Repeater Tech

I switched to just using N1MM for everything including FT8 contests like the FT Roundup and it handles WSJT-X integration pretty well for that purpose, but I'll be honest outside of contest context N1MM is kind of overkill and the general logging stuff is barebones compared to Log4OM. so i get why you'd want both. one thing worth checking — in Log4OM there's a setting somewhere in the UDP listener config where you can set it to ignore dupes within a certain time window. I think its under settings > log integration or something like that. been a while since i dug into it but i remember there being an option that helped with exactly the double-logging issue you're describing. might be worth poking around in there before you change your whole workflow

so ive been trying to work AO-73 for a few weeks now and i keep running into this thing where maybe 3 or 4 minutes into a pass the downlink just kind of wanders off and i cant figure out if its my doppler correction thats off or if the bird itself is doing something. im using SDR# for the downlink and a handheld for the uplink which i know isnt ideal but its what i have right now. my tracking software is Gpredict and i have it set to update TLEs every couple days from celestrak. the thing that confuses me is it doesnt happen every pass. some passes it works pretty clean the whole time, other times it just falls apart around the middle where the satellite is highest. i thought maybe it was AGC or the transponder going into compression but i honestly dont know enough about how the linear transponders on these birds work to say for sure. anyone dealt with something like this on FO-29 or the other linear birds? wondering if its just a known quirk or if im actually doing something wrong

I was in the exact same spot maybe a year ago, felt totally lost on all this. Honestly just upload your log to LoTW first and see what you already have confirmed, might be surprised. I had like 40 entities already matched before I even realized I was close to anything. The ARRL DXCC page has a pretty clear breakdown of the rules if you dig around on there.

yeah i do exactly what youre describing, been doing it for maybe two years now. Log4OM for everything day to day, N1MM when theres a contest i actually care about. the ADIF transfer is mostly fine but i did have one weird situation during the CQ WW last fall where some of the exchange data didnt come through clean and i had to manually fix a handful of log entries. wasnt a disaster but annoying. just make sure your ADIF fields are mapping right before you commit to it, Log4OM has some quirks about how it exports certain contest-specific fields that N1MM doesnt love. the WSJT-X thing is honestly the main reason i moved casual operating to Log4OM. once i had that UDP logging just humming along and everything showing up in the logbook automatically i didnt want to go back to babysitting N1MM for it. for FT8 chasing DXCC it just makes more sense.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now (general) and i keep hearing people mention nets they check into regularly but i honestly have no idea where to find a reliable schedule. like i found some stuff on the ARRL site but half the links seem outdated or the frequencies listed dont match what im actually hearing when i scan around. checked into the morning net on 7.255 a couple times last week which was cool but i kind of stumbled onto that by accident. also saw something about a special event station for some historical anniversary coming up and i want to try to work them for the certificate but again i dont really know where to look to find out when theyre actually on the air. is there like a central place people go for this stuff or is it just word of mouth and monitoring the clusters? feels like im missing something obvious here.

i mean FT8 is basically a contest mode that never ends, i said what i said. JS8Call scratches a completely different itch and ive been using both for like two years side by side. one thing to watch with JS8Call and a noisy QTH is the normal speed mode might struggle but you can drop to slow mode and that buys you a few more dB of headroom, the tradeoff is each exchange takes longer obviously but if youre just chatting with someone thats fine. RTTY is still pretty alive during contests if that interests you at all, CQWW RTTY is actually a fun one and the bands get pretty packed. different vibe than weakd signal stuff but worth trying if you havent

had both at the same time for a few months actually. for pure receive the RSP1B isnt even close, the dynamic range difference is noticeable the moment you tune around 40 meters or the AM broadcast band — the HackRF just gets stomped by strong signals nearby. the RSP1B handles that way better. SDRuno has gotten better but i still mostly use it with SDR++ through the sdrplay API and that works fine now, they sorted the driver stuff out a while back. the HackRF is cool if you want to play around with portapack firmware or do spectrum analysis or mess with signal replay stuff, its more of a hackers tool than a monitoring receiver. if you just want to sit there and listen to shortwave and ham bands the RSP1B will make you happier. thats my take anyway, mileage varies

