Christopher Lee

oh man yeah all the time. 40 at like 1am is its own thing honestly. i used to do the same on 75 meters but thats gotten so weird and hostile lately that its not even fun to listen to anymore. 40 still has good people on it late night. sometimes i catch propagation going long and you start hearing stuff from the other side of the world just creeping in under the domestic stuff and thats when it gets really interesting. you're not weird, thats just how the hobby works for a lot of us i think

LoTW confirmations absolutely count for DXCC, in fact a lot of serious DXers rely almost entirely on LoTW now because its faster and you dont have to deal with cards getting lost in the mail or waiting six months for a bureau card to show up. when you apply through the ARRL you can submit electronically using your LoTW account and it pulls the confirmed QSOs right in. paper QSLs still work too and some entities basically require them because the rare DX stations never upload to LoTW, but for your everyday stuff LoTW is totally fine. on the deleted entities question — it depends. some deleted entities still count toward DXCC and some dont, the ARRL maintains a list. generally if a contact was made while the entity was still valid (meaning before it got deleted or merged with something else) it counts. worth checking the deleted entities list on the ARRL DXCC page specifically. and yeah WAS and DXCC are separate applications, separate fees, separate tracking. your log is your log obviously but you go through different processes for each award. WAS you can also do through LoTW which makes it pretty painless if you have the confirmations already sitting there. good luck man, 40 entities is a solid start, it gets addictive fast.

the ALC thing is huge and i feel like nobody talks about it enough. when your ALC is riding hard constantly it's essentially clipping the envelope of your signal in a way that sounds ugly on the other end even if your audio chain is otherwise clean. i tell people to set mic gain so the ALC meter just kisses the threshold on peaks, not sitting there buried in it the whole time you're talking. on the IC-7300 specifically — the built in speech compressor is actually decent if you keep it low, like 4 or 5 out of 10. above that it starts to sound processed and harsh to most ears. the thing is compression can help you sound louder on the band without actually increasing your rated power which is the legitimate benefit, but people crank it because they think more is more and it ends up working against them. also worth checking your TX bandwidth settings if you havent already. some guys run it really narrow thinking it helps with splatter but if you go too narrow you lose the midrange presence and end up sounding like youre talking through a soup can. 2.8 or even 3.0 kHz sounds better than 2.4 for voice most of the time unless the band is really congested and you're trying to be a good neighbor.

had both at the same time for a while actually. the RSP1B is just a better receiver, full stop. the HackRF is a swiss army knife but the blade kinda sucks — its a 8-bit ADC under the hood and you feel it. dynamic range on the hackrf near any strong signal is rough. i was trying to do some HF monitoring and a broadcast station a few MHz away was just stomping everything. that said if you ever want to do anything that requires transmit, even just replaying signals for testing your own gear, hackrf is your only option in that price range. the RSP1B wont do that. for pure listening though, SDRplay wins easy. SDRuno is a bit of a learning curve but its actually pretty capable once you get used to it, lots of plugin support now too. on linux you can run it under wine or just use SDR++ which works great with the RSPx series and honestly i use that more than SDRuno anyway. for weather sats the RSP1B with SDR++ and then piped into SatDump is a really solid setup. i was pulling clean HRPT from NOAA-18 last winter with just a V-dipole out the window, not even a proper dish.

the split listening thing is huge and honestly most people never figure it out. the DX op is almost never sitting still on their receive end, especially on a busy band — theyre sweeping around or working a pattern and if you just camp on the same freq as everyone else youre basically invisible. ive had good luck just watching the cluster spots AND ignoring them at the same time if that makes sense. spots tell you the split exists but they go stale fast and the herd just piles on whatever split the last guy posted. one thing i'd add is timing your call relative to when the DX finishes a QSO. theres usually a brief moment where the pileup thins just slightly because everyone's waiting to hear the next callsign going out. thats your window. not right when he sends QRZ, more like just a hair before the next QRZ when the pileup is winding down from the previous call. hard to describe but once you hear it a few times you know what i mean. the 4-el at that height should be doing fine on 17, preamp thing is interesting, i could see that being a real factor if youre in a noisy environment and the AGC is working against you

so i've been putting this thing off for like two years, always buying kits or used gear but never actually building from scratch. finally sat down over the past few weekends and put together a direct conversion receiver for 40m based loosely on the Sudden receiver design, but i swapped out a few parts because i couldnt source the exact ones listed and figured close enough would be fine. the VFO is a colpitts oscillator running around 7 MHz, driving a NE602 as the mixer, then into a pretty basic audio chain with an LM386 at the end. i was fully prepared for it to not work at all on first powerup but i'm actually hearing SSB signals on it. not perfectly, there's a fair bit of hum and the audio is a little muddy, but actual signals are coming through and i can tune across the band and hear different stations. my question is the hum — i'm running it off a wall wart right now and i suspect that's at least part of the problem. would a proper regulated supply help a lot here or should i be looking at decoupling on the board first? the layout is pretty rough, just point to point on a piece of veroboard.

