Robert Thompson

so ive been messing around with this idea for a while now and finally starting to actually put it together. basically i have a hexbeam and a vertical and i'm constantly having to manually flip the coax switch depending on what band im on or what direction i want to point. its not a huge deal but it gets annoying especially during contests when youre trying to move fast.
my plan is to use an arduino uno with a relay board to handle the antenna switching and maybe tie it into some kind of rotator control at some point. i already have a raspberry pi 4 sitting around that i use for wsjtx and js8call, so i figured i could have the pi send serial commands to the arduino to trigger the relays based on whatever band the radio is on. my radio is a ts-590sg so i can poll it via cat for the current frequency and just write a little python script to handle the logic on the pi side.
has anyone actually done something like this or something similar? im not a great programmer but i can fumble through python and arduino sketches well enough. main thing im worried about is rf getting into the arduino and messing things up, ive heard that can be a real problem especially if the relay board is anywhere near the feedlines. any advice on shielding or grounding for that kind of thing would be appreciated. also not sure if i should use opto-isolated relays or just regular ones for this application.

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

so ive been using N1MM for pretty much everything for the past couple years and its great for contests obviously but outside of contest season i find myself kinda fighting it for just regular rag chew logging and working DX. a buddy of mine keeps telling me to try Log4OM for the everyday stuff and only fire up N1MM when theres an actual contest running.
the thing is i also run WSJT-X pretty regularly, FT8 mostly, and i know Log4OM can pull from WSJT-X logs but ive heard the ADIF import can be a little flakey depending on the version. anyone actually using this combo and does it work cleanly or do you end up with dupes and weird entries all over the place. i just dont want to maintain two separate logs that never quite agree with each other, had that problem years ago with some software i dont even remember the name of
also wondering if there's a point where you guys just gave up trying to integrate everything and just picked one program and stuck with it no matter what

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 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.

11 contacts still counts man, activation is an activation. i had one where i only got like 12 and the last two were basically me begging on the frequency lol. also 40m can be rough depending on time of day, have you tried 20m for POTA? usually way more hunters on there during the day at least in my experience

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

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.