so i've been checking into the regional 40m net on wednesday nights for a few months now, its usually around 7.250 or so depending on QRM, net control has been rotating between a couple of guys and its been a pretty good time honestly. last week i completely spaced it out, work stuff got in the way and by the time i remembered it was already past 9pm local. anyway i was just curious if anyone else participates in wednesday night HF nets or something similar and whether you've noticed the check-in numbers going up or down lately. feels like some nights we get maybe 8-10 stations and other nights its closer to 20 which is kinda cool. also heard theres a special event station coming up for some historical thing but i dont have details, someone mentioned it on the net a few weeks ago but i was half paying attention tbh is there a good resource for finding net schedules besides the ARRL net directory? that thing always feels a little outdated to me

yeah the AGC thing is real and its one of those things that catches people off guard. the transponder has a fixed power budget basically, so if you blast it with a strong signal you end up compressing everybody else on the transponder not just yourself. general rule of thumb most people use is aim for your downlink signal to be roughly the same level as the transponder beacon if theres one, that way you know youre not being the jerk hogging all the gain. 5 watts through an arrow is probably fine depending on your elevation angle and how the pass went. low elevation passes are rough even with good setup. if you were hearing yourself clearly enough to copy SSB that's actually a decent sign. the way to know if its real signal vs intermod is tune around and see if theres a consistent offset relationship to what youre transmitting — real linear transponder signals will track properly with doppler when you correct for it, intermod usually does weird stuff

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and a buddy at my local club keeps telling me i need to try a contest. i always figured contests were for the serious DX guys with big antennas and amplifiers and stuff but he says even a modest station can be fun to operate in something like CQ WW. CQ WW SSB is coming up end of october i think? i honestly dont know where to even start. like do i need to register somewhere or just get on the air and start calling? and how do you log everything, is there free software that works or do i need to buy something. i tried reading the rules on the CQ website and my eyes kind of glazed over honestly. also ive done a couple SOTA activations this year which i loved, someone mentioned there are SOTA specific contests or at least periods where it gets really busy, is that tied to any of the major contests or is that separate. and Field Day was my first real operating event back in june and i had a blast with the club but that felt more casual than an actual contest i guess. anyway any advice for a first timer would be appreciated, even if its just telling me what mode to start with or what band tends to be most active for new stations

yeah what he said about the choke is right. also just double checking — you measured each leg seperately before you put it up right? i made the mistake on my first one of measuring the total wire length and then cutting it in half instead of cutting two individual legs and i ended up with a slightly lopsided dipole which was a headache. probably not your issue but worth mentioning. 2.8:1 isnt even that bad honestly for a first build, a tuner will handle that easy if youre running a rig with one built in.

so ive been trying to get winlink working for about two weeks now and im honestly more confused than when i started. i got the basic Winlink Express installed and i can connect to a telnet gateway just fine which i know doesnt really count but at least the software makes sense now. the problem is when i try to actually connect via RF to the local RMS gateway i keep getting timeouts and i cant figure out if its my radio setup, the soundcard interface, or if the gateway is just not responding for some reason. im running an IC-7300 into a SignaLink USB, vara HF is installed and licensed. i can see the gateway listed in the channel selection window, it shows a frequency and everything, but when i try to initiate a session it just sits there doing the handshake sound for a while then fails. i checked the audio levels in vara and they look okay, PTT is keying up because i can see the TX light on the radio, so signal is going out... i think. also a separate question - does the RMS gateway operator have to be online for it to work or is it basically always running unattended? i dont really understand how the whole store and forward thing works with gateways vs the CMS. like does my email actually sit on the gateway or does the gateway just pass it upstream to the common message server? been reading the docs but honestly they assume you know more than i do about how packet works in general

so i've been wanting to build a regen receiver for years and finally sat down and did it last month. based loosely on the AA1TJ style one-tube design but i adapted it for a FET since i don't really have a tube setup handy. got it on 40m mostly and it works way better than i expected honestly. the regeneration control is kind of driving me nuts though. i've got it on a 10k pot and the sweet spot between oscillating and just-below-oscillation is maybe a quarter turn on a cheap pot. everything is crammed into this tiny range and it makes tuning really touchy. i've seen people talk about using a series resistor to spread out that range but i'm not sure what value to start with or if there's a better approach entirely. also wondering if shielding the coil more would help or if that just kills sensitivity. the audio is actually surprisingly decent for what it is. running it into a little LM386 amp stage and it's pulling in stations i wouldn't have expected. SSB is a little rough but CW comes in clean. just want to tame that regen control before i build the enclosure.