made that exact jump maybe 18 months ago and yeah the dynamic range improvement is real, not just spec sheet stuff. i was running an RTL-SDR with the ham-it-up upconverter and while it worked, anything near MW broadcast was a mess. the RSP1B handles that a lot better. the 12-bit ADC makes a noticeable difference in busy band conditions. SDRuno takes some getting used to honestly, the workspace layout confused me for the first week but now i dont mind it. though i also tried running the RSP1B in SDR# with the SDRplay plugin and that worked fine if you want to stay in familiar territory while you learn the hardware. the LNA and IF gain staging gives you way more control than you get with the RTL stuff. i dont think youll regret it if you're doing serious HF monitoring.

went through the exact same confusion when i upgraded honestly. what finally made it click for me was just pulling up the ARRL band plan PDF and cross referencing it with part 97. the FCC chart shows your actual legal limits and the ARRL band plan is more like gentlemans agreement stuff about where different modes tend to hang out. they're not the same thing and mixing them up in your head makes it way more complicated than it needs to be. the band edge thing is real though, had a guy at a hamfest tell me he got a complaint once for apparently causing interference and it turned out his dial was right on the edge and his radio was apparently running a bit wide. never had a problem since he started staying a few kHz inside.

so i decided i want to get my technician license and i downloaded the question pool from the arrl website but honestly its kind of overwhelming. theres like 400+ questions and i dont really know if i should just memorize all of them or actually try to understand the material. a friend told me to just use ham study dot org and grind the practice tests but another guy at my local club meeting said i should actually read a book first. i dunno, i only have maybe a few weeks before the next exam session in my area and im not sure how much time i really need. any advice on what actually worked for you?

so ive been interested in ham radio for a while now, my neighbor has a big antenna setup and he got me curious. i looked it up and apparently you have to take a test? i found a few websites but honestly im not sure which ones are actually worth using or if i should just buy a book or whatever. the test has like 35 questions on it i think? does anyone have advice on how long it actually takes to study for this or is it one of those things where you can just cram for a weekend and pass. i dont really have a background in electronics so some of the questions about ohms law and stuff are kind of going over my head already

mag mounts work fine for most people tbh. if youre just hitting local repeaters the difference is probably smaller than youd expect. i ran one for like 5 years before i finally did a proper mount and my signal reports were basically the same before and after, at least on the repeaters i normally use. the real annoyance with mag mounts is the coax going through the door jamb or window — that wears the jacket over time and ive had two coax failures that way. if you do the permanent mount just for that reason alone its worth it.

yeah thats pretty much exactly what i do, log4om for everything day to day and then when a contest comes up i fire up N1MM. the ADIF import between them is a bit of a pain but honestly its not that bad once you get a workflow going. i just export from N1MM after the contest and import into log4om to keep the master log clean. as for WSJT-X and N1MM together — dont bother trying to run them simultaneously, thats asking for trouble with the UDP ports fighting each other. N1MM has its own FT8 mode stuff now but its not the same as WSJT-X and i personally dont use it that way. for serious contesting N1MM is just miles ahead, the bandmap alone is worth it, and if youre doing anything like CQ WW or sweepstakes the dupe checking and multiplier tracking is so much faster than fumbling through Log4OM's contest module which feels like an afterthought to me honestly.

yeah what he said. also dont stress too much about having a perfect station for this, i worked my first 100 entities on a G5RV in a townhouse backyard so your setup is totally fine. 20m is your friend for DX, especially in the mornings and evenings depending on where youre located. one thing i'd add — WAS can sometimes be trickier than it sounds because getting all 50 confirmed takes a while, some of the less populated states just dont have as many operators active and you end up waiting for a good opening to somewhere like Delaware or North Dakota. DXCC kinda snowballs once you get going though, once you hit 100 you'll find yourself wanting 150, then 200... its a rabbit hole fair warning

so this has been driving me absolutely nuts for about three weeks now. my IC-7300 started doing this thing where it transmits fine for maybe 20-30 minutes and then the output just... drops. like goes from 100w down to maybe 3-5w and stays there. doesnt matter what band. receive is totally fine the whole time, SWR reads normal on a dummy load, it just stops putting out power. if i turn it off and let it sit for 10-15 minutes it comes back full power, which is what makes me think its thermal. ive already reseated the finals heatsink compound thinking maybe someone had done a bad job on it at some point but no difference. fan is spinning fine, doesnt feel excessively hot to touch on the outside. havent pulled the board yet to actually probe anything but im getting there. anybody seen this one before? wondering if its worth just sending it to Icom or if this is something diagnosable at home. i do have a scope and a decent LCR meter but im not super experienced on RF finals specifically.

