Steven Patel

so ive been a general for about two years now and lately ive been going back and forth on whether to bother with the extra. i know it opens up more of the HF bands but honestly i use maybe 40% of what i have access to now so i dont know if the extra spectrum is even something id use. the theory side of it is what kind of intimidates me though. ive looked at the question pool and some of that stuff about filter design and transmission line theory and impedance matching is pretty deep. like deeper than anything i actually encounter day to day. i understand the basics well enough to operate but some of the question pool math is a whole other thing. is there a reason to go for it beyond just the privileges? like does actually studying for the extra teach you stuff that makes you a better operator or is it mostly trivia that you forget right after the test

went last year and honestly the tailgate swap meet was still pretty good early in the morning. like if you get there before 8am you can find some real deals, guys just trying to unload stuff from their shacks. i grabbed a nice old Drake speaker and a bunch of coax connectors for almost nothing. but yeah by 10 or 11 it does thin out and then its mostly the commercial tables. the club also does a pretty solid VE session and there was a talk on SOTA that was actually interesting

few things to check - first, when you say the TX light blinks, are you actually getting RF out? like have you verified with a wattmeter or at least seen the ALC move on the radio? signalink can blink and still have the audio level set wrong on either end. the drive level on the signalink itself and the mic gain on the IC-7300 both matter, and too much is as bad as too little with VARA, it's really picky about overdriven audio. also the 'no channel' thing usually means the gateway heard you but the frequency was occupied or the timing was off. VARA HF specifically needs the dial frequency to match what the gateway is listening on, and a lot of people get tripped up because they forget to account for the USB offset. like if the gateway is listed at 14105.0 you need to actually be dialed to that exact frequency, VARA handles the rest internally. double check your frequency against the gateway list in the channel selector and make sure you're not accidentally on LSB instead of USB.

so last weekend was my first actual activation with our local ARES group and i honestly wasnt sure what i was getting into. ive been attending the monthly nets and did the ICS-100 and 200 online courses like they asked but nothing really prepares you for showing up at an actual EOC with your go-bag and just... waiting to be useful, you know? the event was a county-wide emergency drill, simulated flooding scenario. i got assigned to shadow one of the more experienced guys who was handling liaison comms between the EOC and a couple of shelter sites on 2m simplex since repeaters were being treated as unavailable for the exercise. it was actually way more organized than i expected but also kind of humbling because i realized how much i dont know about net control procedures when things get busy and multiple stations are trying to check in at once. the net control guy was incredible though, just calm and clear the whole time, managing traffic like it was nothing. made me want to get way better at that. anyway just wanted to share since ive seen a few people here asking what ARES is actually like in practice vs just the paperwork side of things. happy to answer questions if anyone has them, though im still pretty new to all this myself

yeah EME is definitely one of those things where the barrier to entry got dramatically lower once digital modes took over, specifically JT65B on 2m. back in the CW only days you needed a serious array just to hear yourself, but now people are making legit EME contacts with a single long yagi and 400-500w if conditions are right and you're working a big gun station on the other end. realistically though if you want to work more than just the absolute biggest stations you're looking at at minimum a 4 yagi array, something like four 9 or 12 element yagis with decent preamp — a good low noise preamp is honestly more important than people think, you want something like 0.5dB NF or better right at the feedpoint. the path loss on 2m EME is around 252dB depending on moon distance so every fraction of a dB in your system noise figure actually matters. and for power youre right that 1kw is kind of the practical minimum to be competitive, though ive heard of guys with 500w doing it on JT65 with big antennas. first contact is wild by the way, knowing that your signal went to the moon and back and someone 8000 miles away decoded it is a genuinely weird feeling

not a dumb question at all, honestly this trips up a lot of people especially when nets have their own little local customs on top of the FCC rules. the actual rule is you have to ID at the end of your transmission or series of transmissions and at least every 10 minutes during a contact. so if you're going back and forth with someone relaying a message and it stretches out, yeah you'd want to drop your callsign in there somewhere around the 10 minute mark. but on most local 2m nets the exchanges are short enough that it's usually fine to just ID at the very end when you're done. the check-in ID at the start of the net doesn't really count as your ID for subsequent transmissions, so you were right to say your call again when you relayed that message. that's just good practice. net control will appreciate it too because it helps them keep track of who's doing what especially if there's a lot of traffic moving around. some nets are pretty informal about it and some are more by the book, just kind of feel it out. your instinct to ID again was the right one.