not a dumb question at all, this stuff confused me for a while too when i first started. so basically LoTW (Logbook of the World) is the one most serious award chasers care about because ARRL uses it for DXCC, WAS, that sort of thing. the certificate thing you mentioned is just a digital certificate you get from ARRL, it's kind of like a key that proves your logs are actually yours. the process to get it is a little annoying honestly, they mail you a postcard to verify your address and then you download the cert. takes a week or two but once it's set up its pretty smooth. eQSL is more casual and easier to get going right away, some people like it but it's not accepted for most of the big awards. still nice to collect the cards though, they have little graphic designs and whatnot. paper cards i still love personally. yeah it's old fashioned but there's something about getting an envelope from Japan or Brazil or wherever in your actual mailbox. most people go through the bureau system which is cheap but slow, like really slow, we're talking months sometimes. or you can just mail cards directly to stations if you can find their address on QRZ. my honest advice: get LoTW set up first since thats where the confirmed contacts will matter most for awards later, then sign up for eQSL too because it costs nothing and you'll get confirmations faster. paper cards you can do whenever you feel like it, no rush on those.

what he said. also dont stress too much about seeing your own packets through your own gate, aprs.fi aggregates from everywhere so as long as your position is populating you're good. i spent way too long troubleshooting something that wasnt actually broken when i started out with this stuff. one thing worth double checking though — make sure your MYCALL in Direwolf matches exactly what you're transmitting from your radio, sometimes people have like a different SSID set on one end and wonder why things look off in the logs.

so i passed my general a while back and kept telling myself id learn morse code eventually and eventually is apparently now. i've been doing the lcwo.net lessons for about three weeks and im starting to recognize letters at like 15wpm but sending is a whole other animal. i borrowed a cheap single lever paddle from a guy in my club and i honestly cant figure out if my timing is off or if the paddle itself is garbage. everything sounds mushy when i record myself back and listen. the dots run together or theres too much space between things, its hard to describe. the keyer in my radio is a yaesu ft-991a and i think i have it set to iambic mode A but i might be on B, honestly not sure which one is supposed to feel more natural. do i need to buy a better paddle to learn properly or should i stick it out with the loaner and just practice more. i dont want to throw money at gear before i know if im even going to stick with this but i also wonder if fighting bad equipment is slowing me down. any thoughts from people whove been through this would be really appreciated.

had almost the exact same symptom on mine a couple years back, turned out to be a cold solder joint on one of the driver board connectors. not even a component failure, just a sketchy joint that got worse over time with heat cycles. reseated the connectors and reflowed a few suspect joints and it came back to full power. probably worth a good visual inspection under magnification before you start swapping transistors.

I went through exactly this same confusion when I started, took me forever to figure out why I could hear the repeater but couldnt get in. Turned out I had the offset direction wrong, not the tone. Worth double checking both. As for etiquette, honestly most repeater regulars are pretty welcoming to new people. If it's a quiet moment just throw out your callsign and say you're listening or just testing, nobody's gonna bite. Some clubs even have a weekly net that's great for new hams to check in on since theres usually a net control walking everyone through it. Might be worth looking up if your local club runs one.

oh man the plateau you're describing is so real, i went through the exact same thing and i think almost everybody does around that 5-8wpm range. what helped me more than anything was just getting on the air even when i felt totally not ready. like i started calling CQ on 40m at like 8wpm and just told people upfront in my exchange that i was a new CW op and to please QRS. most guys were super patient honestly, way more than i expected. the Farnsworth thing does work but you gotta stick with it longer than two weeks, i think it took me closer to 2 months before i noticed i was actually hearing words instead of individual letters. also one thing nobody told me — copy by hand and let some stuff go. dont try to get every single character, just keep moving forward and fill in what you missed. that single thing helped me break through more than any software trick. took me about 8 months to get comfortable at 15wpm but i was only practicing maybe 20 minutes a day so your mileage may vary.

