Robert Thompson

yeah what he said. i remember my first activation i way overthought everything and then it was mostly just sitting at a water table for three hours lol. the hardest part was staying focused when nothing was happening. bring a notepad for sure, write down your check-in times, any traffic you pass, just good habit to get into early. your EC will probably do a quick briefing before it kicks off so you can ask any last minute questions then too.

yeah the fishing pole thing is the move, everyone i know who does SOTA regularly uses one. also get yourself on the SOTA watch or sotawatch3 site and post a spot before you leave the trailhead if you have cell signal, chasers will be waiting for you and your 4 contacts go by way faster than you'd think. i sometimes get my 4 in like the first 8 minutes if conditions are decent and ive spotted myself

honestly just get a cheap USB GPS puck and let the radio sort it out, saves a lot of headache. i think i paid like 12 bucks for mine on amazon and plugged it into the data port and never looked back. the manual position entry on those radios works fine but one wrong digit and youre beaconing from a cornfield somewhere lol

congrats on the first one, always feels good when it clicks. for spotting yourself -- yeah most people try to get the spot up before they start calling CQ, even if its just a quick entry on the app while youre still setting up the antenna. the hunters watch the spotting page pretty closely so you'll get a pile pretty fast once you're on there. that said ive definitely had activations where i forgot to spot and still got my 10 because someone heard me and spotted me for me. the community is good about that. on the park reference thing, you dont need to say it every single transmission honestly. most hunters already know the reference from the spot, but its good practice to throw it in every few CQs or whenever you work someone new. something like "CQ POTA this is W4XYZ activating K-2345" every 3rd or 4th call is plenty. if you go too long without saying it someone will ask anyway. 40m is probably the most reliable especially mid morning and afternoon for regional contacts. 20m is great if you want to reach further or if 40m is noisy. i usually start on 40 and move up if things slow down. sounds like you've already got the hang of it though, 10 contacts in 35 minutes for a first activation is solid.

Welcome to the FT8 world! I felt the same way initially, but it really shines during poor band conditions. Just worked JA yesterday at noon on 20m with barely any signal visible on the waterfall.

yeah the process changed a bit in recent years, there is a fee now — think its around $35 last i checked, could be slightly different so worth verifying on the FCC site directly. you apply through the FCC ULS portal yourself, no need to go through ARRL or any third party for the vanity app itself, though some folks use AE7Q or other sites to check whats available and track the status of applications. the window system works like this — when you submit, there's a filing window that opens and closes, and if multiple people apply for the same call during that window they do a tiebreaker, i forget exactly how they determine it but i think its somewhat random or based on some criteria. if you're the only one who applied for a particular call during that window you'll pretty much get it. after the window closes it usually takes a few business days to process and youll see it update in the ULS database. AE7Q.com is really handy for watching the status, way easier than checking ULS directly every five minutes. as a General you're eligible for 2x2 calls in any district and 1x3 calls too i believe, the shorter 1x2 and 2x1 calls are reserved for Extras. so if you had your eye on one of those shorties you might need to upgrade first. good luck with it, vanity calls are kind of fun to pick out

the coax question is one i went back and forth on for a while. I ended up settling on two runs — a short 10ft piece for when I can set up right next to the antenna feedpoint and a 50ft run for when I can't. both PL-259 on one end and i keep a few adapters in a small ziplock. learned that lesson after showing up somewhere and realizing my connector didn't match what they had at the EOC. on the HT thing — yes, absolutely keep one separate. your HF rig being tied up on a net doesn't mean you stop needing to talk to people 20 feet away. doesn't have to be fancy, any decent VHF/UHF handheld with a good battery and a spare programmed for local repeaters does the job. the baofeng will work in a pinch but yeah i get what you mean, i keep a wouxun as my backup and it's been solid. one thing a lot of people forget when they first build these out — paper. a waterproof notepad and a few sharpies. if your laptop dies and your phone dies you still need to log traffic somehow. sounds obvious until it isn't.