went last year and honestly it was better than i expected, picked up a old Kenwood TS-440 for way less than i wouldve paid on ebay. the swap meet does tend to get picked over pretty early so if you go get there when it opens dont wait around. the club had a nice tech forum going too which was worth sitting in on for a bit.

so ive been studying for the technician exam for like two months and passed it last thursday, got my callsign showing up in the ULS on saturday morning and i was refreshing that page way too many times honestly. anyway today i just keyed up on a local 2m repeater kind of nervous and this guy came back to me, we talked for maybe 10 minutes about nothing really, weather, how long ive been licensed, he was in Columbus. it wasnt anything special but i dont know it felt like a big deal to me. just wanted to share i guess. now trying to figure out what to do next, been reading about HF but that feels like a whole different world

so ive been licensed for about 6 years now and done a fair amount of HF work, some 2m weak signal stuff with FT8 and i keep seeing EME contacts come up on the clusters and it just looks incredible to me. the idea of bouncing a signal off the moon and actually having someone hear it on the other side of the earth is just... i dont know, its one of those things that sounds impossible even when you understand the physics. anyway i started reading into it more seriously and im getting a little overwhelmed with the equipment side of things. i know youre fighting maybe 250-260dB of path loss which is brutal, and that you basically need serious antenna gain to make up for it. ive been looking at 2m EME setups mostly since thats what seems most accessible, and i see guys running 4x yagi arrays or even dish setups. my backyard situation is... ok, i have maybe 50x60 feet to work with so a big dish is probably out but i could maybe do a 2x2 or 4 yagi setup if i built them myself. what are the realistic minimum specs to actually make a contact these days? i know JT65 changed things a lot compared to the old CW only days but im not sure how much antenna i really need versus how good my preamp and feedline situation needs to be. any practical experience from people actually doing this would be really helpful, ive been going back and forth on this for months

so ive been running APRS for about 8 months now with a TM-D710G and a Mobilinkd TNC hooked up to my HT as a backup, and i keep noticing on aprs.fi that my position beacons are showing up with duplicate entries like within seconds of each other. been trying to narrow down if its a path issue or if theres just two different igates hearing me and both uploading to the IS, which i guess is normal? but the timing is weird sometimes its like 4-5 seconds apart. my current path is WIDE1-1,WIDE2-1 which i thought was pretty standard for suburban use. ive read that you can cause extra duplication if your path is too aggressive but i dont think thats whats happening here. the D710 is set to smart beaconing with the sensitivity cranked up a bit more than defaults because i do a lot of stop and go driving and wanted better position granularity at intersections. anyone else seen this or know if its actually a problem worth fixing? positions look accurate on the map its mostly just cosmetic annoyance but i want to make sure im not hammering the local digis more than i need to

so ive been getting more into DX chasing lately and i keep having to jump between my laptop and the radio which is kind of annoying. a buddy at our club mentioned there are apps that can pull cluster spots directly on your phone but i honestly dont even know where to start with that. i've been using DXwatch in the browser which works fine but its kind of clunky on mobile and half the time i miss a good opening because im fumbling around trying to filter by band. im mostly on HF, usually 17 and 20 meters, and i have a pretty basic setup nothing fancy. just wondering if anyone has found a good app that ties into the spotting networks and maybe shows you alerts when something rare pops up. or does everyone just use the browser tools and i should stop being lazy about it. also im on android if that matters.

yeah that doubling issue is almost always contact gap being too tight, even if it doesnt look like it. what happens is the paddle bounces just slightly after you release and makes another contact. try backing the dit contact off just a tiny bit more than you think you need — like seriously smaller adjustment than feels right. also check if the tension spring on that side needs a little more tension. the BY-1 has a pretty decent adjustment range so you should be able to dial it in. give yourself a few sessions with it too, switching paddle styles always messes with muscle memory for a while.