so we have a county ARES exercise coming up in about 5 weeks and im trying to nail down the power situation before then. last year we ran off a honda eu2200i and it was fine but a couple guys complained about the noise during net check-ins and honestly theyre not wrong, trying to copy weak signals while that thing is chugging away 10 feet behind you is annoying even with the inverter being pretty quiet as far as generators go. thinking about going full battery this time, ive got two 100ah lifepo4 batteries from battleborn that i use for camping and they hold up really well. the main station would be running an IC-7300 plus a signalink for digital, maybe 100w on SSB during busy periods but mostly 50w or less. my rough math says i could run most of the day on one battery with smart power management but id feel better with both wired in parallel just in case the exercise runs long or someone wants to fire up a second rig. antenna wise i was planning on putting up a linked dipole — the one i built last fall for 40/80 — on a 31ft spiderbeam pole. worked fine in the backyard but ive never deployed it under actual field conditions with wind and people walking around. anyone have opinions on whether a non-resonant EFHW with a 9:1 unun might be faster to deploy even if its not quite as clean? i can tune through the 7300's internal tuner on most bands but 80 seems finicky sometimes. anyway mostly asking about the generator vs battery tradeoff and whether anyone has done a full day exercise on lifepo4 alone without running out. the exercise is supposed to be 0800 to 1800 local so roughly 10 hours.

so i've been putting off building a QRP rig for probably two years now, always figured i'd mess it up or something. finally just ordered a QCX mini kit for 40m and spent a weekend on it. honestly the build wasn't as scary as i thought, took me maybe 4-5 hours total including all the winding on the toroid cores which i was dreading. first contact was a guy in ohio, i'm in virginia, running about 4 watts into a end-fed halfwave up in a tree in my backyard. i know that's not DX or anything impressive but i sat there kind of stunned for a minute that this little thing i built with my own hands was actually talking to someone else's radio. hard to explain the feeling if you havent done it. anyway my question for people who do a lot of QRP — is 40m a good band to start on or should i be looking at building something for 20m too? i mostly want to do portable stuff eventually, maybe SOTA activations. the 40m seems pretty good in the evenings but i notice it gets noisy during the day and i'm wondering if i'm missing out on contacts by not having 20m available.

I get where youre coming from but trust me once you try a good paddle and keyer setup you'll never go back. its not about cheating its about being able to focus on the actual communication instead of fighting with the mechanics of sending. I can do 25-30 wpm conversations now without breaking a sweat whereas before with my straight key i was maxed out at maybe 15 wpm and my fist sounded terrible that said nothing wrong with keeping the straight key around for slow rag chews and special events, but for everyday operating a paddle just makes so much more sense

i was in the exact same spot about 8 months ago and ended up going with the Yaesu FT-65 and have zero regrets. hits all the local repeaters fine, battery lasts forever compared to what i expected, and programming it with CHIRP wasnt too bad once i watched a youtube video about it. the manual is pretty useless tbh so dont even bother with that part. the Wouxun stuff is generally considered a step above Baofeng build quality wise from what ive read, never owned one myself though so cant say from personal experience.

yeah the dual NCS thing is a really common problem and it almost always comes down to not having a written ICS structure before the exercise starts. we ran into the exact same thing a couple years back. what helped us was designating NCS, alternate NCS, and a liaison position in writing like a week before the exercise and making sure everybody got a copy of the net plan. sounds obvious but it really does make a difference when the stress is on. the HT issue is something i think about a lot too. we actually started requiring operators to bring a minimum kit checklist to our exercises — external antenna or mag mount capable setup, 12+ hours of battery, and a written copy of all the simplex and backup frequencies. a few people grumbled about it at first but after the first drill where guys ran out of juice by noon the complaints kinda stopped. terrain is brutal for HTs around here too so i feel that.

Check that your SmartSDR CAT TCP port is actually 60002 - it must match exactly. Also verify you have CAT control enabled in the SmartSDR CAT setup, not just the port defined.