so last tuesday i finally worked up the nerve to check into the local 2m net for the first time. ive been licensed for about 4 months now and just been doing simplex stuff with a neighbor who got me into the hobby but he kept saying i should try the net. anyway the net control called for check-ins and i just kind of froze for a second and then keyed up and gave my callsign but i think i did it wrong? like i didnt know if i was supposed to say my callsign phonetically or just say it normally, and i also wasnt sure how long to wait after someone else checks in before i key up. i ended up stepping on somebody i think and felt terrible about it. is there like a standard way to do this or does every net have its own thing going on. the net control was super nice and acknowledged me fine but i want to do it right next time. do most people give their call phonetically on check in or just say it fast and normal

yeah the TCXO makes a real difference, did mine about 18 months ago. i was skeptical at first because the radio seemed fine but once you run it against a reference you really see what its doing. on FT8 especially anything that keeps you from drifting out of the passband mid-contact is worth it. as for the bandpass filter mods, i did look into those and from what i read it depends a lot on your local noise situation. someone in a rural area with a clean band probably wont notice much, but if you're anywhere near broadcast or you work a lot of 40m during the evenings when its wall to wall signals, supposedly it helps with IMD performance. i ended up not doing it either, partly because i wasnt confident enough in my SMD skills for that particular job and partly because honestly the radio performs pretty well stock for what i do. would be curious to hear from someone whos actually done the comparison on a spectrum analyzer before and after though.

So I finally did my first activation last weekend at a state forest about 40 minutes from my house, K-4857 if anyone knows it, and honestly I was way more nervous going into it than I needed to be. I'd been hunting other activators for maybe three months before I worked up the courage to go out myself and I kept psyching myself out thinking I needed some fancy setup or a big antenna situation. What I ended up using was just my KX2 and a 40m EFHW thrown up into a tree with a throw weight and some 550 cord. Got it maybe 25 feet up on one end which is not ideal but it worked. I spotted myself on the POTA app before I started and honestly the pileup that came in within the first five minutes was kind of overwhelming, I wasnt ready for that. Had to slow way down and really work on pulling calls out of the noise. Ended up with 47 QSOs over about 90 minutes, most on 40m SSB but I switched to 20m for the last 20 minutes and picked up a few more including what might have been my first hunter from outside the US which was cool. Qualified the park no problem, needed 10 for that obviously. Anyway if you're on the fence about doing an activation just do it. The hunters are super patient with new activators in my experience and the whole thing is just really enjoyable. Only thing I'd do differently is bring a folding chair instead of sitting on a log for two hours, my back was not happy.

34 miles on 2m with a collinear and 50w should be doable most of the time unless theres a real obstacle. whats your coax situation and how high is the antenna? that stuff usually matters more than which collinear you pick tbh. i spent way too long agonizing over antenna choice when my actual problem was a bad PL-259 at the radio end that was adding like 2-3db of loss i didnt know about.

the ref oscillator thing on the 7300 is one of those mods thats genuinely useful but only if you actually need it. i did mine maybe 18 months ago, swapped in a TCXO replacement and yeah on FT8 and WSPR the drift is basically gone, like the thing sits rock solid now even before it fully warms up. before the mod i had to let it warm up 15-20 minutes or my frequency would be slightly off and id wonder why decodes were inconsistent. so for digital modes i'd say its worth it. for casual SSB ragchewing honestly probably not going to change your life. the speaker swap is a real improvement though i agree. i used a Tang Band unit someone recommended and it was night and day compared to stock. surprised icom ships these rigs with such mediocre speakers considering what they charge for them

yeah the awards thing can be a bit overwhelming at first honestly. the short answer is just work everything you can and let the credits sort themselves out — thats basically what most people do. WAS is probably the most achievable one early on since youre already at 40 states, 10 more and you can submit for that. DXCC is the big one most DXers eventually chase and 100 confirmed entities gets you the basic certificate, but WAZ is kind of underrated, working all 40 CQ zones is genuinely tricky and not everyone bothers with it. for checking entities the ARRL DXCC entity list on their site is really the definitive source, but yeah its not exactly user friendly. Club Log has a pretty good lookup tool that'll tell you if something counts and it integrates with LoTW confirmations which is nice. honestly at 60-70 entities in your log youre already doing pretty good for 8 months in, just keep working DX and the confirmations will come