yeah the vague answers thing is real, ive noticed that too on the RemoteHams forums. i think some of those guys have been running their setups so long they genuinely dont remember what steps they took to get there lol. i dont have the SDR integration sorted on mine either so cant help much there but on the internet linking question — we actually tried something similar for field day a couple years back where we wanted people at the club site to be able to hear what the remote op was working. ended up just doing a simple audio loopback through a cheap computer at the remote site feeding a local allstar node. wasnt elegant but it worked. the one thing id say is dont let it go two-way unless you really think through the RF exposure and transmit authorization situation at the remote end, got complicated fast when someone at the club end accidentally keyed up thinking they were just monitoring

not dumb questions at all, everyone goes through this. the CTCSS thing is probably your issue — double check that your radio is set to transmit the tone, not just receive it. a lot of handhelds have separate settings for encode and decode and its easy to only set one of them. if the repeater doesnt open when you key up, youre almost certainly not sending the tone or its set wrong. and yeah the pause thing is real. most repeaters have a courtesy beep after the squelch tail drops, and you want to wait for that before keying back up. its partly so the system resets and partly just good manners so other stations can break in if they need to. on a linked system its even more important because your audio is going out to potentially dozens of other repeaters at the same time and if you step on the tail constantly it gets annoying fast. linked systems like EchoLink nodes or IRLP or some of the Allstar networks can cover huge areas so just treat it like you would any busy repeater and give a beat or two before transmitting.

i did something similar on my 746 pro years ago and honestly kinda regretted it, not because it broke anything but just because the improvement was smaller than i expected and i spent like three hours with it open nervous the whole time lol. some of these radios are just well engineered from the factory and you're chasing marginal gains. that said if 10 meters is your thing and you're working weak DX i can see why you'd want every db you can get.

yeah i caught the tail end of that opening, was only on for maybe 20 minutes before it dropped out but managed to snag a ZL which was a nice surprise. my 10m antenna is kind of a compromise dipole in the attic so im never really expecting much but it pulled through. cycle 25 has been consistently surprising me honestly, my old elmer used to say this cycle wasnt going to amount to much and i think hes had to eat those words a few times now lol on the 7760 thing — ive been half tempted but im not buying anything until i see some actual hands-on reviews from people who arent paid to say nice things about it. the spec sheet looks good but so did a couple other radios that turned out to be kind of meh in practice. ill wait for the dust to settle

so ive been using a cheap RTL-SDR v3 dongle for about a year now mostly for aircraft and some HF stuff with the direct sampling mode and honestly its been fine for what it is but im starting to hit the limits of it especially on the lower HF bands where the noise floor just seems really high and i keep missing weaker signals that i know are there because other guys on the local club net are hearing them fine with better setups anyway i was looking at the SDRplay RSP1A which is like $110 or so and supposedly has way better dynamic range and a proper frontend vs the RTL-SDR which everyone knows is basically a TV tuner chip doing something it wasnt designed for. but then i see people saying you can get a HackRF for not much more and that covers transmit too which the RSP1A doesnt do. i dont really need to transmit from the SDR right now but maybe eventually? anyone actually compared the RSP1A to an RTL-SDR on like 40m or 80m and noticed a real difference in what you can pull out of the noise? or am i just going to be disappointed either way without a better antenna

As someone new to SOTA, I appreciate this discussion! Still learning about the point values based on elevation and scoring systems for both activators and chasers. Are there any other ultra-lightweight options worth considering for us QRP folks?

the jump is totally doable, dont stress too much. yeah theres more theory than the tech exam but honestly if you just grind through HamStudy or QRZ's practice tests for a couple weeks you'll start to recognize the patterns. the electrical stuff like ohms law and resonance calculations are really not that bad once you see them a few times, and there are only so many ways they can ask the same question. on the privileges thing your club buddy was right, generals are restricted to certain sub-bands on HF. on 20 meters for example you get CW and data below 14.150 but SSB phone starts at 14.225 for generals i think, while extras can use down to 14.150. its not a huge deal in practice, most of the popular DX calling frequencies are accessible and youll find plenty of action. 40 meters is where it gets a little more noticeable since the phone portion for generals is kind of narrow and can get crowded. but honestly just get the license and worry about the fine print later, you'll figure it out as you go. the gordon west book is fine but i'd supplement it with the actual question pool drilling, that's what really locks it in for most people.

