and honestly my audio reports have been... not great. people keep telling me i sound like im underwater or that theres a lot of bass and its hard to copy me. im running an IC-7300 into a Heil PR-40 which i thought was supposed to be a pretty solid combo, gain on the mic is set around 50% in the menu, compression is off because i read somewhere that beginners shouldnt use it until they understand what its doing. ive messed with the TX equalizer a little but honestly i have no idea what im doing in there. i tried boosting the mids a bit and someone said i sounded worse so i put it back. my ALC is sitting right at the top of the recommended range, maybe just a tiny bit over sometimes when i talk loud. i think thats probably fine? anyway if anyone has a baseline starting point for SSB audio on the 7300 specifically id really appreciate it. or just general tips on what to listen for. i monitor myself on a second receiver sometimes and i cant really tell whats wrong but obviously other people can hear something

yeah what he said about ALC. also dont overlook where the mic is physically — i used to hold it too close and off to the side because i thought it looked cool or something and my audio was apparently pretty bad lol. straight on, about an inch or two back from your lips makes a big difference, at least with dynamic mics like the stock hm-219 or whatever they ship with the 7300 these days. i switched to an Heil PR-781 a while back and that helped but honestly fixing my mic technique helped just as much for way less money

I had almost the exact same thing happen to me when i first started joining nets. I just started putting my callsign at the beginning of every transmission out of habit and nobody has ever complained about that haha. better to over-ID than under I guess. also some nets are just way more formal than others, the ARES net in my county is pretty by the book but there's a casual ragchew net i join on thursdays that's way more relaxed about it

congrats on your first one, that feeling when you work europe QRP from a summit never really gets old honestly. for the spotting question -- alerting ahead of time definitely helps chasers plan for you, but you still want to self-spot once youre actually on frequency and ready. you can use the SOTAwatch app or if you have cell signal just do it through the website. a lot of activators also text someone at home to spot them if their data is spotty up top, which happens more than youd think. for the summit reference just search it on sotadata.org.uk and if it comes up with a valid reference number and region then youre good. if you activated the wrong peak by accident it happens to everyone at least once, dont sweat it too much just double check next time with the topo maps on the SOTA mapping page and make sure your GPS coords are actually on or close to the summit boundary. on the CW thing -- honestly even at 5wpm youll get contacts, chasers are super patient with slow code especially from a portable station. SSB works fine too, just takes a bit more digging through the noise sometimes at QRP levels. do whatever keeps it fun for you right now.

honest answer: the question pool method works fine and theres no shame in it. the pool is public, the exam questions come straight from it word for word, so if you know the pool you know the exam. hamstudy is what i used and i passed first try no problem. just do the practice tests until youre consistently getting like 85% or better and youll be good, the passing score is only 74% which is 26 out of 35 questions. the electrical theory stuff, yeah theres a handful of questions on ohms law and maybe some basic power calculations but its not a huge portion. i remember maybe 4 or 5 questions out of 35 being actual math. if you just memorize which formula to use for which type of question youre mostly fine even if you dont fully understand why. not saying thats ideal but for getting your ticket it works. once youre actually on the air you pick up a lot more anyway.

yeah i passed mine back in march and honestly hamstudy was the only thing i used, didnt even open a book. just kept doing practice exams until i was consistently hitting like 85-90% and then i went and took the real thing. got a 32 out of 35. the regulations questions are the ones that tripped me up the most because some of them are really specific about frequencies and power limits and stuff, so pay extra attention to those. good luck

for self supporting in an open field with no trees, look into the Spiderbeam fiberglass poles if you havent already. the 12m one is pretty solid and packs down to nothing, we use them for field day every year. you'll need good guying though, any wind at all and a unsupported 40 foot pole with wire on it gets sketchy fast. we had one come down mid-contest a couple years back and it landed on somebodys car which was not a great moment lol. also on the linked dipole — make sure your feedline routing is thought out ahead of time because it can get real messy real fast with two stations and you dont want common mode problems coupling between the two HF rigs, especially on adjacent bands. choke baluns at the feedpoints and maybe a line isolator on at least one run. just something to keep in mind.

the 50 foot cord run is actually not that bad if you use a proper 12 gauge extension, you'll drop maybe a volt or two which doesnt really matter for a battery charger or a switching supply. i've done similar exercises and honestly the honda eu2200 is just hard to argue with. quiet, fuel efficient, and the inverter output is clean enough that my signalink doesnt throw a fit on digital modes. the yamaha is also good but parts and support in my area lean toward honda so thats kind of a tiebreaker for me personally. that said if youre doing a hybrid approach — run the genny a few hours to top off batteries and then go battery-only during quiet periods — you can stretch fuel a long way. i usually bring two 100ah lithiums and a 30amp charger, kick the genny on for maybe 90 minutes every four or five hours and that keeps everything happy without burning through gas all night. the noise reduction alone is worth it during overnight ops when you're trying to keep a low profile in a park.