yeah im planning on going, been going pretty much every year since like 2009. if you need a spot in the car i got room for one more, just split gas. fair warning i tend to get there early and stay until they kick everyone out so be prepared for a long day lol

the documentation thing is NOT overkill, do not skip that. i did my first real ARES activation a few years back during some flooding and i was so glad i had laminated freq sheets because my phone was dead and trying to remember the repeater PL tones for a county i dont usually operate in would have been a disaster. i keep a small binder with local and regional freqs, a few blank ICS-214 forms, and a simplified net script just in case whoever shows up doesnt know what theyre doing. the thing most people forget honestly is lighting. a headlamp sounds stupidly obvious but you'd be amazed how many operators show up to nighttime deployments squinting at their radio with their phone flashlight. also coax adapters -- i carry like a little ziplock with SO-239 to BNC, a couple PL-259s, a barrel connector, all that stuff. you will absolutely need the one you dont have if you dont bring them all. and i'll just say it -- a paper log. not trying to be old fashioned but when stuff gets chaotic digital logging sometimes just isn't practical.

the muffled thing is almost always mic position or proximity effect — if youre too close to most dynamic mics you get this bass buildup that sounds awful on SSB. try moving it back a few inches and see if that changes things. also your room matters more than people admit, a lot of shacks are basically just parallel walls and a hard floor and that makes for terrible acoustics which the mic just picks up faithfully. on the compression question, yeah its a mess of opinions but my take after a long time doing this is: a little goes a long way. the speech processor on the 590 is actually pretty decent but cranking it to max just pumps everything and you end up with artifacts and it sounds harsh on the other end. i usually sit around 3-4 and call it done. the bigger gain honestly comes from getting the mic gain set right in the first place — most people either drive it too hot which clips before the processor even does anything useful, or too low and the processor is trying to amplify noise. find the sweet spot on your ALC and work from there. VOX is fine for casual operating but it does cut the first syllable of your transmission if your threshold isnt dialed in perfectly, which can mess with readability more than any audio quality issue. worth setting up a paddle or footswitch eventually.

yeah i run both, FT8 is basically just logging software at this point haha, i mean that in the nicest way possible but you know what i mean. JS8Call i use more when conditions are marginal and i actually want to pass a message or just ragchew in a slow way. the heartbeat/store-and-forward stuff in JS8Call is underrated, ive had messages relayed through other stations when i couldnt hit someone direct 40m JS8Call activity is spotty in my experience, 7.078 is the usual spot and i do see stations there but nothing like the FT8 pile. weekends are better. also try 30m if you havent, seems like the more serious JS8 guys hang out there, bit quieter but you actually get responses when you call PSK31 is still my favorite for a real keyboard QSO if conditions support it tbh, there's just something about watching that waterfall trace and typing back and forth in near real time that JS8Call cant quite replicate

That SWR on 70cm with a Tram 1185 honestly sounds about right for a mag mount with RG-58 going through a door seal. The 1185 is a decent antenna but its pretty sensitive to what its sitting on and how the coax exits — if the cable is getting kinked or compressed anywhere at that door jamb it can definitely mess with the impedance match, especially up at 440 where everything is more fussy. If you can, try routing the coax out differently even just temporarily, like hanging it out the window with the glass down just to test, and see if the 70cm SWR changes. If it does, thats your answer and you might want to look at running the coax through the firewall or finding a flatter coax profile for that door seal. Some guys use LMR-240 ultraflex for exactly this reason. Also worth checking if your PL-259 connection at the antenna base is fully seated, I once chased a high 70cm SWR for two days and it turned out the connector wasnt quite tight.

the relay mode thing the other guy mentioned is what you want to look at. i will say from experience though, getting a group to actually pre-configure that before an event is like herding cats. everyone assumes someone else did it. one thing i ran into with a similar setup - check your VARA modem bandwidth setting, if the gateway youre hitting is configured for VARA 500 and youre trying to connect with VARA 2300 it'll just sit there doing nothing and you wont get a great error message about why. wasted an embarrassing amount of time on that.