yeah the QCX mini is a great first kit, good choice. i built one a while back and honestly it performed better than i expected for what it cost. the alignment can be a little finicky so hopefully you got a decent result on that front. on your question about getting more out of QRP — antenna is everything, like even more so than with higher power. a really good dipole or EFHW up reasonably high is going to do way more for you than any operating trick. that said, conditions matter a lot and honestly i've found that early morning on 40m or 20m during decent solar flux is where most of my qrp contacts happen. chasing DX with 5w is doable but you kind of have to pick your moments, dont try to bust a big pileup obviously. and CW if you havent gone there yet — huge difference in what you can work compared to SSB at that power level

that's awesome that you got to do a real one so early, a lot of guys go years before they get called out for an actual event. the waiting thing is real and honestly some newer folks get frustrated by it and think nothing is happening but that's just how it works. the value is being there and ready. what i'd say — and this took me a couple activations to figure out — is get your logging habits down cold before you need them under pressure. ICS 309 forms, knowing how to write a clean message, being able to hand off your log to someone else if you get relieved. sounds boring but when things get busy at the EOC end and they're asking for a recap of traffic you really dont want to be flipping through a messy notebook trying to remember what time you relayed that supply request. also just talk to your EC about what went well and what didn't, they usually appreciate that kind of debrief conversation and it helps them know where to plug you in next time. sounds like you did great for a first activation though.

so ive been running FT8 for a while now and its fine, great even for making contacts when the band is rough, but i keep reading people talk about JS8Call like its this whole different thing and i cant quite figure out if its actually better for weak signal work or if its more of a... chat mode? like the way people describe it sounds like its slower and more conversational but im not sure if thats actually an advantage for like true weak signal dx or if FT8 just wins there because of the shorter transmission windows and better sensitivity numbers. my setup is pretty modest, ic-7300 into a fan dipole up maybe 25 feet, so im not exactly running a pileup station here. been playing with WSJT-X on 40m mostly, sometimes 20m if the band cooperates. just trying to understand where JS8Call actually fits vs FT8/FT4 because i feel like im missing the point of it whenever i read about it.

so ive been messing around with online cluster spotting for a few months now and i think im finally starting to get it but wanted to check if anyone else uses both DXwatch and the QRZ logbook spotting thing at the same time or if thats just overkill basically what i do is have DXwatch open on one monitor filtered for my bands (mostly 17m and 20m) and then QRZ.com open on the other tab so i can pull up the callsign info right away when something interesting pops. the problem im running into is sometimes a spot shows up on DXwatch but when i tune there its already gone or the pile is absolutely insane and i cant get through anyway. is there some trick to knowing which spots are actually worth chasing vs ones that are already dead also tried that DX toolkit app on my phone and its decent but the cluster feed seems to update slower than the browser version? or maybe im imagining that. anyway just curious what other peoples workflow looks like for this kind of thing

the baofeng is fine for getting started dont let anyone tell you otherwise, i know plenty of people who use them for simplex during events and they work. the charging thing is the real issue though — lithium AAs and a spare battery pack go a long way toward solving that problem for field use. one thing i'd add that nobody told me when i started building my kit — document everything. write down your frequencies, your ARES net schedules, your county EOC contact info, all of it on actual paper and laminate it or stick it in a little folder in your bag. when its 2am and things are chaotic you do not want to be digging through your phone trying to find the local simplex frequency. learned that one the hard way during a deployment a couple years back. the radio stuff almost always works out, its the little logistics things that trip you up.

congrats on the first one, S2S on your activation debut is a nice way to start. the log thing trips a lot of people up early on -- easiest fix going forward is just keep everything in UTC from the start, i know its annoying but once it becomes habit you stop thinking about it. for fixing existing entries the reflector has some posts about manually editing the CSV before upload, shouldnt be too hard if youre comfortable with a spreadsheet the activation zone question -- its always 25 meters vertical below the summit, thats a global rule and doesnt change by reference. what MIGHT vary is how easy it is to actually find a spot within the AZ that works for an antenna. some summits youre basically on a knife edge and every tree is on a 45 degree slope, others you get a nice flat shoulder with great takeoff. the database doesnt really tell you that part, thats what trip reports on sotl.as are good for as for frequency etiquette, i usually give a final CQ saying something like "QRT after this" so chasers know to get in quick if they want the contact. most experienced chasers understand you might only be up there an hour, nobody expects you to camp out all day