congrats on finally checking in, that first time is always the hardest part honestly. once you do it a few times it just becomes second nature. for HF nets the ARRL has a net directory on their website, its not always perfectly up to date but its a decent starting point. the 40 meter nets tend to be a bit more forgiving than 75m in my experience, 75 can get uh... colorful sometimes depending on time of day and who's on. for special event stations the best thing i've found is just watching the DX bulletins and also the ARRL website has a special event station listing. QRZ will sometimes show them too when you look up the callsign. W1AW operations are probably the most well known but there are tons of smaller ones tied to local history events, national parks activations, that kind of thing. once you work a few you'll start recognizing the pattern of how they operate and it gets easier to find them.

so ive been licensed about 8 months now and i keep seeing people talk about uploading logs to LoTW and eQSL and also mailing out paper cards and im honestly not sure what the point of having three different systems is. like i get that paper cards are the old school way and theres something cool about getting a physical card in the mail but is anyone actually still doing all three of these? feels like a lot of work just to confirm a contact i set up my LoTW account a while back and the whole TQSL thing kind of threw me off, took me a few tries to get my certificate sorted. i have uploaded a couple logs but i dont really know what to do next or if the other station has to upload too before anything shows up as confirmed. also someone mentioned eQSL to me at a club meeting and i dont know if thats even worth messing with or if most serious operators just ignore it not chasing any awards right now, just curious what the general approach is. do most people just pick one or is there a reason to do all of them

This is why I keep saying we need more realistic training scenarios. Too many groups just do the basic "check in and pass one message" drill and call it good. Real emergencies are messy and confusing and people are stressed. We started doing no-notice drills where the EC just shows up at your house and says go activate right now. Really exposes who actually keeps their gear ready vs who talks a good game. Also helps to cross train people on different roles so you have backup net control operators.

so i finally hit 100 confirmed entities on Logbook of the World last week and submitted for my DXCC award, been chasing this thing for about two years now and honestly didnt think id get there this fast when i started. mostly ran 100w into a dipole for most of it before i finally put up a yagi last spring and that made a huge difference obviously. anyway now im thinking about what to chase next and WAS seems like a natural fit since ive already got like 38 states confirmed just from contacts i made while going for DXCC. my question is does the same LoTW confirmations count toward WAS or do i need to do something separate to apply? i know you need ARRL membership but im already a member so thats not the issue. also is WAZ worth doing at the same time or is that more of a CW thing, i mostly do SSB but ive been slowly getting into digital. any advice from people who have done these appreciated, ive been reading the ARRL award pages but they dont always answer the practical questions if that makes sense

To fix a broken knob or bad solder joint you might only need a screwdriver, soldering kit and some time - but you need to know when to stop, you could end up doing more harm than good without the right tools or know-how. You need professional help if your RF circuit or digital signal processor has problems that are more than just simple fixes.

Check your APRX config file baud rate setting against the actual TNC-X jumper position. I had the exact same problem - jumper was still at factory default 1200 baud but I was trying higher speeds in the config. Simple ID-10-T error but took me hours to figure out!

Thanks for the encouragement, folks! Just tuned across 10m and hearing some weak FT8 signals from South America. Going to give it a proper try this afternoon when the MUF should be higher. This solar cycle has been amazing compared to when I first got licensed during the last minimum - what a difference!

yeah its pretty much situational honestly. on a clear repeater where everyones getting full quieting you can often just say the letters and itll be fine. but the whole point of phonetics is to avoid confusion between letters that sound alike — B and D, M and N, that kind of thing. so when conditions are rough or theres any doubt, phonetics just removes the guesswork. i'd say use them for your callsign on first contact pretty much always, and then once youre in a QSO and the other person obviously has your call, you can relax a bit. nobody's gonna get on you for using phonetics too much though. thats never really a problem. the net you heard was probably a local ragchew where everyone knows everyone.

so i finally got around to doing a proper mobile install in my truck, FT-7900R dual band, mag mount for now until i can drill through the roof which my wife is NOT thrilled about. anyway i ran the coax from the antenna through the door seal down under the floor mat toward the back seat and up under the center console to the radio. seemed like a clean install honestly i was pretty proud of it. but now im getting weird SWR readings, like on 2m its sitting around 2.1 which isnt horrible but its higher than it was when i just had it sitting on the roof with the coax going straight in the window. on 70cm its even worse, jumps around when i touch the coax near the center console area. ive checked the PL-259 connections twice and they look fine to me. anybody dealt with this before? wondering if running the coax under the carpet is causing some kind of issue or maybe the door seal is pinching it somewhere. the coax is just some RG-58 i had lying around, maybe thats part of the problem too

haha yeah my first one i forgot the coax adapter and had to literally drive back down to the car. didnt even make it to the summit that day. now i have a checklist taped inside my pack lid, never leaving without it again. 12 contacts is actually solid for a first run especially in wind, some summits i barely scratch 10 even on a good day

this is exactly the kind of post i needed to read. i passed my technician exam back in March and ive been kind of on the fence about ARES because it seemed intimidating, like i didnt know enough yet. but the way you describe it makes it sound a lot more accessible. did your group do any kind of formal orientation or did you just kind of show up to a training net and figure it out from there?