I had similar latency issues with my F1ATB Remote-SDR setup initially. The key is that SDRs need 5.6MB/s raw but Remote SDR compresses this down to less than 100kB/s, so the bottleneck is usually in your audio processing chain. Try reducing your GNU Radio audio buffer to 128 samples and make sure you're using ALSA, not PulseAudio.

the ALC thing is super important and yeah its one of those things people mention but dont explain well. basically you want the ALC meter to just barely be moving, like kissing the bottom of the scale on voice peaks. if its pegging or even sitting steady in the middle of the scale you're probably overdriving the modulator and that's where you get the splatter and the distorted sound. back off the mic gain until you see it just nudging on loud syllables. on the TX bandwidth, for a conversational contact i actually run mine a bit narrower than default — something like 200hz to 2800hz cuts the low mud and doesnt eat into adjacent channels as much. the stock setting on the 7300 is a bit wide imo. and yeah the TX monitor is not perfect, theres a bit of processing in the chain that can color what you hear, but its still useful for catching obvious problems like clipping sounds. honestly the best thing to do if you have a buddy nearby is get them to record your audio with their SDR or something and play it back — thats been more useful to me than anything else

yeah i went through basically the same thing with an almost identical circuit a couple years back. ended up running the receiver off a 9v battery just to prove to myself the wall wart was the culprit and the hum dropped way down. after that i added a proper LC filter on the supply line and it cleaned up enough to actually use. still not hi-fi but good enough for CW which is mostly what i use it for anyway. one other thing — the physical layout of the LM386 stage matters more than you'd think for this kind of build. if your audio wiring is anywhere near the oscillator section you're gonna have problems. i had to basically rebuild mine on a second piece of copper board and keep the RF and audio as far apart as i could get them.

yeah part 97 reads like it was written by lawyers because it basically was, but its not as bad once you break it down a bit. the power limits arent really technician-specific for most bands, the general limit is 1500 watts PEP on most HF bands but honestly as a new tech you probably dont have an amp anyway so dont stress that part. the thing that trips most new folks up is the phone privileges on 10 meters, you got from 28.300 to 28.500 MHz which is solid and theres usually activity there when the band is open. the broadcasting thing is actually simpler than it sounds, you basically just cant transmit for the purpose of general reception by the public like a radio station would. a normal QSO where youre talking to someone specific is fine. third party traffic is its own rabbit hole but the short version is you can pass messages for non-hams to other countries that have third party agreements with the US, and theres a list on the ARRL website of which countries those are. honestly your elmer isnt totally wrong though, you learn a lot more from just operating than from reading the rules in a vacuum. get on 2m or 10m when its open and a lot of this stuff will start clicking naturally

For digital modes like FT8, most software handles the ID requirement automatically by including your call in every transmission. With RTTY or packet, you still need to follow the 10-minute rule manually unless your software does it for you.

the stock mic on the 7300 is honestly fine, people run them and sound decent, so id look at settings first before spending money. go into the SET menu and find the TX audio section — you want to check your mic gain isnt cranked too high because that'll make everything sound crunchy and thin real fast. most people run it around 50-60% and adjust from there based on ALC behavior. you want the ALC just barely moving on voice peaks, not pegged. the speech compressor is a bit of a religious debate but i use it set pretty conservatively like 4-6dB and it helps with readability without wrecking the audio. if you slam it too hard yeah it sounds like garbage. also make sure your TX bandwidth is set to at least 2.4kHz, some people accidentally narrow it down for some reason and then wonder why they sound weird. the bass roll off setting in the TX filter adjust menu — i have mine set to 100Hz low cut and 2600Hz high cut and people generally say i sound pretty natural. honestly the best thing you can do is get someone to give you an honest audio report, not just a 59 which means nothing, find a patient elmer who will actually describe what they hear.

so we had that crazy windstorm that knocked out power for like 3 days and cell towers were down too. i had my ht and mobile rig but honestly felt pretty useless since i didnt really know who to talk to or what frequencies to monitor. our local club talks about emergency communication but we never really practice it you know? just wondering what others have done to actually prepare for this stuff beyond just having the radios

yeah what he said, but also just pick whichever one sounds fun to you and go from there honestly. i started with WAS cause working all 50 states felt more tangible to me than trying to think about the whole world at once lol. got it confirmed in maybe 6 months working mostly 40m and 20m. the Azores contact you mentioned would count toward DXCC btw, CT8 i think is the prefix, so you've already started whether you knew it or not