I tried to make Log4OM my everything app for about six months and kept bouncing back to just using N1MM even for non-contest stuff because I already know where everything is. Probably not the answer you're looking for but there's something to be said for just knowing a piece of software really well even if it wasnt designed perfectly for your use case. The WSJT-X logging through N1MM works fine too if you set up the right macros, its not as seamless but it gets the job done. That said I know guys who swear by Log4OM and think N1MM is a dinosaur so probably just comes down to what you started with.

im in kind of the same boat actually, been a tech for like a year and just started studying for General last week. what im finding is the electrical theory stuff goes a little deeper than tech but not by a crazy amount. the part thats actually taking me the longest is memorizing which frequencies i get access to on which bands because there's a lot of it and it all kind of blurs together after a while. someone on here told me to just focus on 40m and 20m since thats where most of the action is for new HF ops anyway so maybe dont stress too much about memorizing every single band segment perfectly.

Oh man yes external speaker is absolutely the way to go, dont even hesitate. I ran my 857 for probably six months with just the internal speaker and it was miserable on the freeway. Picked up a Heil HM-10 remote speaker, mounted it up on the dash close to ear level, and it was like night and day. You dont need anything fancy honestly, even a cheap $20 external speaker will be a massive improvement just because of the placement. The other thing worth trying if you havent already is playing with the RF squelch and also the audio settings in the menu. There's a high cut filter in there that can help cut some of the hiss that competes with road noise. And if you're on a repeater that runs kinda quiet, sometimes just asking the repeater trustee if the output power or PL tone situation is normal helps rule that out. Also a tip -- mount the external speaker angled toward you rather than flat on the dash. sounds obvious but i had mine flat for weeks wondering why it still sounded bad lol

APRS spotting is actually pretty slick once you get it set up — basically your HT with APRS capability can send a message to the SOTA gateway and it posts your spot to SOTAwatch automatically, no cell needed as long as there are digipeaters and igates in range. which on a summit is often better than you'd think since you have line of sight to a lot of infrastructure. look up the SOTA APRS2SOTA gateway, theres decent documentation on the SOTA reflector about it. that said i did an activation last spring on a summit where i had zero APRS coverage and no cell either and i just called CQ SOTA on 14.285 and 7.033 and still managed 12 contacts in about 45 minutes. people do scan around looking for activators especially on weekends. just make sure your summit is listed on SOTAwatch as a planned activation beforehand if you can, a lot of chasers check that the night before and will be listening for you at the time you listed.

so ive been a tech for about 8 months now and honestly i want to get on HF already. been listening to 40m on my rtlsdr and it sounds like so much fun. my buddy keeps telling me the General exam isnt that bad but then he also said the same thing about the tech exam and i actually had to study pretty hard for that one so i dont totally trust him lol anyway im wondering what the hardest parts of the General pool are. like is it the electrical stuff or the regulations or what. i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website but theres like 400+ questions and i dont even know where to start. also do i need to memorize all the band plans or do they just ask you like general stuff about which frequencies you can use i have maybe 2-3 weeks before there's a VE session near me. is that enough time or should i wait for the next one

so i finally did my first activation last weekend, been chasing for a few months and figured id just go for it. picked W4T/SU-001 because its not too far and i knew the trail pretty well from hiking before i got my ticket. threw my KX2 in the pack with a 40m end fed and a small 4ah lipo, maybe 6 pounds total which honestly wasnt bad at all. got to the summit and spent like 20 minutes just trying to figure out where to hang the antenna, there were some scrubby trees but nothing ideal. ended up doing a sort of sloper off a hiking pole which i was not confident about but whatever. spotted myself on SOTAwatch and within maybe 3 minutes i had a pileup going, like an actual pileup, i was not ready for that mentally. ended up with 14 QSOs on 40 which qualifies the summit so im counting it as a win even though i fumbled a few exchanges and one guy had to ask for my callsign twice which was embarrassing. the descent was where things got interesting because a storm came in faster than the forecast said and i was scrambling to pack up. antenna came down fine but i sort of shoved everything in and the KX2 took a bit of a tumble inside the bag, seems okay but made my heart stop for a second. anyway point is i think im hooked, already looking at summits for next month. anyone have tips for working sota on 2m fm as a backup when HF conditions are bad? i have a baofeng but i know thats not exactly ideal